vyvanse prescription has been delayed for 3 weeks now. i am a patient, yet severely ADHD soul, so I figure “oh it’s probably just delayed because they’re out of stock” and go about my business since I had about a week left (thanks to me completely forgetting to take it like 30% of the time).
wake up this morning and realize I am taking the last one I have. Not good, I think, because next week is especially busy at work. So I take an early lunch break at 9:30 and drive out to Walgreens to see if maybe, somehow, I’ve just completely missed the “your prescription’s ready” call and texts.
Pharmacist asks me what I’m looking for. “My vyvanse prescription, it was placed on the 24th. My name is ABC and DOB is…”
Tappity-tap-tap on their computer. They glance up and narrow their eyes at me like I’m asking them to hack into the NSA’s secure amphetamine database. Tappity-tap-tap.
“You’re picking up a vyvanse prescription?? For whom??”
Uh, myself…? Here’s my license.
“Hm…I’m not finding it, let me ask the head pharmacist to take a look.”
30 minutes go by. The Head Pharmacist finally comes out and asks for my license for the second time. “The other pharmacist literally copied it down on the clipboard before they went to find you.” I say as I fish it out of my wallet. They blink and look at the clipboard.
“Oh…huh. You’re right they did.”
Now I’m somewhat irritated as I hand them my license again. He looks at it, realizes it is exactly the same as what the sheet says, and hands it back to me.
“So umm…it looks like the generic lisdexamfetamine is backordered which is why we haven’t filled it yet.”
This wouldn’t be a shock except for the fact that I don’t get the fucking generic. So immediately my response is “Well, my insurance covers the brandname 100% and I don’t even get the generic so…are you saying the brand-name is also backordered and you cannot fill it??”
“No, we can fill it if you want the brand name medication!!”
“So why did y’all not fill it for 3 weeks if literally every other time I’ve filled this prescription through you, I’ve received the brand name medication??”
“…Because the generic is back-ordered sir…”
??? What the fuck are you talking about. It sounds like you just tossed my prescription into the “backordered” pile whenever it came in and didn’t realize it wasn’t actually a backordered medication until I came in. Thank you for wasting my entire hour lunch-break!!
I don’t think intelligence comes into it very much. From what I’ve seen, the norm is, especially in metropolitan areas, pharmacists are overworked, underpaid, understaffed, don’t get enough sleep, are constantly treated like shit by customers (who, to be fair sometimes have a valid reason to be upset, since it’s medicine and not just some random treats).
I agree with this, but as someone with ADHD who needs it to perform my fucking job, I am also all of these things except also untreated for ADHD because someone else also isn’t doing their job to even basic competency. Like I know there’s a million zillion reasons it sucks but those are never the reasons we’re given. The reasons we’re given day in day out are “well, we fucked up and here’s an excuse that doesn’t even make sense.”
If we push back on those reasons AT ALL we’re instantly treated like medication seeking strung out addicts who are angry because they can’t get their street drugs that they probably give away for free to babies to get them hooked and dependent on drugs while putting razor blades in their candy or whatever the the fucking news fed WASP stereotype is.
It’s not about being annoyed that sometimes mistakes happen and people are generally treated like shit as laborers, including pharmacists. I’ve never met an ADHD person who doesn’t understand that the systems are shit, the regulations are shit, the wages and staffing is shit, etc. What we don’t understand and what’s so frustrating is why the fuck they simultaneously think the words they’re saying are even consistent (if not valid) excuses, and why the fuck we’re treated like shit (which again, even if we were addicts is a piss poor way to treat people, but that’s a separate argument). It’s not a single event. It’s every single pharmacy, every single pharmacist, every single prescription, with VERY RARE exceptions.
Being someone that’s also got friends and family taking BPD meds, anti-depressants, etc, even they think it’s absurd how hard it is to fill an ADHD prescription compared to literally everything they take. The entire medical attitude towards ADHD is fucking toxic.
Edit: Just to add because I think it’s important, I know literally none of this is their fault and is entirely the result of shit policies, shit circumstances, and shitloads of propaganda. I know they’re mostly now just retail employees, none of the above is ever any reason to treat them like shit either. I was just defending OPs rant that I am overwhelmingly sure they came here to have instead of being annoyed at the pharmacist, because if they had it at the pharmacy they’d have included “and now my life is basically a million times harder because they decided the minute I was agitated that I was never allowed to take a controlled substance again.”
preach it