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"Helping you to help your ADD ADHD child"by Anthony Kane, MD | ||
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| ADD ADHD and Drug Abuse
For an website send an email to: dustoffhtml@addadhdadvances.com Dust Off
The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs. I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't. I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them. On February 28, I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer. On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning, Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead. I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust Off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM. I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called "dusting." A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said no. Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain and to your heart. Kyle was right...it can't hurt you. It kills you! The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. It's not an overdose It's Russian roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not, you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why it's more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known. It's easy to say, "Hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want." But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do, but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them. After Kyle died another story came out. A probation officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a DARE or PLUS program there. So rather than tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house. We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new, and some "professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus.
It is well known that children with ADHD have a higher rate of drug abuse that other children. Many misinformed but well meaning people attribute this to the fact that ADHD children get used to taking drugs like Ritalin, and it is an easy step to go on from there. These people are wrong. It is true that ADHD children have a higher rate of drug abuse. However, this is only if the children go untreated for their ADHD. Children who have their ADHD addressed properly are not more likely to abuse drugs in the future. That means that if your child has ADHD, then it is imperative that you make every effort to find an effective treatment plan for your child. Here is another important point concerning those children who seem to be going in a bad direction. The one thing that prevents such a child from getting involved in things that are extremely risky is a good relationship with his parents. That means when things get really dangerous, the children who have maintained good relationship with their parents are the ones who hold back. These children are also the ones who view their current behavior as simply a lapse, and later function normally as older teenagers and young adults. I urge you to make sure that your child is the one with the good relationship. If your child is still young, you should make every effort to work on building a warm loving relationship with your child. You can use our program, How to Improve Your Child's Behavior or you can use some other program. Just don't let go and hope things will work out themselves. The risk is far too great. If your child is already older, it is not too late. I am currently working on a program designed to help you with your teenager. What I am finding in my research is that it is far easier to repair even the worst relationship with your teenager than I originally thought. I hope to have this program out in the next few months, so please be patient. If you want more information on ways that you can teach even the most difficult child to obey you, please see our If you would like help with ADD ADHD medication and treatment please see our Anthony Kane, MD ADD ADHD Advances |
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