Is Adderall in Short Supply? Challenges: What You Need to Know Taking the ADD Drugs

The FDA reported a shortage of Adderall, a medicine used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The announcement follows weeks of complaints from customers and pharmacists about difficulties obtaining the medication.

This is the second time in recent years that the government agency has recognized a scarcity of Adderall, also known as amphetamine mixed salts pills. The FDA detected a shortage in September of 2019, but by May of 2022, the problem had been remedied. Aurobindo Pharma, Lannett Company, Milan Pharmaceuticals, Sandoz, and Teva Pharmaceuticals were the five drug manufacturers hit by the Adderall shortage.

Teva, one of these pharmaceutical firms, is suffering manufacturing delays that are generating the current shortage, as was indicated in the FDA’s press statement reinstating the formal shortage. In September, an FDA spokeswoman assured Health that the agency still anticipated having sufficient supply to fulfill demand, despite the difficulties that Teva would be experiencing over the following months. The agency, however, now claims that rival producers are falling behind.

The FDA noted in a news statement that while "other manufacturers continue to produce amphetamine mixed salts," their output is insufficient to fulfill the current demand in the United States.

Teva, the leading U.S. supplier of both original and generic Adderall, acknowledged delays of the medicine in September and stated that they should be temporary.

A representative for Teva, Kelly Dougherty, told Health that while certain customers "may encounter a backorder (intermittently) based on timing and demand," such delays are usually short-lived. "We are actively shipping both branded and generic Adderall to customers," the company said, adding that "we expect full recovery for all inventory and orders in the coming weeks, at which point we expect no disruption at the pharmacy level."

Before the announcement on Wednesday, doctors and patients have been sounding the alarm in interviews with media sites including BuzzFeed News, Bloomberg, and NBC News about the difficulty of maintaining enough supplies of Adderall. Sixty-four percent of community pharmacists surveyed by the National Community Pharmacists Association in August said they had trouble getting Adderall in for their patients.

The FDA has verified the accounts of patients and clinicians, yet many still have trouble getting their hands on life-changing medications. What you need to know about buying Adderall and what to do if you run across problems doing so are detailed below.

Increased demand complicates already challenging supply conditions.

Limited availability of the medicine was reportedly caused by a manpower shortfall at Teva, as reported by Bloomberg.

Dougherty stated that there is "no product shortage on our end," and that "any noted delays are the downstream effect of a past labor shortage on the packaging line which has since been resolved."

More people using Adderall at the same time has led to shortages in recent years.

The use of amphetamines like Adderall was already on the rise before to the COVID-19 epidemic, with consumption tripling between 2006 and 2016; nevertheless, the pandemic accelerated the trend.

Iqvia Holdings found that prescriptions for Adderall climbed by more than 10% between 2020 and 2021 as a result of lockdowns, and that the number of telemedicine visits, especially those dealing with mental health difficulties, increased.

The New York Times noted that several of the start-up businesses that began offering telemedicine mental health services during the epidemic, such as Cerebral Inc. and Done Global Inc., have come under fire for potentially overprescribing the ADHD medicines.

In May, Cerebral announced that they will "indefinitely" discontinue dispensing restricted medications including Adderall, Ritalin, and others. The Wall Street Journal states that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is also looking into the prescription procedures of Done.

If Your Pharmacy Is Out of Your Medications, What to Do

The best way to avoid having to go without Adderall is to get your prescription refilled as soon as possible.

"That way you have time to find another pharmacy that stocks your medication if your usual pharmacy is out-of-stock," Farah Khorassani, PharmD, associate clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine School of drugstore & Pharmaceutical Sciences told Health.

If your pharmacy is out of Adderall, Khorassani suggests calling around to other pharmacies in the area, or having your pharmacist do so on your behalf.

Alex Dimitriu, MD, founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine and BrainfoodMD, advised checking into mobile or mail-order pharmacies if your regular drugstore was out of stock.

According to Sonia Gaur, MD, a psychiatrist at Stanford Health Care, you may wish to urge your healthcare physician to phone your prescription into a new pharmacy.

If the drug becomes increasingly difficult to obtain due to the shortage, you and your doctor may want to consider switching to a different type of stimulant prescription. As part of its shortage statement, the FDA suggested that patients who were unable to obtain Adderall consult with their doctors about using other forms of medication, such as extended-release forms of amphetamine mixed salts.

However, because withdrawal symptoms from stopping Adderall or any other medicine can be severe, it’s not a good idea to do so without first consulting a doctor.

According to Guar, "the risk profile is based on multiple factors," including "comorbid diagnoses," "length of taking medications," and "medication dose."

In addition to affecting your energy and mood, abruptly changing your drug regimen may cause you to feel more exhausted and hungry than normal. Dr. Dimitriu says that fortunately, you should only have these symptoms for approximately a week. If you forget to refill your prescription in time and run out of medicine, Dr. Dimitriu advises starting with a lesser dosage and gradually building back up.

If you have tried everything and can’t find your medication, talk to your doctor about other possibilities and make getting enough sleep a top priority. "Sleep is essential to ADHD and our attention, focus, and impulse control," Dr. Dimitriu stated, "so make sure you keep sleeping well (over seven hours) whether on meds or off."