Please Read Before Choosing To Medicate!

I am sorry for your pain and that you have suffered. As i said quite clearly, i am an archaeologist. I am not a specialist on ADHD. What i am though is someone who has done extensive research on all sides of this over the last 15 years for a variety of reasons atleast some of them due to people i am close to.

Here is what i can honestly say that i have discovered.

Your fears ARE warranted! We can actually see that studies are suggesting drugs for ADHD ARE having long term negative impacts on children’s brains.

Let me explain this. I love skulls. Love to dig them up love to dust the tiny fractured bits off fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle and i love to study them. I can tell from the size and some of the shapes of the bones, the sex and even the age at death. I can also, by looking at the inside of the skull in specimens that are put together enough to do so, the rough shape of the brain contained inside the skull! Which is how i can tell definitively that some of the more nauseating myths about ADHD people are not true. But, before i go there i would like to answer your question.

“Personally, I feel that psych meds greatly worsened my LD and borderline ADHD issues. Do you of any research that would give credence to this this?”

I do not know what drug/s you were on i can not say for certain in your case atleast for that reason. Nor could i say without looking at your brain or atleast the inside of your skull even if i knew what drugs you were taking. And please understand, in both cases you would likely be dead for me to do so. And i don’t want anyone to die. I want everyone to live full and happy long healthy lives. So i would never want to have to look at those for you.

In the case of ADHD anyway, and let me be clear, i have little to no information on anything else as i have not done the research related to all the rest of the LDs and mental issues. But in my study of ADHD i did come to understand anything listed as a disorder is lacking in organic scientifically measurable evidence.

That being said, yes, your issues could be greatly worsened by drugs for ADHD. Studies are showing that long term use of stimulant medication shrinks the frontal lobe. That would be one of the most important parts of a person’s brain. It is the seat of reason and of logic and far more importantly self editing and self control.

If you read about many of the major school massacres if not all of them. You will find most of the perpetrators were on stimulants for many many years before they went postal so to speak. What made that easier in their case? Probably their brain’s inability to rationalize what they were doing or to check their impulse as the rest of us would do possibly likely even due to long term use of stimulants which studies are showing shrink said frontal lobe.

Many parents don’t like giving their children pills all the time so they just take them off for the summer months or on the weekends. PLEASE PARENTS DO NOT DO THAT! THAT IS A VERY BAD IDEA! These stimulant drugs are class 2. They are the equivalent of cocaine and they effect the brain in the same way. JUST TAKING YOUR CHILD OR YOURSELF OFF FOR A COUPLE DAYS HERE OR A SUMMER THERE, IS LIKE TAKING A JUNKIE OFF THEIR COKE FOR A WEEK AND THEN EXPECTING THEM TO BE NORMAL NO WITHDRAWAL. These drugs MUST be weaned away from those taking them SLOWLY preferably under the monitoring of a doctor! They are that potentially dangerous!

This also means, that parents who take their kid off for a couple weeks to see if they are ok to go without meds for ever after are not infact getting a measurement of how their child really is. They are measuring instead, the detox of the equivalent of a cocaine junkie if your child has been on stimulants for any length of time. You would need to keep your kid off probably around 6 months and THEN begin your assesment of “is my child ok to go med free?” Because that is about how long it takes for a full complete and total detox and chemical dependency to even begin to wear itself out in the brain and the body.

The fact is testing with these drugs started in many cases anyway as early as the late 40s and early 50s, yet they refuse to state or to properly publish what the long term effects are in all honesty and fairness that typically means someone is hiding something. If that is the case, they wouldn’t hide it if it were a positive thing.

There are many pages out there on the short term and long term side effects of ADHD medication. There is even another thread somewhere in this section perhaps just called ADHD with many wonderful references to various sites that can tell you more about it.

Next the myth i wanted to kill, because i feel it is an insulting one. And i am in a rather unique position as an archaeologist to give it the equivalent of the academic bird. Some maintain those with ADHD are a “throw backs” to either neanderthal or to earlier hunter gatherer societies. They claim our brains are different and that they are designed for these alternative life styles and pre sapien sapien societies. So let me nip them in the arse 1 at a time.

1. Hunter gatherer society myth

Early human hunter gatherers co existed with neanderthal. So which is it? Are we early hunter gatherer humans neanderthals or hybrids? The fact is, there is no evidence of hybridization between the 2 species except for possibly one young child’s partial skeleton found in portugal.The basis of the claim would be the size and shape of the bones. DNA research has however pretty much declared this child a clinical impossibility if it really is a hybrid. Which comparative DNA studies of humans and neanderthals clearly indicate is roughly as i have already said impossible.

2. We are really just neanderthals. Hmmm…. Where to begin? Neanderthals are an extinct species. Sorry folks. Those with ADHD are as fully human as you yourselves are. The brains of ADHD people can not be differentiated from those without it unless medication over the long term is involved in which case the frontal lobe shrinkage gives it away. Again, that is why it is called a disorder and NOT a mental illness because there is nothing organic that can be found to differentiate it from a normal brain.

3. The hunter gatherer myth, How to deal with this one…. How to deal…. Hmmm…. The age of homo sapiens as a species does not allow for the time necesary for the brain to evolve really at all. Which means ever since our population changed from what we typically believe to simplify the matter was either heidel bergensis or homo erectus, our brains have NOT changed. Which means, early agriculturalist the people of the classical era and the people of today and the man that invented the first arrow head to hunt with share a brain equal in development. I love myth busting.

It also means, that if there was any legitimacy to this diagnosis, archaeologists would probably be able to point to the differences in the ancient skulls. This can’t have just materialized magically POOF one day when the drug corporations bought sexy lobby groups. No way! We would be seeing accounts of people with ADHD going all the way back to the stoneage! We would be reading mental health texts that indicate this disorder or it’s symptoms were known to early humans. Many of whom in the era of early writing, had medical professions roughly equal to our own. Take for example ancient Egypt which even had woman doctors! Many of the brain operations we have uncovered and the injuries and etc from those, would make our modern doctors proud of their work.

Oh and another note about ancient discveries verses ADHD in ancient populations.I love it when people reason “Well if your child had cancer wouldn’t you give them chemo??? It is the same thing! What if your kid had diabetes??? Wouldn’t you give them insulin?” The problem is, it is NOT the same thing at all. Perhaps someday it will be. When there is an organic test for ADHD, and a link between the behaviors and the physical body. Until that time…. You are medicating your child based on the same spectral evidence presented in the salem witch trials, which would be NONE AT ALL. However, as an archaeologist, i can find bones showing evidence of cancer in ancient bodies. I can find evidence in the bones or the genetic materials in many cases though not all that will tell me someone had an actual organic illness. Yet i can not say based on the evidence of the human body that someone has or in the case of the work i do, had ADHD. Therefore it is really not the same thing at all. Let me give you another hypothetical to think about. If you were a juror, in a murder case, in which the prosecution could NOT link the defendant to the murder weapon or murder victim through any physical object or eyewitness account that was from someone without a financial incentive to say they saw the defendant commit the crime, would you convict? No physic evidence of any kind linking this person to the murder. No indication that they were without an alibi at the time of the murder, and the only eye witness has financial incentive to be dishonest, would you convict? Because to medicate your child you are in ever respect saying “Yes, i would convict a person of murder or any other crime with no evidence of any kind to substantiate their prosecution for said crime.” It is NOT the same thing at all as it would be to give a child chemo for having an organic illness such as cancer. And if you don’t treat your kid for that, you should be arrested and jailed and i don’t care what your religion is. But, for something like ADHD, where so many are proffiting so much off of the suffering of children pumping them full of the chemical equivalent of cocaine with no evidence of any measurable organic sort to base their diagnosis on, that isn’t treatment. That is convicting a person, a child no less of a crime with no evidence linking them to the crime and relying on a jail house snitch getting a walk instead of jail time for their testimony. It’s apples and oranges people. Do the research and the math. Don’t trust blindly. These drugs can and have killed. And they can and will again. Until you parents say no more. Your children are counting on you!
If this were a genetic disorder, truly passed on as the fear mongers claim through generations through genes, we would see europe as the vast majority of the american population comes from europe in probably less than 6 generations. We should be seeing per equal sized groups a rate atleast similar between european ADHD sufferers and american ADHD sufferers, if in fact it is genetic. The fact is, you are more than like 10 times more likely to be labeled ADHD in the usa than you are anywhere in europe. Not only do i know that from research but i know that because i have lived on both continents. ADHD, over here, is virtually unheard of. So if it is so genetic, then why is it not showing up in the european peoples we find we so frequently link to with in only a few generations? Puuzzling… Something smells bad about the system in the usa, and what is worse, medicating using a broken system as a guide can clearly not be healthy for anyone’s child.

Mandi,

Great sites.

Personally, I feel that psych meds greatly worsened my LD and borderline ADHD issues. Do you of any research that would give credence to this this?

I know that many of the psych med side effects can resemble an LD/ADHD profile. So maybe it is the side effects that I experienced on top of the LD/ADHD?

Anyway, I greatly worry what will happen to LD/ADHD kids on these meds.

Thanks again.

PT

I got a lovely little email today. I thought i might share it.

Thank yu Able Child, for all your hard work! Because parents no longer have anywhere to turn to. As even NIMH and Chadd are on the pay roll of big pharmaceuticals as are most of the leading experts getting exhorbitant amounts of money to medicate helpless childre. Thank you Able Child for doing the work you do. Please, do not stop. We need more groups like yours!

From my email:

“Senator Dodd Steps into FDA Investigation and leaves The “Child
Medication Safety Bill” Behind

Today, Senator Dodd finally takes a position on the SSRI
Antidepressant Crisis in America, but it is not in the support of
children as we would have hoped, but rather in the corner of the
Special Interest lobbyist group the “Psychiatric Industry”.

“Senator Dodd has been made aware of the 17 families from his State
that have come forward to tell of coercion to place their young
children on SSRI, antidepressants and behavioral drugs within the
public schools”, says Sheila Matthews, National Vice President of
www.ablechild.org. “He also is well aware of the two board members
of www.ablechild.org who have lost their children from the marketed
psychiatric labels and dangerous drug treatment being foisted upon
parents. Senator Dodd has failed to act on a bill that would protect
parent and children’s rights. Instead, he writes to the FDA during
an ongoing investigation to lobby for more drug research on children
even with knowledge that these dangerous drugs have been directly
linked to suicide in children. “Just what parents don’t want,
dangerous drugs tested on our children.” Ms. Matthews added.

Senator Dodd’s office seemed unaware of the already $25 million
dollars spent each year on drug research for “adhd” and other
behavioral labels through the NIMH. His response seems to be the
same; he is against coercion, but is not willing to sign an anti-
coercion bill to protect children. He calls for more hearings, when
the hearings have already taken place.

The fact is “children are dying” and parents want action on the
Child Medication Safety Bill, not more drug research at the expense
of our children. Parents are becoming more and more educated on the
fraud of attention deficit disorder and the dangerous drugs tied to
the label. Senator Dodd is clearly out of touch with parents from
his home State of Connecticut as well as those from the rest of the
Country.”

Senator Dodd, you lose my vote for one! I will be encouraging everyone i know in your state to vote for your opposition.