for context; I'm a non-medical professional (in the mental health field) with ADHD and a 10+ year history of being prescribed adderall.
I've been in the exact situation that's described here--I was living abroad, and came back to the states for a month, and had asked a physician family member if they could prescribe me stimulants for that month. Turns out they could, but no pharmacy would fill it due to her license being in another state. Do'h!
I dropped into an ED as a hail-mary, where I waited for a very long time to politely be told no.
Was I frustrated and distressed over the prospect of my very stable medication routine being disrupted and being subject to the vicissitudes of sub-optimally managed executive dysfunction? Yes, embarrassingly so.
Did the ED make the right call? Also yes.
It's something that comes along with this disorder. The prescription management is very stringent. Draconian, really. There is no wiggle room. There are no favors that can be curried. You get your script from one particular provider, 30 days at time. You hope the pharmacy will fill it, and then hope that if the pharmacy will fill it that they have it, and.... that's it. It's simply understood by the patient population that there will be no derivation from that schema. It may as well have been handed down from a stone tablet from yah-weh himself. Understanding this is simply a part of what it means to have and manage ADHD.
It's really no different than any other problem that needs managing for me to function with ADHD. I mean sure, the problem is in the system, and not in me--but it's still my problem. It's my responsibility to deal with, as best I can.
I know that it's my responsibility to, for example, always be available to pick up my 30-day supply at day 28--so that i can slowly accrue an emergency stash for the next time that anything goes wrong. It's stupid and annoying sure, but If I know that I have the ability to do that, and I don't, I've really forfeited my right to be mad at an ER doc for not writing me my script. Why should he take a potential risk on his license because I didn't manage a known problem to the best of my ability?
I was perfectly reasonable to at least check if an ED doc would prescribe me stims, given the circumstances--No SUD history, very stable med management history, genuinely hit a spot of bad luck etc etc. I still knew they'd say no. They also knew I had to at least ask. We're just people in a system, both being very reasonable, and both wasting each other's time (but not any more than absolutely necessary.)
it's simply not so personal. it's not flawed thinking. it's a flawed system, but 'flawed system' is like saying 'wet water'. systems are simply like that.
I manage my ADHD with systems. Some of them internal, some of them not. All of them are flawed. All of them don't work sometimes.
it's very seldom the case that people are being unreasonable in an unflawed system, which seems to be your insinuation about the ED doc.
Not how it looks to me. I see people being very reasonable in a flawed system.