I have ADHD(Attention Defisite Hyper Disorder)and I'm not sure if it's normal. Is it normal?
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Just about half of the folks in America are said to have ADHD.
When I led a youth group several years ago, half of the boys in it were medicated. That experience led to my suspicion, and eventual cynicism, of Attention Deficit Disorders.
Many artistic, insightful, and intelligent children have trouble focusing on single, specific topics. I wonder how many creative minds have been smothered and quelched by Ritalin.
It was about in the '80s that marketing specialists in the Pharmaceutical industries decided that they wanted to "market medication to healthy people, make healthy people believe that they are sick" to boost sales.
People don't realize just how many venues these companies have at their disposal to make people think that ADHD and said mental disorders are valid for many people. Media, advertising, psychiatrists, you name it, they have it at their disposal. What is considered socially normal is dictated by the sources they have at their disposal.
It's sad but true. Many modern Psychology experts are saying that in a decade or so, ADHD will be classified in the DSIM as a "trend illness", or an illness that was mass diagnosed in a fad-like manner.
I became sceptical of meds when my doctor perscribed Zyban for quitting smoking even after I asked if I could have Welbutrin instead...insurance would pay for Welbutrin, the same drug. I paid $90 out of pocket for a perscription that he insisted was "tweaked a little bit...not exactly the same." It did nothing. Further research proved what the doctor denied...there is absolutely no difference between the two. I was in my 20s then. Young and naive.
My years as a Cub Scout leader put me in charge of about a dozen boys...seven of whom took Ritalin. My first reaction was wondering how the human race survived for the last 200,000 years without the drug. Statistically, there should be 3.5 billion people worldwide on it, just to cope. I watched their parents coddle and cater to their every whim, never holding them accountable and defending their every move, proving where the problem lied. It's so much easier to give a pill...than it is to parent.
The final straw, where my scepticizm turned to cynicizm, came when I suffered a bout of deadly depression. My doctor perscribed Cymbalta. It turned me Bi-polar and never addressed my problem. During one of the "lows," I filled my mouth with blood pressure pills...during another, I had a .357 in my mouth with the hammer cocked. Both times...I changed my mind at the last minute. Even after quitting, it took two years for me to stabilize. I sometimes still wonder when the Cymbalta will quit haunting me.
I'm 45 now. I've built a lifetime of experience that's tought me that we make our own problems. I'm now on a mission to fight pill pushing. I learned that the problems we face in life need to be addressed directly. Stop taking pills...stop looking for an easy way out. Face the world and conquer fears instead of looking for a way to avoid them. Whether you take a pill or not, the problem will always be there until you defeat your own demons. Most of the time, those demons are there only because you feed them. I stopped feeding them and they went away. Forever. They haven't returned and they won't.
This may not apply to you. Sometimes there really is a physiological problem that requires meds...but nine times out of 10...people need to quit feeding the wolf that eats at their soul.
Sorry about the novel. This subject really strikes home.
The human race has survived for a long time without ritalin, but that's not a valid argument for ritalin being unnecessary for most people. Penicillin wasn't discovered until 1928, which means, in terms of all of human existence, we haven't had it very long, either. That doesn't mean penicillin is unnecessary for most people who take it, of course, because the date of discovery of a medication is completely unrelated to how important that medication is.
Yes, there are a lot of parents who spoil their kids, and sometimes their kids have ADHD. That has very little to do with whether or not those children needed their medication, which was none of your business as a Cub Scout leader. You weren't those childrens' doctors, and you weren't in any way qualified to evaluate their diagnoses or medication. Even if you were a doctor, which, based on the perspective of your post, I assume you're not, you didn't do a psychological evaluation of those kids. It's also worth noting that there are resources available for parents of children with ADHD, and they don't advise that you refuse to discipline your children. That was an issue with those parents, and there are many parents like them whose children have never been diagnosed with a disability.
Your approach to dealing with these things doesn't apply to ADHD. Like dyslexia, ADHD is not a mental illness, it's a learning disability. You can't fix it by facing your inner demons. It's not caused or triggered by trauma or stress, and it's not cyclical like depression. ADHD does not go into remission. Some people no longer have significant symptoms after adolescence, and therefore no longer require treatment, but you can't make it go away through therapy. There are coping tools to help people with ADHD, but they don't get rid of the disorder, and they generally work best in addition to medication, not instead of it. Of course, anybody who doesn't want to be on medication is perfectly free not to take it.
How would pharmaceutical companies be pressuring doctors to prescribe medication? Doctors don't get paid extra for writing prescriptions, and it's illegal for pharmaceutical companies to reward them for doing so. The doctors who prescribe medication don't work for the pharmaceutical companies. It sounds to me like you had a bad doctor, which is awful, but which I don't think is representative of most cases.
Again, I'm really sorry all of that happened to you. It sounds like it was really awful to go through, and I can see how it would really turn you against medication. There are a lot of people in the world like me, though, who can live happy lives because of our medication. Our stories don't get told as often, because they're much less interesting, but we're here. Every time somebody insists that taking pills is "the easy way", implying that we're weak for taking our medication, or questions our diagnoses based on how they perceive us, or tells us that our disabilities aren't real, it hurts us. Every time, it makes it a little bit harder for us to talk about our disabilities. Every time, it makes us a little more afraid to mention having them, because somebody's always there to talk over us or roll their eyes. Every time, it makes it a little more stressful to request accommodations that we need.
Do you have any idea how hard it was to get the help I needed in school when I had teachers who didn't believe that I had a legitimate disorder? Do you know what it feels like to have your classmates tell you that you're just faking for drugs when you're 13 years old? Have you ever tried to explain something that's shaped how your mind works for your entire life to somebody who wouldn't stop rolling their eyes? It fucking hurts. It's like getting punched in the stomach and having the wind knocked out of me every single time. Sure, sometimes there are false positives in the diagnosis process (something that happens with every disorder, disease, and disability, both psychological and physical), but you're not qualified to decide which is which. Is it really worth risking hurting people like that? Are your own opinions of this disability so important that you're ok with cutting people down? Do you really think you're more informed about ADHD than people who've lived with it for our entire lives?
I appreciate that you're trying to help people, and I think it's perfectly fine for you to talk to people who are considering the same medications you've been on. It is NOT perfectly fine to tell people with disorders that you don't have how to manage our disabilities. Telling us "Oh, I know YOU really have it, I'm just talking about other people" doesn't help any more than "I'm not racist, I have black friends" helps. We don't need you to speak for us. We can speak for ourselves.
I am one of those disabled people. If you look online at adults with learning disabilities, there are many others who are fighting exactly the kind of stigmatising "help" you're trying to provide. If you want to help, stop talking about us, and LISTEN TO US.
Penicillin is actually another drug that has been oveprescribed to the point of creating alergies and "superbugs." It saved many lives at one point, but taken others. Antibiotics kill bacteria..which is an entirely different topic.
Doctors most certainly are rewarded by drug companies. My brother-in-law is one. Just because they don't write a check, doesn't mean they aren't getting kickbacks.
As far as teachers...I'm surprised by your experience..or perception. The U.S. public school system proved the biggest pusher of Ritalin...if kids won't focus, teachers demand that gifted, creative students who can't focus on a single topic, however disinteresting the topic may be, be perscribed ADHD meds or transfer to special education...you want stigma? There it is. I also guarantee that Einstein would have faced such an ultimatum today. School absolutely couldn't hold his attention.
I'm not attacking you and what you believe that you suffer from, and there's certainly no reason to take offense. I'm just absolutely convinced that ADHD is fabricated...or at the very least overdiagnosed. I'm sorry...I don't mean that as an attack, and you may very well need Ritalin yourself, but I've watched too many creative minds turned to compliant zombies by it.
I will give you that my experiences, and the points that I made, however valid, were anecdotal, but that doesn't make me wrong. I could give you a mile of links proving my point, but that would be a waste of both our time...since 1)anything can be found on the internet and 2)neither of us will be convinced of the other's point.
My lifetime's experiences are going to influence my opinion...as yours will. I've just witnessed too many creative and critical minds numbed by ADHD meds, antidepressants, and other neurological inhibitors, stimulants, and depressants.
My opinion will not change, and neither will yours...but I will say that I did listen to you...I didn't talk about you. I just disagree.
I understand that it can be very difficult to discuss the nature of something and its surrounding issues when each party has a different opinion on its existence (or at least its prevalence, in this case). That's said, let's establish a couple points that I hope we can both agree on:
• Some people actually have ADHD.
You admitted yourself that there really are some people who have a physiological problem. You said "This may not apply to you. Sometimes there really is a physiological problem that requires meds." We disagree on the probable number of such people, but we agree that they do exist.
• I am one of those people.
This one takes a little more explanation. When I was getting ready for college, I went through a process to get disability services. Among other things, this required rigorous testing to see if my diagnosis was correct and determine the exact nature of my symptoms (sometimes symptoms can manifest differently or disappear after adolescence). This was not the first time I'd been thoroughly tested, but these sessions were more involved. The testing took three days. They did ask questions about my symptoms to both my mother and me and reviewed my past doctors' reports, but the rest of the testing was objective. They tested math and verbal skills, short term memory, reaction time, spatial reasoning skills, pattern recognition, and attentiveness, among other things. When I say they were objective, I mean that they didn't rely on the opinions or observations of the research team. The tests were timed, scored, and compared to scores of the general population as obtained through large previous studies using the same tests. There was no doubt as to the diagnosis. I scored abnormally low on sections affected by ADHD, such as tests involving attentiveness and reaction time, much lower than is even required for a diagnosis. I'm telling you this not because I need you to validate my disorder, but because I think it's necessary to establish this if I'm to explain my perspective properly. I do not, for the record, think that only people with symptoms as extreme as mine should be diagnosed. I'm not playing the "I have REAL ADHD, but everybody else is pretending" game. You probably disagree, and I'm not trying to start an argument over that. I just want to be clear, particularly in case somebody else with ADHD reads this.
Now, if we can agree on those two things, I'd like to explain myself.
You experience the world as a person who doesn't have ADHD. As such, maybe it's difficult for you to see why anybody would be offended or hurt by your posts. Maybe it seems to you that you've done nothing but express an opinion on an interesting topic. Maybe this topic seems somewhat abstract to you, however passionate you are, like a political discussion which, after the debate is over, everybody can agree to disagree about and still be friends. (continued…)
I don't have that choice, and neither does the OP. In this case, yes, I chose to post replies to your comments. The OP, on the other hand, didn't ask for a debate on ADHD when they posted their story. They didn't ask for your opinion on whether or not their diagnosis is legitimate. As the OP hasn't commented again, I don't know how they feel about the replies this story got, but this issue is larger than this post. People with ADHD don't get to choose when we have this conversation, because almost every time we mention having it, somebody decides that that's an invitation for a debate. If I don't want to face having my diagnosis questioned, the only thing I can do is not talk about it, which would mean not getting the accommodations I need in places like school and work.
Also, you acknowledged that some people do have ADHD, but given that you know that, your comments come off as extremely insensitive, especially if you consider that you don't know who's going to read your comments and that even from you're prospective, it's possible that the OP's diagnosis is actually correct. "I actually wonder if they downright fabricated the 'illness'" is a really hurtful thing to hear after struggling with a disability for your entire life, and you said it on quite a public platform. Even if you turned out to be right, and "nine times out of 10" medication is unnecessary, are you really ok with a 10% chance that you just told somebody struggling with a very real disability that you think their disorder is made up?
There are times when it's appropriate to discuss skepticism, and there are times when it isn't. If the question had been "Do you think ADHD is over diagnosed?", your posts would be less offensive. That wasn't the question, though. I'm an atheist, and I discuss my atheism in religious debates and communities focussed on atheism. I DON'T go into topics where people ask questions like "IIN that I want to be closer to God?" and say "No, your god is made up!" That would be rude. If the post was about a religion whose members have to deal with being questioned about the validity of their religion on a regular basis, then it would be doubly rude. Add the fact that this is a question of health and healthcare, and that it's already impolite to give people unsolicited medical advice, particularly if you're not a doctor, and it should be clear that this kind of reaction is extremely inappropriate.
I want to add that your arguments are absolutely nothing new to me, because people bring those points up very frequently when I mention that I have ADHD. That isn't a criticism of your originality or anything. I just think you should know that if you say those things to somebody who's been diagnosed for some time, you're not educating us. It's presumptuous to try to educate us about our own brains. However much research you've done on my disability, I can guarantee that I've done more, because this is my life. I have to research it to find techniques to function. So frankly, when you come into a topic where the OP has stated that they have ADHD and has not asked for your opinion on their diagnosis, and you start questioning the diagnosis, it really comes off as you saying "I think I know more about your brain than you OR your doctor!"
Now you're attacking me on a personal level..my integrity...which I never asked for.
You're right..I'm not a doctor, but that doesn't mean I can't question doctors and hold them accountable to their analysis and supposed "diagnosis" of fabricated, or at the very least, overdiagnosed "illnesses."
If we all accept professional opinion without question, we'd be overrun with an attitude of unquestioned compliance. If a mechanic tells you that you need a new ecm because your brakes are failing...will you accept without question? If so..I'm sorry but you're a marshmallow...and you deserve what you get.
I care deeply about kids. I've dedicated more to their well being than most doctors. Without pay...or "kickbacks" that you insist don't exist. I've watched their creative thinking destroyed by this supposed diagnosis.
I was very much asked for my opinion by the OP...and I gave it. As you were...and you did. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I don't have a voice. Especially since I have as strong of an opinion as you do.
My opinions are rooted in nothing but compassion. That's why I'm so outspoken about it.
I'm truely sorry if it hurt.
...that was not my intention.
He/she reaches out with a little understanding and you virtually insult him/her with condescension.
Awesome.
...to take medications for fabricated or exaggerated "illnesses." I've seen the destruction that this overperscribed medication causes, and a growing number within the medical community back me up.
I've also noticed that you have a tendency to try to silence anyone who disagrees with you on any topic...welcome to the real world, where that doesn't happen so easily. An open mind would do you some good..especially from those who give you respect.
No...I'm on a valid mission to battle the destructive over-perscription of ADHD meds, and I will not stop until I've done my part. Your lack of respect for another point of view fueled my ambition.
I apologized for hurting your feelings. That was not my intention, but you proceeded to dress me down even after I showed you respect.
I've passed the "learning" stage. Now I have much to teach. Continuing an arguement with someone who is absolutely convinced that there is no legitimate opposing view is fruitless...and it ends now. I will not reply again.
I respect you as a human being. I don't respect your opinion on ADHD.
What is this "trying to silence [you]" stuff? I'm not trying to take away your right to free speech, I'm telling you that some of the things you've said can hurt people. There's a big difference. If you want to help people, go to medical school and do research that can help disabled people. If you're so convinced that ADHD isn't real, earn the qualifications and conduct studies that prove it. I'm sorry, but from what you've said, you're not even remotely qualified to teach anybody about ADHD. If this is your mission, why don't you commit to it and get the qualifications you need?
Oh, and telling me that my disability isn't real isn't giving me respect.
Neither my motive, nor yours are malignant. You need to defend ADHD, having been diagnosed with it, and I need to protect kids from the overpersciption of medication, having witnessed it's overuse and side-effects. It's important to listen to people with opposing views no matter how voraciously we disagree. I see this all the time with the abortion issue: Neither side will ever be convinced of the other's benevolence and hostility runs rampant.
Myself? I respect you as a human being as well as your opinion...even though I couldn't disagree more. I guess I expect the same. You're articulate, obviously intelligent, and well-rehersed. Despite your accusations, so am I. My sister is a nurse practitioner and her husband is a retired neurosurgeon. Much of my opinion has been shaped by experience and reinforced by their input.
To address your first paragraph:
People who have lost the use of their legs, whether from nervous system damage or amputations, unquestionably need them, but if half of the population started using wheelchairs, that would raise serious, and understandable doubts about their validity. I would hope that the medical profession would start questioning the long term effects of confining growing children to wheelchairs for ingrown toenails, athlete's foot, and webbed toes...all legitimate problems. Using the analogy you presented, that would equate my observations of the overuse of Ritalin.
As for your last paragraph:
I've seen several of your posts rue those who disagree...not only on this topic. I didn't only mean me.
Again...your claim that it requires a medical degree to have a legitimate opinion on this equates to saying that you should never question a mechanic who demands your engine needs an overhaul because your tire pressure's low...especially after consulting a close realative who is a mechanic, and you've researched the causes of low tire pressure.
If you disagree...I'll be happy to be your mechanic...
Your motives were well intentioned...but please don't do that.
I don't mean to say that you're supposed to accept professional opinion without question. Doctors are not infallible, and not all of them are responsible. On your own or your child's diagnosis, you're absolutely within your rights to read up on the diagnosis, get a second opinion, and do whatever else you want to do to educate yourself. In fact, I advise it. I've done a great deal of research myself. When you're questioning OTHER people's diagnoses, however, we have a problem. What I think is inappropriate and harmful is when people who aren't doctors start telling other people their disabilities aren't real.
When I said that the OP didn't ask for your opinion, I meant that they didn't ask for your opinion on the validity of the diagnosis. Maybe I misinterpreted the question, but I took it to mean something more along the lines of "Is it common to have ADHD?" or "Do other people here have ADHD?", not "Do you think ADHD exists?", which is the question you answered with your first comment (and, to be fair, the question most other commenters answered as well).
Yes, you have a voice. The voices of neurotypical people have a tendency to drown out those of people with learning disabilities or autism spectrum disorders, and that's the root of the problem I've been trying to get across. If it were just you saying (SAYING, not just thinking) that ADHD isn't real, or chiefly activists pushing for better research, that would be ok. It isn't, though, it's a lot more widespread than that. It's enough people that it's hard to talk about, and it's even harder to be heard. It's enough voices that people make jokes about ADHD and scoff at the disorder without ever considering that there might be somebody who's been diagnosed in the room. It's so widespread that those voices invade ADHD support communities and other resources specifically for people with ADHD. It's so many voices speaking so loudly that if I need help, it turns into a debate far too frequently. When I told you your arguments were nothing new to me, I wasn't trying to say that I know everything. Rather, I was trying to get the point across that your position is surprisingly mainstream, so much so that people who agree with you (though, I admit, not necessarily you; it's possible that you interpreted this question differently from how I did, and that your boundaries are more appropriate than I realised) make the lives of people with ADHD more difficult. Just about every person with ADHD has already heard your voice on this issue from one mouth or another, though not your specific story. So I suppose the question is, how often do you say it? If a friend or acquaintance mentions having ADHD, do you question them? Do you try to convince them otherwise?
I haven't really told my story here. If you'd like to hear, I might tell it. I haven't decided yet.