Posted on 04/05/2013 4:58:25 PM PDT by CharlesMartelsGhost
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that nearly one-fifth of high school-age boys have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Doctors eventually medicate two-thirds of them. The diagnoses represent a 41 percent increase over the last decade.
The primary gateway drug for teenagers isn’t marijuana or beer. It’s prescription medication. As the New York Times piece breaking this story points out, feeding a child a daily diet of Ritalin increases the chances of dependency, anxiety, and psychosis. Sports once channeled the energy of testosterone-fueled teens. Now our overprotective culture complains of the dangers of sports as it fills children with chemicals.
“First, do no harm,” a med school lesson so basic that even high school dropouts know it, gets tossed down the memory whole by script-happy doctors. As any street pusher will tell you, it’s all about the Benjamins.
It’s easy to wage a war on drugs when the enemy combatants wear tie-dye and long hair, or gold chains, track suits, and beepers, or, in their current incarnation, saggy drawers and designer t-shirts. When the drug pusher dons a white coat, the lab garb provides a cloak of invisibility. Despite ubiquitous evidence of their malfeasance in overmedicated America, dope dispensing doctors remain largely immune from criticism. Indeed, the indecency resides in the suggestion that writing prescriptions can be habit forming, not in the writing of prescriptions that form habits.
The collective cognitive dissonance on drugs doesn’t withstand an honest look at the history of the science. In most instances, today’s dirty “street” drugs were introduced as yesterday’s clean cure-alls by pharmaceutical companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Ecstasy, the dance-party drug also known under its alphabetized nom de narcotique “X,” “E,” or “MDMA,” first came into existence not at warehouse raves but in a Merck laboratory.
Sandoz Laboratories created LSD, which the company marketed under the name Delysid. As they withdrew from the hallucinogen market in the mid-1960s, a Harvard professor — not a cult crazy or a deranged hippie — emerged as acid’s pied-piper.
Before Tony Montana served as an evangelist for cocaine in Miami, Sigmund Freud did in Vienna. Freud used his considerable intellectual powers to write “a song of praise to this magical substance.” Therein he boasted that cocaine “wards off hunger, sleep, and fatigue and steels one to intellectual effort.” Moderate cocaine use, he maintained, neither proved “detrimental to the body” nor induced a “compulsive desire to use the stimulant further.” But Freud’s life contradicted his claims. He remained addicted to the drug, with disastrous and debilitating consequences, for more than a decade.
Cocaine is a helluva drug. So are Ritalin, Desoxyn, and Adderall — members of the methamphetamine family whose names have been changed for respectability purposes. Surely posterity will look upon our age’s penchant for dispensing Ritalin or OxyContin under medical auspices the way we look upon Bayer’s creation of heroin or Freud’s proselytizing for cocaine.
If a highbrain the likes of Sigmund Freud could so misconstrue the destructive power of narcotics, isn’t it possible that doctors with lesser intellects might also err in judgment today? Alas, their affliction isn’t a lack of intelligence but a surfeit of arrogance.
Boyhood isn’t a medical condition to be cured. The God-complex of doctors, on the other hand, could use an injection of humility. Physician, heal thyself.
“Boyhood isn’t a medical condition to be cured.”
So well put.
Your entire post has been an education for me. Forewarned is forearmed as they say...
Actually, methylphenidate (Ritalin) isn’t an amphetamine.
They tried to put my son on Ritalin years ago because he and few other boys were being “disruptive” (spit balls, etc). He couldn’t sleep first 3 days he was on it and when read the side effects I told them to shove it. He now has 2 Master’s degrees and a career in International finance and tax. Guess he didn’t really need that Ritalin.
I would like to see a correlation study performed regarding possible links to birth control and the increase of ADD, ADHD. Yes, some schools and educators push the meds but not all. Something is causing lots and lots of these little guys to squirm and dance and to be inattentive that goes beyond “little boyisms”. Pumping these (sometimes very powerful) birth control meds into females for the many years this product has been available might have some unwanted side effects. Just wondering.
Influence of feminism on science and therapy meets teacher union laziness.
Well, prescription methamphetamine has been available for decades to “ADD/ADHD” patients. It can even be legally prescribed to children.
That's right, pure methamphetamine can be prescribed to kids for something we are not even sure is a disease. Brand name “Desoxyn”.
Synthetic heroin is prescribed to people all the time. Even for minor injuries. Some are stronger and more addictive than natural heroin.
So if super addictive methamphetamine and heroin can be prescribed if someone says it helps them why not pot? Well, there's no money in non-addictive plants people can grow at home but there's plenty of money in addictive expensive pills. Especially when most of those expensive pills are paid for by the taxpayer.
Want to see the real dopers sitting on welfare and popping pills on your dime? Work as a pharmacy delivery person for just one day.
The WOD is simply another way to scam taxpayers and take freedoms away.
I agree with your last two paragraphs, but perhaps it’s not an arrogance/humility issue, but more a societal/big pharm issue.
As for Bayer pushing heroine for coughs, when a child is on the verge of aspirating vomit due to coughing, codiene cough suppressants can be life savers - over the very short duration they’re prescribed, a few days.
Society is pushing hard to denigrate boys being boys... pussification by our education system - no more dodge ball - we’re now RAMPANT with bullies!
Sadly, the public school system is manifesto driven. No longer can boys be boys.
All that aside, ADHD is real. It is genetic, and more likely to be inherited than diabetes. On the other hand, boys being boys, it’s a great tool for the boy haters to use to label, and falsely medicate otherwise normal children. I think it’s highly over diagnosed, and the drugs are highly over prescribed.
For the most, I agree with what you’re saying, but there really are ADHD people out there, and methylphenidate gives them an opportunity to live a more “normal” life. The rest, who are prescribed this in error, get a buzz. Those who it actually helps can sleep while taking it.
I’m not trying to be contrarian, just maybe standing up for those that it really helps live a somewhat more normal life.
Bump!
It’s a derivative of benzylpiperidine. It is structurally more similar to cocaine than amphetamine.
We chose to SPANK our kids instead, and save ourselves the money, effort, and poisoning these drugs would have done to them.
The characteristics of American masculinity - independence, curiousity, and physicality - are all threats to government. Is it any wonder that government schools, government bureaucrats and government teachers would treat it as a disease to be cured.
The Soviets maintained their psychiatric prisons. In America, we call ours the “public school system”.
And there are much better ways than spanking, now that we understand parent/child psychology better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZwALlaiSk
or
http://ocw.usu.edu/Family__Consumer____Human_Development/oer-power-of-positive-parenting/
or
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Positive-Parenting-Wonderful/dp/1567131751
The irony is spanking doesn’t work and it never has. You likely did a lot of other things right and are just attributing it to spanking.
“The irony is spanking doesn’t work and it never has. You likely did a lot of other things right and are just attributing it to spanking.”
Naa, but you’re welcome to disregard 5000 years of recorded history. That is your right as an American. But my kid was NO DIFFERENT than myself, and I was NOT whacked...except by my grandmother. I wound up treating my parents like crap, but treated my grandmother great.
So have fun, but remember, all kids are NOT the same, so don’t try to apply idiotic new-age crap to kids that you don’t know...you simply have NO CLUE what you’re talking about, at least regarding the kids in my family.
But I do agree - there are some really strong, and effective, drugs for parents that can’t bring themselves to disciple their kids.
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“The characteristics of American masculinity - independence, curiousity, and physicality - are all threats to government. Is it any wonder that government schools, government bureaucrats and government teachers would treat it as a disease to be cured.”
Yep. I agree. I’ve also noticed, too, that even advertising is subtly pushing this same agenda. Look at how many print ads/TV commercials, etc feature wussy, passive, effeminate men. Most often, the female in the ad is portrayed as dominate. It’s ridiculous.
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