Unintended Consequences for Treating ADHD Pharmaseutically

 

This essay isn’t intended to debate the validity of the ADHD diagnosis, but rather to point out an unanticipated problem with the present treatment modality. Though age six is the usual age of being diagnosed with ADHD, there are children who have been diagnosed as early as age 4 who are then prescribed ADHD meds. Assuming you were diagnosed by a state sponsored mental health provider, not complying with treatment modalities could result in Child Protective Services being involved in the child’s life. A child diagnosed with ADHD has the potential of being medicated until age 18, at which point, unless you are fortunate enough to have a private pay psychiatrist, the state cuts off your supply of narcotics. In this scenario, you are more likely to be a male. You have most likely been told all your life that you are broken by family, teachers, and doctors, and that you need meds to function, and are suddenly thrust into a world where you are now expected to function as if you never had ADHD. State sponsored Mental Health programs will not provide ADHD meds to adults. Primary Care Physicians don’t want to prescribe ADHD meds, and will refer you to a psychiatrist. Even if you could afford a psychiatrist, very few psychiatrists are willing to provide ADHD meds to adults. If a person is persistent and tries to find a treatment provider, the person soon becomes labeled as a ‘drug seeker,’ which I find particularly odd given our primary paradigm’s solution to all ‘medical’ issues are found in a pill. Of course people are drug seeking. It’s what we teach as a society.

An adult person with ADHD, now cut off from any medical recourse is now at higher risk of turning to illegal drugs. Why wouldn’t they? They have been given narcotics all their life, why would we expect anything less? If you consider the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses, the cost of housing said people, and the alternative cost of just allow a Doctor to medicate with legitimate drugs for legitimate reasons, I think the cost of supplying narcotics is cheaper. This well established fact that those given narcotics will pursue future use of narcotics, sanctioned or not, causes the government to respond by increasing penalties in order to suppress the general population’s pursuit of illegal drugs, which also makes it more unlikely that a Doctor will prescribe for a ‘medical’ reason due to the increase scrutiny they get when doing so. At this point, one might wonder if ADHD is a real ‘thing.’ If it’s a medical thing, then the government needs to get off the backs of Doctors and allow them to treat ‘medical’ issues. If ADHD is not a medical issue, and society is determined not to allow adults to use narcotics because ‘it’s bad’ and society can’t allow adults to make adult decisions and so they need the state to protect them, then why is it we are so willing and ready to medicate are most vulnerable citizens, our children, with narcotics?

The truth seems apparent, linguistically: there is not ‘children experiencing ADHD,’ but society has ‘children with ADHD.’ Society, the adults, the parents, the teachers, the doctors, have been very clear in this one particular message: we don’t want to spend the time and energy on nurturing individuals that are unable to fit within the statistical norm. How we respond to children with ADHD is exactly how we respond to adults who fail to engage in normative social expectations. You don’t have to believe me. Just do the math. The average Doctor visit is two minutes. How is that good medical care for the human beings we serve? A person who tries to get more attention becomes labeled as problematic. More and more, parents don’t want to attend to their reality, (a kid acting up,) and would rather be on their cell phone than parenting, and yet, the very fact that we don’t give proper attention or nurture tends to result in more disruptive behaviors to get the desired attention. Teachers don’t want to deal with children who are problematic. In truth, they really don’t have the time, and disruptions interfere with the kids who are able to sit and attend. There is evidence to suggest that all children would benefit from a radical approach to learning, the kind of approach that would be ideal for teaching children with ADHD, and that is increasing play and increased adult and interactions. We, biologically speaking, are not designed to sit still and quiet for 8 hours a day. We were meant to play. As our performance in academics declines compared to other countries, we increase the amount of chair time, translation ‘less play time,’ which also corresponds to the increase in childhood obesity, because we’re less active, and even when kids get home, they’re still expected to do school work, which result in less play outside time, and the quick fix is maybe playing a video games, because really, we don’t feel safe letting our kids go outside. Oddly enough, this seems to coincide with with kids and adolescents having increased anxiety. Mybe because we are less active but we still have energy, and an inate desire to play and be in nature which can’t be satiated, because we don’t have any safe ways to engage it, and so we’re back to the doctors for anti-anxiety meds, but instead it gets misdiagnosed as ADHD, because clearly, you just need a narcotic because you can sit and be still so the adults can live their lives.

There is overwhelming evidence that for those who are incarcerated for life have one thing in common: a lack of play as children. The lack of play is not related to ADHD per say, but some of the dynamic ways one might engage a person with ADHD, without meds, will feel like play. It has to be fun and dynamic. The inattentive type, though, where one seems to space out, fits a different paradigm that isn’t necessarily tuning out, but rather simply processing of information on deeper levels. There are those who will raise this ‘problem’ to levels of conspiracy, where there is malicious attempt by a few to intentionally harm males, to chemically de-emasculate them. I can see their point, which seems validated when you see that people were treated medically, and then ignored just when they become of age where they could seriously start contributing to society. Before 18, they didn’t have the legal voice to say no to ADHD meds, but as an adult they have legal right to say yes, but everyone else responds with ‘just say no.’

Almost everyone has heard that Einstein did poorly in primary school, because he was always day dreaming. It is said, he came up with relativity while day dreaming. I wonder what would have happened had he been medicated for ADHD. Maybe instead of treating ADHD as if it were a ‘disorder’ as opposed to a specialized way of dealing with information, we could all have better outcomes for everyone. This path way, though, doesn’t come from a pharmaceutical solution, but from the adults, the parents, the teachers, and the doctors adapting to the child’s reality, as opposed to chemically forcing others to adapt to ‘society’s reality.’ Especially if in doing the latter, you cut people off from access to your reality by no longer supplying them with the drugs that you said was necessary for them to function in said reality.