Lylah Ivy, a freshman psychology major, suffers from ADHD. She says that her medicine not only helps her focus in class but with another common symptom of ADHD: executive dysfunction. Ivy describes this as an inability to find motivation to do certain tasks. She said, “You’re like ‘Oh, I need to do this,’ but you kind of get stuck in a paralysis state sometimes.”
After experiencing negative symptoms, Ivy was taken off of her stimulant medicine. “Then everything just kind of went downhill with my school,” she said. “I started noticing I was having a lot of issues with executive functioning, I was not paying attention in class, I wasn’t going to class.”
While one of her medications was on backorder, Ivy began experiencing adverse reactions because she suffers from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). She said, “If I stop my meds abruptly, then my heart rate skyrockets.”
Though not everyone has POTS, she emphasized that it is good to be aware that quitting any medication abruptly can have bad side effects. “The shortage is so important for people to talk about because you never know when you’re just going to not have [your medicine] again.”
Ethan Kahl is a sophomore graphic design major who also has ADHD. He described his struggle with focus: “One minute I’m just doing something and the other minute my mind is somewhere else and I want to do something else. I just can’t stay in one place at a time. But when I take my medication it slows it down a little bit; I have more control over it.”
Ethan’s mother, Amanda Hebert, has had trouble getting Vyvanse, the medicine that both Ethan and his step-brother take. “To get Vyvanse was an act of congress,” she said, “to the point where we had to get different milligrams to be able to obtain the full milligram they were on or we just couldn’t get it so they would go without it. […] our insurance even wanted to stop covering it because it was a name brand.”
She emphasized the need to have this medicine because it helps her kids control the impulses that would be difficult to control without medicine. “It’s been a crazy roller coaster with it because your children need this. It’s not a magic pill, […], but it helps at least take the edge off of that hypertension side of it, the urges they can’t control.”
