Things such as ADHD give people with no expertise in the subject a chance to jump on their on particular hobby horse.  I also find it interesting how often kids’ behavior problems get blamed on teachers but not parents.

There is no such thing as ADHD, or ADD. Only children, whose needs have been denied. Whose dificult behaviors, make it easy for us to “medicate” them.

Whose diagnosis, made simply by asking a few questions about their behavior, can become the beginnning of a lifetime of addiction to drugs.

Usually the “disease” starts out with a single mother who can’t handle, her male child, or with a school that can’t handle a little boy.

That children become addicts on these drugs is well documented, selling them to other children, and later becoming meth users as adults.

We seem to believe there is a difference between a prescription written by a doctor, and a hook up with a dealer. Even though the drug is exactly the same. Calling it medication doesn’t change anything.

We never question why, many more times the amount of these drugs used in the rest of the world, is prescribed in the United states to children each year. Nor do we question why, adults diagnosed ADHD, and sometimes addicted to other drugs, can easily obtain a prescription for for these powerful stimulants. A diagnosis of ADHD has become a legal high.

In America we like stimulants, we like drugs that seem to make you more productive. Like the German soliders in WWII, who were given Amphetamines in their rations, we can march 55 miles a day before collapsing.

We dislike, other kinds of drugs, that make us lethargic, like cannabis, because we’re concerned that we won’t have a productive society. 

Yet, we will never come to grips with our drug problem in this country, until we begin to understand just how much drug use we have here, and stop lying to ourselves about it.

Millions of people are addicted to prescription medications like Ritalin, the only difference between them and the addict on the street, is that typically the Addict cannot afford health insurance.

Some kids in extreme cases probably need the drugs; otherwise, they would have to be removed from the classroom they are in and their parents couldn’t cope with them.  However, boys especially have been put on these drugs for being fidgety, as if being a fidgety boy was abnormal.

In my brief career as a teacher, I taught many ADHD kids. Most, I found, had above average powers of concentration when they were motivated to study. Most were also intelligent, but were simply not suited to a standard, 30-desks-in-a-row American classroom.

Isn’t it amazing that we give our children drugs that affect the brain chemistry (seratonin uptake), without having the foggiest notion of the long-term impact on the child’s growth and development?

I have had students who had a Ritalin “rebound” reaction: they would forget to take their drug in the morning, and would have an inexplicable outburst of rage.

Ritalin, by the way, is an amphetamine--you know, the stuff they throw you in jail for if you use it without the approval of the US government and their owned guild, the AMA.

This is just one of many problems that I, as a libertarian, have with our one-size-fits-all education system: we would rather drug literally millions of normal, exuberant kids, rather than CHANGE THE SCHOOL!

I could envision a school designed for so-called ADHD kids, that would put heavy emphasis on physical activities, sports, learning through manipulation, and hands-on activities. Oh, but then the kids might not pass the NCLB mandated tests. In other words, they don’t fit in the one-size-fits-all system.

Our whole perspective on human consciousness (in children, teens and adults) is ready for reconsideration.

“ADHD” is another medical-psychiatric diagnostic label that may have totally misinterpreted what is going on with these kids.

Same thing with many other behavioral health diagnoses.

In the case of ADHD, some researchers have said that the rapid-fire awareness is tied to traits we have learned in the history of our species, such as continually scanning our environment for threats and danger, or to hunt animals for food, for example.

In addition, we are asking active, physical kids to sit quietly for hours upon hours a day in a classroom listening to often-boring material.

Kids want to run, jump, climb and play. No wonder they appear “hyper.”

They may also be experiencing anxiety, like a lot of us.

Knowledge about human consciousness is rapidly changing and the views withing the medical-psychiatric community need to change too.

The general public also would be helped by learning more about consciousness and the fallacies of many “mental health” concepts.

Food for thought in the articles ...

“Being open to perception can be troubling, enlightening”

American Chronicle
July 16, 2007

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle. asp?articleID=32379

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“Amazing enhanced human perception abilities are emerging, say researchers”

American Chronicle
February 8, 2007

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle. asp?articleID=20423

Ya mean a Pharmaceutical company lied about a product? Just to make money? In America?