That is yet another horror story, my brother was put on Ritalin in elementary school. While I'll not blame that completely on his death at 19 years old, he did begin experimenting with pot in 6th grade and other drugs by high school. He was a very smart boy, but dropped out his junior year.
Wow...I'm so sorry. I'm sure there was a direct correlation between the Ritalin and the experimentation with other drugs.
Many years ago I was a pharmacy tech for an HMO pharmacy. The peds docs that worked for the HMO would average roughly 25-30 scripts for Ritalin per week. I'll bet they wrote more Ritalin scripts than antibiotics. I remember one mother that had *two* children on that
cr@p. She herself was a nervous wreck and I firmly believed that drugging her children only helped *her* cope with being a mom. Very sad, indeed.
As to your brother being very smart - most "ADD" children are way above average. They "act out" in school because they are bored. If the schools would only allow them to work up to their intelligence, the boredom would end and so would the so-called behavioral problems.
(((((((hugs))))))) - I'm so sorry for your loss.