ADD ADHD Treatment

Recently there have been a lot of reports about a new form of drug abuse involving ADHD medications.  Most of us are aware that children and teens use all sorts of prescription medications to get high.  However, there is a new breed of ADHD drug abuser.  These new drug abusers are not kids who are abusing drugs to have fun.  These people are students and professionals who use these prescription drugs to enhance their intellectual and job performance.

There was a recent article in Wired magazine  that reported twenty five percent of their readership used prescription medication such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta to enhance their intellectual performance.  This means that a large number of people who work in cutting edge areas of science and technology are using stimulant medications to get an intellectual edge. 

A similar article in Science Daily  reported that 35% of college students and 10% of high school students used stimulants to get them through finals and other stressful times. 

We have known for a long time that drugs like Ritalin and Concerta are effective in people who do not have ADHD.  They increase awareness and improve mental clarity in normal people as well as help those who have ADHD function in a more normal fashion.  For this reason, with the increase in the level of competition and stress in the academic and scientific world, peek performers are using these medications in order to give them an edge and to make their jobs a bit easier.

These new white collar drug abusers have made a lot of people very upset.  A number people with ADHD take personal offense.  They feel this new form of drug abuse endangers them.  They are concerned that this type of abuse places a stigma on them. 

Many adults and teens with ADHD feel they have to hide the fact that they use medications so that they won’t be seen as a “drug abuser”.   One high school student commented that she has to hide the fact that she takes Ritalin for ADHD so that her peers won’t hit on her to sell them her medication. 

Most of the comments I read strongly condemned the use of these drugs for performance enhancement.  They felt the people using these drugs were foolish or stupid or short sighted.  However, the people who use these drugs in order to do a better job in their business, in their research, or in their studies do not feel this way.  These individuals view prescription medications as a way to enhance the quality of their professional lives.

In my comments, I did not condemn this type of use of stimulant medications.  I have a great deal of trouble denouncing those who use medication for performance enhancement when I understand the reason behind this course of action so clearly.  I am not condoning this form of drug abuse either.  I view this need that individuals feel to utilize drugs in order to be competitive more as a result of the degree of stress our society places on the individual to perform, than it is a reflection of their own personal failing.

My full comments are posted in an earlier blog post.

One thing that I do not understand, however, is how this form of drug abuse has anything to do with people who take these medications for ADHD.  Except for the high school student who pointed out that she is in danger of becoming labeled as a drug source, I didn’t see why what is going on with the students and faculty of Harvard or MIT or the tech industry has anything to do with ADHD children and adults who use these medications appropriately.  Yet most of the really strong comments were made by individuals who felt personally threatened.

How do you feel about students and professionals using prescription medications in order to get a head academically or professionally?

Do you feel that abuse of ADHD medication affects you or your ADHD child in any way?

Does it add to the stigma of using these medications?   

Do you feel these abusers are in the same category as cocaine and heroin abusers?

Are you afraid this type of abuse will cause some type of crack down, making these drugs less available for those who really need them?

Please leave a comment below and let me know how you feel about this topic.

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I just saw a post on Dr. Kenny Handelman’s ADHD Blog at http://www.addadhdblog.com/brain-steroids.

He wrote about an interesting form of ADHD medication abuse. There was an article at http://www.wired.com/  that discussed how many scientists and academicians are using ADHD drugs for intellectual performance enhancement. 

The general feel at the blog was one of condemnation.  I, however, looked at it from a somewhat different perspective. I don’t know if Dr. Kenny will approve my post, so for your benefit, I decided to post my comment here, also.

Here is my comment:

I agree with you that anyone who is taking these meds for performance enhancement will not be reading this blog post. But not because they are too stupid. They don’t have the time.

We are living in a world of intense competition. This is true in the sports world. It is true in the business world. And it is even more true in the academic and scientific world.

On the lowest level, intellectual performance in the “publish or perish” academic world will determine salaries and career paths. There may be hundreds of extremely qualified candidates for a handful of tenure track positions that open up each year.

So, very literally, getting an extra thirty minutes or an hour a day of high level intellectual functioning may be the difference between having a career in an area you have invested the past 10 to 20 years and needing to fill out applications to law school. I know people who were in this position, both in universities and in law practices. And strong coffee does not give you that level of function.

That is in the academic world.

The research science and technology world is worse. We all know and understand how athletes take drugs to enhance performance (though maybe we don’t approve of it). The scientific world is much more brutal. .

In science and technology you are either first or you are not. There is only one Nobel Prize. There are no silver or bronze metals. The one who gets to the patent office first, gets the patent. The guy who shows up the next day may have worked twice as hard, but he walks away with nothing.

In addition to that, in every cutting edge field of science and technology, the amount of information being uncovered on a daily basis is too much for even the experts to master. In a world where all knowledge is interconnected, having the time to grasp an extra 5% may give the scientist the ability to make that breakthrough.

In that environment, taking brain enhancing drugs makes a difference. It enhances productivity, it enhances performance and it can shape lives and careers.

I am not condoning or condemning the use of drugs for intellectual performance enhancement. I am just glad that in my part of the world, at least for now, having to make such a choice is not necessary.

Warmly,

Anthony Kane, MD

http://addadhdadvances.com
http://ccparenting.com

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I am not anti-medication.

I am also not pro-alternative medicine, at least not blindly.

When parents choose not to treat their child’s ADHD many times they choose to go the alternative medicine route. This is almost always a mistake.

It is not that alternative treatments don’t work. When you get How to Help the Child You Love I will show you thirty five different treatments that do work. However, just almost none of them are being sold as a treatment for ADHD.

So what is being sold today? A lot of things that don’t work.

These treatments usually take every vitamin, mineral, amino acid, or fatty acid that have ever been suggested to help with ADHD and put them together in one convenient ineffective pill.

These companies have lots of research to back up the fact that the ingredients in their pill work.

And guess what, they are right. But they only work in the proper dosage. If you were to give your child the effective dosage of each of these items he would need to take between 20-40 pills a day.

All that stuff in the right amount just will not fit into a few tablets.

So when you spend your money on these worthless treatments the best you can expect is that nothing will happen.

So what else can happen?

Let’s discuss how an alternative treatment comes into being.

Many times someone who is respected in the medical field has a theory that a certain treatment might work. If this treatment is something that is not regulated, then some company works quickly to make it available to you.

This company doesn’t research the safety of their product nor do they examine the follow up research on the treatment.

What almost always happens is that research proves that the treatment does not work. Since these products aren’t regulated there is nothing stopping the company from selling them, as long as they can still find buyers.

However, occasionally it is found that not only does the treatment not work, but also it is dangerous to take, particularly for children. Again since there is no regulation, there is nothing stopping the company from continuing to sell this treatment.

What that means is that there are a lots of popular ADHD treatments out there that don’t work and that may even be dangerous for your child.

In How to Help the Child You Love I discuss with you in detail what treatments are safe for your child and which treatments you should stay away from.

If you would like to treat you child’s ADHD without using drugs, I strongly believe that you can be successful.  However, you have to be careful.  You, or whoever you are relying upon, need to ignore the claims and the personal success accounts and should look at the research.   

If you don’t you will just be guessing. You will almost certainly guess wrong, and what you chose may hurt your child more than drugs ever would.

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If you are concerned or worried about treating your ADD ADHD child with drugs, you are not alone.
If you treat your ADD ADHD child with drugs and your child can’t fall asleep at night, you are not alone.
If your ADD ADHD child is losing weight, you are not alone.
If the drugs your child takes upsets his stomach, you are not alone.
If your child has terrible side effects from medications, you are not alone.
If you decided to treat with drugs and your ADD ADHD child is doing great, you are not alone, also. But you are pretty lucky and there is no guarantee that it will last.

Even if you are happy with your child’s progress while he is on medication, there are a number of mistakes and misconceptions that parents have and you should know.

Myth 1: Medication treats ADHD

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against medication for children with ADHD. I have used it with my own children and I have recommended its use in other children. I just want you to realize what everyone in the medical profession knows and what your doctor may or may not have shared with you when you discussed the possibility of giving medication to your child.

Medication does not solve the problem. No one with ADHD was ever cured by taking medication. What drugs do is to make it easier for your child to get through his day. It helps to settle him so that he can sit in school quietly and concentrate on learning material.

Myth 2: Your child will grow out of ADHD

It could be your child will grow out of ADHD. Some children do. It used to be that it was thought that 50% of children out grow ADHD. That is because as your child gets older and matures, the symptoms change. As our understanding of what ADHD looks like in an adult becomes more refined, it appears that less and less children outgrow the problem.

The actual percentage of children who outgrow ADHD is still unclear. A lot depends upon how you define adult ADHD, and we have no universally accepted criteria for this. However, everyone agrees that if you were planning on your child someday growing out of ADHD, you had better change your plans.

Myth 3: If my child was diagnosed with ADHD, it means that he has ADHD

This is the mistake that almost every parent and almost every doctor makes. Even if your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, it does not mean that he has ADHD.

Why?

Because, ADHD is a very complicated and difficult diagnosis to make.

Here is how the diagnosis of ADHD should work:

To make the diagnosis of ADHD properly, you need an evaluation by four or five different types of specialists who observe your child over many hours, evaluate him medically, speak with his teachers, test his learning aptitude and communication skills, etc. This usually takes weeks to complete. Then when the evaluation is over, the team of specialists gets together and shares their results.

If after discussing your child and analyzing the medical, psychological, academic, and behavioral information they have gathered, they cannot find any other explanation, then they conclude that since they can’t figure out what else it could be, your child probably has ADHD.

That means that even when your child is evaluated properly, the diagnosis of ADHD is a ‘good guess’ diagnosis.

So what if your child didn’t receive a thorough evaluation by a group of specialists? What if, like most parents you brought your child to his pediatrician, told him that he was out of control, and walked out 5 minutes later with a prescription for Ritalin and a diagnosis of ADHD?

If when a team of highly trained experts evaluate your child for many hours over the course of many days and their diagnosis of ADHD is only ‘a good guess’, then what is it when your pediatrician does it in his office after five minutes?

A ‘bad guess’?

FACT: There are no less than 50 different conditions that mimic ADHD

I spent an entire year researching 203 medical books, articles, and research papers to find what conditions mimic ADHD and how to treat them. Based upon what I found, I created the program How to Help the Child You Love.

And guess what else-

Unlike ADHD, many of these fifty conditions are curable. That means that if you identify and treat these causes, your child will be better. He’ll be a normal child like everybody else.

What happens if your child has one of these conditions and you don’t find out?

Well, the best thing that can happen is that you will give him drugs for ADHD and they won’t work. Eventually someone will realize that your child is not responding to the treatment properly and he will re-guess the diagnosis. Maybe this time he will get it right.

What usually happens is that your child gets a little better. Not enough to help him function properly, but enough to convince everyone that you are on the right track. Then your child will spend the rest of his childhood and adolescence going from medication to medication, treatment to treatment trying to find the right balance. Eventually he will be listed as one of those ADHD treatment failures.

You will be told, “This is the best we can do,” and your child will go through his life being seen as a bit abnormal.

It is quite possible that your child may have some condition other than ADHD that is easily treatable, but that is probably being ignored or missed.

It is quite possible that your child was misdiagnosed and is not receiving the proper medical treatment.

And if you do find out that your child has something else going on other than ADHD, he could be better in as little as four days!

This is what I was able to accomplish with my own child and I describe what I did and what you should do in How to Help the Child You Love.

The message for you is to understand that all too often children are given the label of ADHD when really they have something else going on that is much easier to treat.  You, the parent, must be aware of the other possibilities and be ready to question your doctor when your child gets less than optimum results.

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