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When I was a child in 3rd grade my teacher sent a sealed envelope home with me to give to my parents. I got home and gave it to my mother. She was visibly outraged by the contents. It turns out that my teacher thought I might be mentally retarded (the term “ADHD” wasn’t as popular in those days). You would never know it today, but in those days I was a deathly shy. I was also an extremely physically and mentally active child. I remember sitting in class, gazing around the room, fiddling with my rubber eraser and lost in a world of my own. The inner world of my imagination was far more active and interesting than anything that was going on around me so it made complete sense that I would rather spend my time there. I participated little if any in class and possibly even looked slightly autistic as I was highly prone, like many bright children, to various facial ticks and body fidgets.

After making it through 10 years of college and being in practice for over 20 years it seems today that my brain works well enough. I am grateful for my mother’s outrage and the fact that she did not succumb to the growing popularity, even in the early 1960′s, of Ritalin-izing me into more acceptable behavior. Today the United States consumes 90% of the world’s Ritalin and prescriptions of Ritalin are up 700% since 1990. Nearly 5 million people in the U.S., mostly children, are on Ritalin.

The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that stimulant drugs like Ritalin that are used to treat ADHD do not improve children’s symptoms in the long term. The latest study of nearly 500 children over a period of eight years found that those still taking stimulant medication fared no better in the reduction of symptoms such as inattention, hyperactivity and social functioning than those who had not taken medication.

A young boy’s life is surrounded by females. Women, from mothers to caregivers to grade school teachers, frequently don’t appreciate or understand the profound differences between the male and female psyche – possibly in the same way that the female psyche remains an enigma to most men throughout their entire life! Young boys experience their world differently. And this difference is often an inconvenience to the modern mother and the modern grade school teacher.

In more primitive times the survival of our species most likely depended on the more active and physically aggressive males who would hunt and fight to protect the survival of the group. But when the expectation is to glue your butt to a chair and stay focused for hours at a time the young female psyche clearly has the edge. A teacher who sees all the little girls in her class behaving so conveniently for her can easily conclude that something is wrong with the young boy. Young boys and girls are so neurologically different that I think it’s unfair to even educate them in the same classroom.

Do we drug children merely because they are inconvenient or annoying?

Just because someone seems “happier” or more agreeable when they are drunk doesn’t mean they’re suffering from an alcohol deficiency that can only be corrected with a few martinis. But this is the exact logic that doctors and parents use when justifying the use of mind altering drugs on young children. They suggest that the problem is a “brain chemistry imbalance” and that the drug will correct it. Bollocks.

Of course there are children who really do have difficulty with impulse control or thinking processes. In this case the appropriate treatment is a good behavioral therapist, not drugs.

Ok. I will probably never ever do this in my lifetime. But this vicariously fulfills about every adolescent flying dream I ever had!