So lately I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a perscription to help make me more productive at school. I’ve tried a few different concoctions (Ephedrine, Ritalin, Dexedrine, Modafinil & Adderall) and would be happy to share feedback with my varied results if anyones interested (pm me?), but long story short, I feel that Adderall is probably the best mind-enhancing drug for me.
(Also if you’d like to get a better idea why a perfectly healthy young person would convince a doctor to perscribe serious mind-altering chemicals, please see the very well-written article at Wired.com Readers' Brain-Enhancing Drug Regimens | WIRED).
Here’s my question: Adderal (which is a brandname for a combination of amphetamine salts packaged together) is sold by a top-tier drug company that charges a large amount of money per dose, which really threatens the bottom line of us students! Forchunately, google informs me that as of 2008, a generic version has become available (presumably b/c the patent ran out?)…cites:
And were not talking about saving just a few bucks here, according to drugstore.com, 120 tabs of adderall costs just under $400, where-as the generic version would cost $160.
What puzzles me is that I’ve spoken to a few pharmacists here in Canada that claim a generic version of Adderall does not exist. Clearly it does, but it seems like its not widely available in Canada. So what up with that? Has the patent not expired here yet? Could I legally buy the generic version from an american pharmacy (with a script from either my doc or an american one) and import my personal supply to avoid paying $250?! At the end of the day, this is the exact same chemical, but does my country not allow me to get it at a reasonable price without breaking the law!?
oh and lastly, is there a definitive way for me to find out if the generic version has been ‘approved for sale’ in Canada?
If doctors in Canada are prescribing drugs for purposes of mind enhancement, they are more enlightened than their US counterparts, who would never do such a thing (unless you are Elvis Presely or the like).
CoG888: I think the accuracy of my psychiatrist’s diagnosis is largely moot with respect to the OP. I may well ‘have’ ADHD or maybe I just procrastinate too much when it comes time to study for exams. But with all due respect, I presume YANAD and so your uninformed opinion of my complicated medication condition is unimportant. I don’t think of myself as being inflicted with any ‘mental diseases’ that necessitate a dire need for these drugs but perhaps that’s just my ego’s natural defense mechanism. But I digress, my personal situation is largely moot, I started this thread to explore what larger legal, political or economic factors are at play here.
The point of my query is that I believe I have stumbled upon a inane discrepancy in federal drug approval regulations whereby for reasons entirely beyond me, Canada is forcing consumers to pay 400 % more for a non-patent protected drug despite the fact that is very widely used and incredibly expensive.
I don’t think that this kind of comment is of any value in GQ. Please refrain from this kind of remark in the future.
Regarding the OP, I would request that people restrict their replies to legal ways to obtain the medication in question with a valid prescription. Please do not provide advice on ways to break or evade the law or other regulations, or this thread may be closed.
Colibri: Thanks for the input. I appologize for any confusion regarding the thread title but it was meant to be taken in jest because I’m legally entitled to the drug, I’m just trying to figure out if I can get the same chemical (through legitimate channels) without paying a 400 % markup on the same damn thing.
Correction: you’re not legally entitled to the drug without a prescription.
Do you realize that Adderall is just another amphetamine? That after a few weeks taking one 10 mg tab is not going to give you the same “buzz”, and you’ll have to up to 20 mg, until that no longer works for you?
Do you realize how difficult it is to recover from an amphetamine addiction? Luckily Adderall will likely not cause many of the physical side effects such as methamphetamine or street-purchased Speed, but trust me it will not be an easy couple months for you once you either run out of Adderall, or it no longer has it’s desired effect.
FYI: Adderall is a funny drug. For people with diagnosed ADHD, Adderall actually functions to slow them down, and relieve many of the constant distractions their condition causes for them. For people without ADHD (that’s you), Adderall functions in the opposite way, boosting them up so they can feel more willing to do simple tasks.
[hijack]Does anyone else see the irony in a Canadian attempting to get prescriptions cheaply from an American pharmacy? (Because I thought that most of the cross-border pharmaceutical purchasing went the other way.)[/hijack]
Since the question about the generic hasn’t been answered yet, I’ll go ahead and answer it.
In the United States, there is a generic for regular Adderall, however, there is no generic for Adderall XR. The drug itself is the same between the two, the only difference between the two is the XR is extended release so it is only taken once a day (usually in the morning), while the normal version has to be taken multible times a day.
Now, as for exporting Adderall out of the U.S., I don’t know what the rules are, however, since the medication is a controlled drug in schedule II, it will probably be very hard. Especially since the pharmacy will require a written prescription from the doctor (i.e. it can’t be called in, or faxed). It might only be an option if your located near the border and can go to the pharmacy yourself.
I can tell you one thing about Adderall… it can only make you more able, it can’t make you more willing. If you’re using it to increase your studying abilities but you aren’t truly a medical ADHD case, it will only end up focusing your procrastination activities to unbelievable levels of intensity. You won’t become valedictorian, but you’ll have the cleanest room in the dorm and unbelievable World of Warcraft performance. I know whereof I speak on this.
How are you legally entitled to the drug? You said you weren’t diagnosed with a condition that would warrant such a drug. In the U.S. this is a highly controlled substance and doctors are very leery about overprescribing it because the feds monitor it closely. You’ll not likely be able to obtain it through legal methods in the U.S. unless you get a medical diagnosis.
The “Amphetamine Salt Combo” link you provided shows that this medication is a combination of two common amphetamines that have been in use for a long time. It might not be exactly a generic version of “Adderall”.
I wanted to add a clarification, this isn’t like an antibiotic you can get from any doctor, it’s a Schedule II drug, which means among other things, you can’t get refills. Controlled Substances Act - Wikipedia
Also, if you’re a student, you should have health insurance, so why isn’t the cost covered for you under that?
I apologize for my unhelpful comment. Given the context of the article linked to by the OP, I misinterpreted xiix’s intentions and assumed he was a “perfectly healthy young person” trying to obtain a prescription medication by faking a mental condition (such as ADHD) as proposed in the article. As I stated in my post, I meant no offense by this, and I will try to exhibit good taste when replying to GQ threads.
The OP is in Canada. Canadian provincial health plans do not cover the cost of prescriptions–usually, a supplementary insurance plan would, but students (being unemployed, or employed part-time in jobs without benefits) tend not to have those. Such plans can be privately purchased, of course, but can be expensive to students who are trying to pay for other expenses. A parent’s supplementary insurance plan, obtained through his or her employment, may cover a student who is a dependent and/or under a certain age, but this is not a sure thing, and depends on the plan itself. For example, my father’s supplementary insurance plan covered me until I was 21–after that, even though I was still a university student, it was up to me to pay for any necessary prescriptions. FTR, I didn’t buy a private plan and so was not covered until I got a full-time job (with a supplementary insurance plan as a benefit) after graduation a couple of years later.
As a Canadian, I’m not surprised that the OP has no insurance plan covering prescriptions. Many Canadians, of all ages and circumstances, don’t.
The Drug Products Database on the Health Canada website will give you information about drugs that have been approved for use in Canada. A search for “amphetamine” as active ingredient returned only Adderall and Dexedrine. As a comparison search, I searched for “hydromorphone” and got results for Dilaudid and the various generic brands out there, so in that respect, the database is complete.
So there is no generic for Adderall available in Canada. Drug approvals are done by individual countries, so just because the drug “exists” in the US, doesn’t make it valid for other countries. Generally, Canada tends to follow the US in drug approval (the basis of approval is usually the same clinical and toxicological studies), but Health Canada has been known to take extra time to review everything.
In addition to that, each individual province then has to approve the drug, because they are the ones that set the prices on medicine, not the drug maker. This can take time, and as a result, not all drugs become accepted, or the patient has to pay full price for it. Sometimes it takes individual patients to lobby the government to get their medicine approved at an affordable rate.
As for the legality of getting a prescription in the US… I don’t know anything about that. I’d be surprised if it were that easy (and that cheap in the long run), but it could be.
I am not aware of any post-secondary education institution in Canada that does not have mandatory health insurance coverage for its students. (For students with alternative insurance, they are able to opt out of these plans.) Now, these plans generally only cover a percentage (70-90%) of prescription drugs, but that should be enough for the OP.
To the OP, why are you worried about the cost of your drugs? What school do you attend? Or are you in high school?
My son was prescribed Adderall XR at age 6 for ADHD. As other people have mentioned, there’s no generic for XR. My health plan at the time only covered generics, so I shelled out $100 a month for the brand name. I finally talked the doctor into prescribing regular Adderall so I could get the generic, which cost me a flat $10.00. Unfortunately, the effect was that he would be sleepy and act depressed for about an hour and then it wore off completely. Needless to say, we discontinued the generic Adderall after about 3 days.
My business partner (48 years old) is generally a disorganized clusterf*** who ends up working about 14 hours in a day to accomplish what he should be able to do in 6 or 7 hours. A friend told him about adult ADHD and he made an appointment with a psychiatrist who diagnosed him and prescribed him Adderall XR. It worked wonders. Productivity doubled and he started sleeping better at night. Unfortunately for him, his health insurance wouldn’t cover it at all, not just because there was no generic, but they don’t recognize it as a legitimate prescription for an adult (or something like that…not sure who his carrier is). I assume he’s still taking it since he still only works 7 or 8 hours a day and we’re making money, so I guess it’s worth it for him to pay the $100 a month.