I have a twenty-year-old son who is a junior in College. My son has always been average in intelligence. He does well in school but he does well because he works hard. In the second grade his best friends name was Nathan. Nathan was not just above average intellectually; he was a gifted child who had to put very little effort into his schoolwork.
Nathan was also a very active child. His focus roamed from one thing to the next in a matter of seconds. He had a deep curiosity about everything in life, which meant he was full of questions. I always thought of Nathan as being a bright, inquisitive child who could be hard to be around at times because his need to learn could be distracting for those around him.
Nathan’s parents were not very accepting of Nathan’s curiosity and his seeming difference from the other children his age. They, of course, took Nathan to the doctor where he was diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Soon afterwards Nathan started taking Ritalin.
Nathan and my son were friends through the sixth grade when we moved away. He was the child who got all the top awards at the end of the school year. He was the child who took his Ritalin when he spent the night with us, exactly at nine in the evening and then, immediately dropped off to sleep.
After moving away we lost touch with Nathan and his parents. When my son was eighteen we had the opportunity to visit the city we had once lived in and catch up on the lives of old friends. Our discoveries, as far as Nathan was concerned, were disheartening, to say the least.
He had dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen and was working in McDonalds flipping burgers. As a teenager he had started exhibiting problem behaviors. Behaviors such as problems with anger, stealing and defiance of authority. He had been expelled from school so many times that he was eventually asked not to return.
We had the opportunity to talk to Nathan during our visit. I discussed his problems with him and what he thought might be behind the change in behavior. His response? Ritalin!! According to Nathan when he first started taking it, it was like a magic pill. He said it slowed his brain down, helped him stay focused and kept his parents from yelling at him all the time. He said it also slowed down his desire to know things, that he felt “woozy” all the time and not interested in life.
When Nathan was 16 he was taken to a new doctor who informed his parents that he had been wrongly diagnosed with ADHD and should come off the Ritalin. Being a central nervous system stimulant, Ritalin is similar to amphetamines in the effect they have on the body. It will produce an artificial feeling of pleasure if it is prescribed to someone with true ADHD. If it is wrongly prescribed it can produce the opposite feelings and this is what Nathan had lived with for years and was the direct cause of his behavioral problems.
When he tried to stop taking Ritalin he told me that he suffered excruciating stomach cramps, severe anxiety and a deep depression. Being sixteen and under the complete control of his parents he, of course, had no option but to come off the drug cold turkey.
What was Nathan’s response to the horrific withdrawal symptoms? It was to buy the drug on the street. He said he was constantly in pain due to the stomach cramps, angry because of the anxiety and unable to think and concentrate because of the depression. He told me his only thought was of how to get his hands on more Ritalin to relieve the pain of withdrawal.
Nathan’s story is a sad one and it is not the only story out there like his. It is rumored that Curt Cobain of Nirvana was wrongly diagnosed as ADHD and given Ritalin as a child. I have heard that the severe stomach cramps he experienced during withdrawal from Ritalin was one of the catalyst for his future use of much more dangerous drugs.
Nathan told me that he got to the point that he was stealing from his parents to buy the pills on the street. Its street names are Vitamin R, the R-Ball or the Smart Pill. He said he would take up to 30 pills a day by crushing them up into a fine dust and sniffing them. According to him, that is when the drug became his true “magic pill.”
There are some children who have problems that are severe enough that the drug Ritalin can be a lifesaver. It’s my opinion though that, that has very little do to with why millions of children are taking Ritalin. My opinion…compliance. Teachers and parents expecting cookie cutter, little children who do as they are told, when they are told: Sit down, sit still, shut up, and pay attention. In short Ritalin has become a cure for normal childhood behavior and parents and teachers who don’t know how to handle normalcy in our children.
Prescriptions for Ritalin have increased more than 600% in the last 10 years. In some schools more than 20% of the student population is diagnosed with either ADD or ADHD and is on Ritalin. At the going rate, more than 22 million school children will be on Ritalin by the year 2007. American school children use more than 6 times the amount of Ritalin than any other country in the world.
Here are some other interesting facts about Ritalin and its use amongst teenagers:
High school and University students are buying the drug for as little as $1 to beat the stress of final exams.
Ritalin is being bought on the street and used by teens to stay awake during spring break trips so they don’t miss out on any of the fun.
The main supplier of Ritalin is the very students that Ritalin has been prescribed for.
For teenagers and adults the effects of Ritalin are the same as that of Cocaine, the only difference is that Ritalin is easy to buy and less expensive. It has become to poor man’s Coke.
Unprescribed us of the drug can cause aggression, anxiety and heart seizures.
Since the level of prescribing the drug has gone up, so has its availability as a
street drug.
More and more evidence is becoming available that drugging children diagnosed as hyperactive could have unexpected and very harmful, long term effects. Excessive doses of Ritalin over a long period of time, especially in children who have been misdiagnosed, can and does produce addiction. It is also possible to develop a tolerance to the drug, so that larger doses are needed to produce the original effect.
Abuse of Ritalin is not a foreign concept in this day and age, neither is the fact that it is a very addictive drug. If your child has been diagnosed with a condition that requires the use of this medication, based on the evidence of the harm that can be caused by long term use, you would be well advised to get a second or, even, a third opinion.
