‘I WAS TOLD TO DOPE MY KID'

New York Post ^ | 8/07/02 | DOUGLAS MONTERO

[kattracks]

Should school systems be allowed to recommend that children be put on psychoactive drugs?

A 12-year-old upstate boy says the trusted educators in his local school forced him to take a cocktail of drugs that turned him into a psychotic who heard voices in his head.

[rb22982]

thats why many high school students buy ritalin pills, cut them up, and then snort them just like cocaine. My brother hated ritalin and used to sell his pills for 5-10/each in HS

[RISU]

Kids need "outside play" to work off their excess energy.
These socalled "eduators" ought to be hung by their thumbs.
If God wanted drigs in children, he would have issued them at birth.
When are we going to be rid of creeps like we are seeing here in this school?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I have a son who, a couple of years ago, the school nurse recommended that we put him on Ritalin.  We said no.  The nurse really pressed the issue, and went so far as to enlist our son's teachers and the administration in the fight on her side.  My son's grades were slipping.  So we took our son to a private psychiatrists to be evaluated.  He later called us up and told us that even though our son was okay, the school nurse was pushing him to change his recommendation.  He wasn't happy about that.  We yanked our son out of that school and put him in a charter school.  His grades and attitude improved dramatically.  I wish that we had filed a complaint against the nurse when she was pitting her opinion against that of the psychiatrist.

[Prince Caspian]

Michael was medicated to keep the evil, dreaded disease known as MASCULINITY from surfacing.

Very good point. Have you read the book "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge? If not, I think you would find it most interesting. True masculinity, the way God designed it to be, has a dangerous and uncontrolled facet to it. And it is something the world is in desperate need of.

[Tired of Taxes]

Well, it sounds like you have great parents, and congratulations on your own success. =)

[Terriergal]

I guess if the schools started pressuring me like that I would have to homeschool. Fortunately I am sending my kids to a very small private school where teachers actually have time for kids with higher energy levels/different learning styles, and where they don't waste time with the nonsense public schools teach.

[Terriergal]

I know a lady who just took her kid to the doctor, got the prescription, and didn't EVER give the meds to her kid. The teachers, within DAYS started sending notes home of positive encouragement for her, noticing the 'change of behavior' in the child since starting her on ritalin. Go figure.

[Saundra Duffy]

Welcome to Hillary Clinton's world.

[Terriergal]

and suffered such anxiety he began chewing on his own shirt sleeves, collars and pencils.

Don't a lot of kids do that?

[Terriergal]

Wow, great story. I'm sure there are people, like you, for whom drugs are necessary, but only if people are willing, like your parents, to observe closely, be involved, communicate, and do other therapy as well. Drugs should never be a long term solution all by themselves, IMO.

[Tired of Taxes]

thats why many high school students buy ritalin pills, cut them up, and then snort them just like cocaine. My brother hated ritalin and used to sell his pills for 5-10/each in HS

How ironic that schools go through so much trouble declaring "drug-free zones" and so on, and here are those same schools essentially giving the drugs to the students directly. Thanks for your honesty. Remembering high school in the late 70's, I'm not at all surprised by that revelation. ;-)

[Tired of Taxes]

I know a lady who just took her kid to the doctor, got the prescription, and didn't EVER give the meds to her kid. The teachers, within DAYS started sending notes home of positive encouragement for her, noticing the 'change of behavior' in the child since starting her on ritalin.

Everyone should try that, and I'll bet that's the reaction most will get from the teachers.

I just remembered - I, too, was having trouble in ninth grade, and I told my mother that I was too nervous all the time and couldn't concentrate. So, my mother took me to our doctor who was the old-school type. The doctor gave me pills to take at school, and soon I was taking them a few at a time. I would feel differently - much more calm and subdued - after taking those pills. I told my mother about it, and that's when she revealed to me that they were just sugar pills. =) She was always a wise woman, my mother, at least about some things.

[FBDinNJ]

Oh that type of stuff happens on a regular basis. I just graduated from one of the best private High Schools in my states and about 20-25% of the School was prescribed a medication for ADD/ADHD. An even larger percentage of the school had a doctor say that they have ADD/ADHD, but aren't medicated. By having a doctor say that you have ADD it allows you to have an extended ammount of time to complete things like the SATs, term papers, and even regular homework assignments.

[Steve Eisenberg]

What happened here was a kid was needlessly experimented on with powerful drugs, and the parent was threatened with criminal sanction if she didn't hand over her child for this experimentation.

Maybe this is what the plaintiff's attorney will try to sell to a jury. But just remember that the plaintiff lawsuit bar is mostly a bunch of stinkin' Democrats. I find it beyond belief that a school would ever dare do this to involved parents such as my wife and myself. Most likely parental involvement was low until she decided to sue.

[Huck]

Well, for discussion's sake, and not to be taken as self-incrimination or an endorsement of any illicit behavior, but I understand marijuana to have applications beyond alleviation of naseau and pain.

Now, you could argue these other uses are not "medical", but I might retort that that is a semantic point? What is the drug's desired effect? In the case of marijuana, there are many, many users who desire and receive an effect which is not related to nausea or pain; It is therapeutic, i.e., mood-enhancing, AKA behavior management. Hence the expressions "mellow out" or "take the edge off."

In other words, the current rationale for using marijuana medically is to alleviate pain and suffering, but I don't think it is a stretch to imagine a doctor prescribing marijuana in the same way they prescribe Xanax. Hell, if the RX company sends them enough free samples, they'd probably give some away.

[Humidston]

In third grade, I was advised to drug my son (by his teacher who also told me of her nightmares when she slept!).

The school was convinced their magic formula would fit him fine and they shoved academic tests in my face to prove it.

I pulled him out, had him tested privately, put him in a private school (because our testing psychologist told us he had learning problems due to dyslexia).

He blossomed, he learned, he transferred into public school in junior high, he graduated from college and he did it ALL WITHOUT DRUGS.

Pubic schools are garbage dumps, peppered with dysfunctional teachers! (Apologies to good FR teachers.)

[MedicalMess]

You even admit it is merely "a theory"! Regulate the dosage. Oh wait, that's what they do with Ritalin and the other psychoactive drugs already. As you can tell I'm not too keen on "human experimentation".

I'm happy to see that you are challenging my position because this gives me practice for future video production.

All antibiotics have been well tested and are relatively safe provided you don't give them to individuals with antibiotic allergies or pre-existing liver, kidney or heart problems. Statistically antibiotics are safer than over-the-counter aspirin and other NSAID pain relieves like Aleve or Motrin which kill 10,000 to 20,000 a year in the USA alone. They are much safer than your doctor who kills 97,000 with medical mistakes annually in the US. Antibiotics generally kill less than one in a million prescriptions or chances equivalent to being struck by lightning.

We cannot do these tests on kids because of growth issues and FDA approval for specific uses outside their established guidelines. However we can with adults. It is very important that we test persons for clostridium species as antibiotics can cause spontaneous overgrowth of this family of pathogens. It is important for any patient with neurological symptoms to find this out because taking any antibiotic could cause brain damage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

None of these people are being told this because no one will recognize that this species of Clostridium goes where it does. Yet we all recognize the neurological effects of Clostridium botulinum and tetani (botulism, tetanus). We know that C. perfringens causes meningitis and C. difficile has been seen to cause meningitis and brain abscess in AIDS patients. So we know all major Clostridium species are either neurotoxic systemically or locally. We are making the associations of Clostridium difficile to ADHD based on surrounding diseases seen with bipolar disorder and ADHD. We won't know till we test 25 to 30 patients whether or not we have something.

The point being, if we can identify the pathogen this automatically frames the types of treatment that you might try and those that you definitely don't want to try because you could kill the patient. Now you become an intelligent guinea pig that makes educated choices rather than being a dumb guinea pig with no intelligent choices. We want to get rid of the source of the problem instead of using a psychoactive drug to counter a psychoactive condition. That's what's called running on a treadmill. Who wants to do that their entire life? Using Ritalin is a wild shot in the dark and can have severe suicidal effects. It would be far safer to give an individual a gentle nudge with Ambrotose complex sugars first to see if the situation will correct itself by unmasking the pathogen so the immune system can respond on its own. But we have antibiotics for greater seek-and-destroy tactics if necessary and safely.

see www.glycoscience.com and check for papers on ADHD and Bipolar Disorder.

[WyldKard]

Thanks to you both for your very kind words!

Wow, great story. I'm sure there are people, like you, for whom drugs are necessary, but only if people are willing, like your parents, to observe closely, be involved, communicate, and do other therapy as well. Drugs should never be a long term solution all by themselves, IMO.

Yes yes yes. And again, yes. Too many parents are willing to let the State tell them how to raise their children...hell..the State has been VERY scary, and threatening to take kids away if parents won't concede to their demands. But parents must be as lions when defending their children. They are our future, and we must realize that there is no sacrifice we shouldn't be prepared to make to insure they will have best future they can.

Too many parents in this day and age consider having children an expectation, and do it just because that is what is done. So they end up with these kids whom they completely ignore, like those rat-bastard Columbine parents...and then when their kids go pop, they tried to blame everyone else, when the real culprets are staring back at them from the mirror.

The moral of the story now: Do not allow your children to go to public school. If for some reason, you have no choice, you must do all you can to make sure the School isn't trying to pull a fast one on you and your child, because they will...my parents often had to lock horns with the schools over how to treat my ADHD..until they finally sent me to private school. Best thing they ever did for me.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"...if the drug in question was marijuana,"

But it wasn't. The libertarian thread is down the hall, third door on the right. Have a nice day.

[goodieD]

We went through the same thing, one drug after another that just made my daughter sick and her behaviour worse. I also stopped giving her the meds and began homeschooling. What a difference!!! I can't possibly recommend public schools to anyone anymore.