The Affect of Long-Term ADHD Stimulants

We take certain cold medications off of store shelves, making the purchase of them controlled by store pharmacies.  Diet pills and concentrated energy drinks are not sold to children under the age of 18 in some stores.  We give dextroamphetamine to a six year old and think nothing of it.  ADHD medications are stimulants, similar in chemical structure to cocaine and speed.  "Speed" is the street name for methamphetamine. 



It's important to note:  ADHD medications do not treat ADHD; they treat ADHD symptoms.  There is no cure.  There is only long term therapy, the only goal of which is to make your child conform.  There aren't even any real studies to prove that this works over time.  Stimulant medications may have some beneficial use in getting your child to pay attention, but chemicals don't actually fix the problem.  And, according to http://www.drugs.com/pro/adderall-xr.html:

The effectiveness of Adderall XR for long-term use, i.e., for more than 3 weeks in children and 4 weeks in adolescents and adults, has not been systematically evaluated in controlled trials. Therefore, the physician who elects to use Adderall XR for extended periods should periodically re-evaluate the long-term usefulness of the drug for the individual patient.

As a matter of fact, this isn't all that unusual, for many medications.   If you look at the warning area on your bottle of cold pills or your over the counter pain medications, they specifically warn against prolonged use without seeking the counsel of a physician.  And yet, if you suffer from arthritis or migraines, you've probably been ignoring that warning for years.



Ask yourself this question:  How would you feel if you learned that your child was taking speed, heroin, or huffing paint?  You may argue that this is different because a physician has diagnosed the illness and is in charge of treating it.  This substance that you give your child every day is controlled, unlike the substance on the street.  This one is FDA approved.  It's safe, isn't it?  Experts say it is.  Despite the quote above, many experts say that, while it is impossible to truly perform case studies, there is no trend that proves any ill-effects to the long term use of stimulants by children.  Matthew Smith's father would disagree.  The cause of death on his 14 year old son's death certificate reads "Death caused from Long Term Use of Methylphenidate, Ritalin."  Is this case unusual?  Possibly.  Would I take that chance?  Definitely not.  





The one point I find appalling about Matthew Smith's story is that the need for medication came from the school, not the parents or a physician.  Is that your story, as well?  It is mine.  My son was diagnosed with ADD when he was only four years old.  That's young, even back in the early 1990's.  ADD, however, is hereditary; the diagnosis wasn't shocking.  It was a school principal, in first grade, who decided my son needed to be medicated.  He broached the subject by telling me "I think your son has ADD" to which I replied "REALLY?!  What was your first clue?"  You see, we'd been working with Sean's first grade teacher all year.  The diagnosis was written all over his school documents.  The principal's response was "We want him on medication."  Literally, I was told by a school official that medication was required.  With a diagnosis in hand, I had not been seeking medication for my child and a physician was not pushing the issue--the school was.  Sean never entered that school again.  I picked up his things and we began to home-school him.  He is now a highly ambitious, successful adult who is attending college for the second time after a disabling injury prevented him from returning to his previous career.  





Homeschooling may not be right for your family and it's not the point of this post.  More often than not, it is the schools that are requesting that our children start taking medication in order to make them conform to a system that is failing. The medications don't treat the problem.  Stimulants will help your child sit still and focus by anesthetizing their highly active brain.  In other words, the schools are actually asking you to dumb your child down so that they can passively obtain information the child would normally actively engage in learning.  They want him to sit still and face forward.  It's not about learning or learning ability.  It's about behaving and having control.  Your ADD-gifted child has been blessed with a highly intelligent, curious, active brain and you're being asked to slow it down so they can fit in.  When you think about that, it's simply incredible that they've been able to sell that snake oil and gotten so many people to buy into it!  





Ask yourself another question:  Is your child's behavior at home really that debilitating or has it escalated since school started?  I'm not going to tell you that raising a child with ADD is easy.  Sean was hell on wheels all the time.  There were many times when I asked "What the hell's wrong with you?"  (Don't ask your kids that.  It's not a nice thing to say.)  There were many times when I thought medication would be easier.  School didn't make things easier, however.  It's not like you can drop them off and leave them for six hours a day.  You're going to hear from the school several times per week.  It's a stressful place for your child and it makes the home a stressful place.  On top of that, all of the pent up energy your child was forced to hold in all day comes out in bad behavior at night.  Medication is not the answer.  Learn about ADD, adjust, rejoice and learn to work with it, not against it.  Whether you know it yet, or not, your child has been gifted.  If you can't see that, medication isn't going to help.  



Learn more about medications here.  Simply type the name of the drug into the search box at the top of the page or scroll down to find the medication your child is on.  This is the FDA drug safety site.  Pages list information for all medications including side effects and warnings.  Medication is required when the problem it is fixing outweighs the potential hazard of chemical intervention.  It is up to you to decide if the medication described meets that requirement.  If it's making your life and your child's life better, by all means, ignore this post.  I'd only ask that you are making an informed decision, first. 





I found this video extremely entertaining and informative: (http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U)