Advanced Disorder & Dragons
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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I’m stealing this one.
Where would this be? Canada? In the US they'd charge you at least $5000.
Looks like a specialist copay on private health insurance
My experience in the US is like this meme. I gotta show up every 3 months just to be like 'hey'. And then they're like 'hey. Any changes?' 'Nope.' 'Cool. Here are your 'scrips.'
It depends on what the medication is. I used to take generic adderall for ~$30/month. When I switched to vyvanse, there was no generic and I had to pay ~$300/ month. I suspect vyvanse is cheaper now, but it’s been a few years since I lived in the US.
The real killer was that I had to meet with the prescriber and get a drug test every month, which cost an extra ~$200/every prescription. Not every doctor requires that, but I went to a budget clinic and IME, those tend to be more restrictive (because fuck the poor)
The drug testing and having to call for renewed prescriptions every month were too much of a barrier to me, so I’m back to being unmedicated. I just don’t have it in me to make appointments every month that feel like a gigantic waste of time.
“Yep, still have adhd” “Ok we’ll renew it, come by next week for a drug test”
Cool, yeah, I can definitely totally remember to do that every single month forever with ‘my can’t remember to function until it’s a catastrophe’ disorder, even though it’s nonsense. Not problematic gatekeeping at all.
I've been on adderall for 10 years and not once have I ever had to do a drug test... I'm curious where you live? At least in the US, drug testing isn't federally mandated for ADHD meds, it just depends on how much your psychiatrist trusts you basically. If you wanted to get back on meds so you only need to do a monthly phone call to renew your prescription (plus a normal follow up appointment every 3 months), I'd recommend finding a better psychiatrist.
but I'll concede that even just a monthly phone call is hard to keep up with, with ADHD. I most often forget until I'm about to run out so there have been many occasions that I have to go without meds for a few days...
There is generic vyvanse now
In Canada we just walk in and out. I've never even seem a debit card machine in my doctors office before
Open market cost of psychologist without insurance ranges, but I've never paid more than $200 for a consult, and that's really pushing it.same for a psychiatrist (MD that prescribes meds).
With insurance as little as nothing, but usually the usual copay.
I say this having lived in multiple states, with multiple insurance companies.
Frankly you're pulling that 5k out of your ass - that's surgery level charges, pretty serious surgery at that, something requiring general anesthesia.
I've seen $50k in charges covered by a $500 copay.
Funny how my ADHD never lets me forget my three energy drinks a day.
My wife was personally offended when I read her your comment. I thought you would enjoy knowing.
If it's any better, the idea offends me too!
You used to, until you subconsciously realized self medicating was somewhat helpful, and it became a routine after weeks of reinforcement, and now it would take months to undo.
That or it's because you're physically addicted to a drug that can legitimately cause withdrawal within 24 hours.
(It's the addiction, and also it tastes good, in theory)
If we're talking Adderall/amphetamine salts, I personally don't understand why it's called "addictive." When my insurance has lapsed, and I can't get to a doctor to write the next month's prescription, I have stopped cold turkey to preserve what I have for days I might really need to be on the ball (think job interviews or similar) with no symptoms of any kind of withdrawal (outside of being more lethargic/unmotivated and easily distracted as is my natural state).
I can understand considering it a problem that the effect weakens - requiring more of it to have as strong an effect as when you first took it, but that's NOT the same as an "addiction" as far as I'm concerned - I have no overwhelming need for it, which is probably why people can forget to take them. I do find that being off of it for a while gives the first few times back on it a slightly stronger effect than it had been having when I stopped, although nothing is ever "as good as the first time."
We’re missing a key component of the discussion: dose. Therapeutic doses and recreational doses are vastly different things. A drug that’s addictive at recreational doses isn’t necessarily an issue at therapeutic doses.
Therapeutic Adderall doses typically start at 5mg whereas recreational users may be using 30-60mg or more. That’s an order of magnitude difference! Now, a long term patient taking prescription Adderall may eventually have their dose up to 40mg but they will have developed significant tolerance to the drug so that it doesn’t affect them nearly as strongly as a recreational user would experience popping 40mg out of the blue at some club.
I've found it takes a couple of weeks to completely reset my therapeutic baseline in terms of how it feels.
If I forget that I took it before it kicks in and take another just a couple of times it fucks all that up and I have to do that. I really fucking hate this disorder sometimes.
There’s electronic pill bottles that automatically set a timer for when you last took it. Revolutionized mine and my wife’s lives.
That's why I created a very strict routine. I keep a pill bottle just for doses. After I take the evening pills out of the bottle and swallow them, I put in the morning pills, and vice versa. Also, when I take the morning pills, if I have any doses I need to take later in the day (but before evening), then I put those in the pill bottle in my backpack. If any of the bottles are empty, then I don't take any pills.
I mean even ignoring the dosage argument someone else already made, we've got malfunctioning neurodivergent brains, we're already aware that these drugs have different effects on us than typical. What we may not find addictive, someone else may.
I've solved the problem.
Sugary caffeine bombs with prescription stimulants.
We're going back to basics and putting the amphetamines back in Ampheta-Cola
Glad I am not the only one. A hearty dose of caffeine to take the edge off of amfetamines
Now fix the GERD that the sugar caffeine bombs cause
Because that's where I am.
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.futsch1.medtimer
Literally I only hit "I've taken this dose" when Ive taken it or am standing with the pills in hand
Doc can't CURE you because pharma only invests in drugs to MANAGE illness.* Because that gets them paid forever, not just once.
- I'm speaking of cure and illness generally, not necessarily calling ADHD an illness rather than a brain type that's out of sync with modern society.
Extremely lazy conspiracy theory
There is some truth to it, though. Big Pharma hates to develop vaccines because they aren't big money-makers. The most you have to take a vaccine is once a year, and many of them you only need to take once in your entire life. That's why the government has to dump a big pile of cash onto them whenever they need a vaccine. They would much rather put R&D into a pill that you have to take every day.
The USA capitalist system effectively worships money more than God. It's not a conspiracy theory so much as a not unwarranted suspicion about for-profit drug companies' likely motivations and priorities. The only thing potentially keeping that at bay is the threat of someone else disrupting their cash flow with an actual cure - although that doesn't prevent them from burying cures they find themselves unless it benefits them, or significantly disadvantages a major competitor.
What would a cure for ADHD even look like?
Nfi, mate
Revolutionary change in economics and culture.
What would a cure for a standard bacterial infection look like?
Oh moldy bread? Who would have thought
Okay so how come the public sector doesn't release cures for chronic disorders? Fred Banting discovered insulin at the University of Toronto, how come he didn't discover a cure?
I don't know about Canada but I'm in the other CA, and I know UCLA for instance actively partners with (gets a lot of funding from) pharmaceutical companies for their research projects.
Fred Banting did what was possible, even considered impossible, at the time. Today's question, how come we still haven't discovered a cure? Best we can do is a transplanted pancreas and kidney, if we can find a dead but healthy donor.
Electronic devices often have potentiometers that let you calibrate them with a screwdriver. If I were designing a human, I'd give it potentiometers, or a chemical equivalent, to make maintenance easier. So if you become insulin resistant, we can just open you up and turn a screw to reduce your resistance.
But the human body wasn't designed to be repaired. It evolved to self-repair. Its systems are all based on the assumption of live adaptation to the situation, they're self calibrating. We can't manually adjust the calibration, it wasn't made with those interfaces. Insulin receptors don't have potentiometers.
So all of the hacks we've built to repair the human body are live fixes, the same as its own mechanisms. We adjust the insulin upwards to counter the resistance the same as the body does. Or reduce the rate at which blood sugar is released so less storage is needed. Those treatments need constant intervention because the human body is designed for constant adaptation.
Or we can just replace the part like we would with a machine that isn't designed to be calibrated. Which is hard work.