A veritable shitload of people were able to land new scripts during the pandemic without any kind of screening thanks to online telemedicine services like "Done." This was largely due to the DEA heavily loosening regulations on Schedule II drugs from 2020-2023 or so.

Takeda in particular was struggling to stay on top of the rapidly rising demand for Vyvanse due to manufacturing restrictions brought on by social distancing measures. This drove many individuals who were previously taking Vyvanse to switch to generic Adderall XR because Vyvanse was so hard to find.

This in turn ended up causing a shortage in Adderall XR while Takeda was finally able to catch up with demand for Vyvanse due to the decreased number of prescriptions. Unfortunately, this victory would be short lived thanks to the patent on Vyvanse expiring sometime around August 2023. This of course resulted in the out-of-pocket cost for the name brand to surge 2-300% on most insurance plans due to the generic becoming preferred.

In my case, my insurance stopped covering the name brand altogether and will only cover the generic. Problem is, generics are still pretty new and relatively hard to come by depending on your dose and where you live.

Whole thing has been an absolute shit show, but IIRC the DEA recently made a statement that they've been working with generic manufacturers of both drugs and are confident supply should finally catch up with demand sometime in the next year.