Right Under Your Nose

Right Under Your Nose

English Composition 103

I would like to take you on a journey, a slice of one family's past and the worst decision they ever made. January fifteenth 1994 was a red-letter day for this family. The parents involved thought they had stumbled upon the answer to their prayers. Their unruly, impulsive, problem child was diagnosed with what doctors considered to be a treatable disease. The doctors insisted that their fourteen year old son needed to take amphetamines daily to help focus his mind. The funny thing is that doctors never use the word amphetamine when talking to parents in this situation. They prefer to say stimulant or medication to avoid shock from parents. What parent would willingly give their child an amphetamine? This was the beginning of the end. Within no time at all there was a difference in the boy. The difference seemed positive in the beginning. In less than a month the boy discovered that the more medication he took the better he felt about life. How could the boy know that he was very quickly developing the nastiest addiction of his life? It only took six months until the young man discovered that crushing and snorting the tablets like cocaine was over ten times more effective. At this point the young man has realized what he is doing and can no longer control it. He actually discovered that snorting it worked better, as noted from a newspaper article depicting a social problem with this medication.

At age fifteen he now had crew of addicts around him. Normal people just didn't seem interesting anymore as they probably would look down upon his habit. He was just taking his own prescription for the first nine months, but those days were gone. Between ages fifteen and sixteen he had at least seven people who willingly sold their daily doses to him for reasonable prices. His parents provided him money for food everyday, and since he could no longer even conceive eating it seemed obvious to spend the money on speed everyday. For him this seemed like a rational decision. By seventeen nothing else mattered and his life was completely controlled by amphetamines and their cruel games of addiction. He had now experienced truly profound side-effects and antisocial, violent behavior. His amphetamine addiction had spawned an alcohol addiction on as a means to provide him with sleep every once and a while. This child became a walking drug. Between ages seventeen and twenty-two this child had amphetamines in his blood every day of his life with no exceptions. One day he noticed that his pulse was not only accelerated. His heart was skipping beats on regular basis. He now realized he was killing himself and tried to stop. He was finally successful at age twenty-four when he moved away from everyone he knew including his family. His new life does not require speed, but he feels he was robbed of the normal childhood he could have had. His life is going well now and he has fixed the wounds of the past in most cases. At least his family forgave him.

The young man in my story is me. I battled an addiction I should have never had which easily could have been prevented. In many ways I was an assailant as well as a victim. My views on this subject are simple. The overmedication and misdiagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder can lead to a seriously debilitating addiction and in many cases death. A child with A.D.D. can learn much more productive ways to deal with their dilemma without prescriptions for dangerous amphetamines.

To understand how this debilitating addiction can surface we must first look at how the diagnosis for Attention Deficit Disorder is made. Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Pediatricians, and Neurologists can all make a diagnosis for the disorder, yet only three can actually prescribe medication (Matthews 13). A Psychologist can diagnose the disorder leaving the child with an open opportunity to obtain a prescription for medication without consultation by the other three types of doctors. All the parents have to do is show that a diagnosis has been made and another doctor will write a prescription.

A.D.D. has three universal symptoms for initial diagnosis which are impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattention (Matthews 5). Some doctors will base a diagnosis primarily on the onset of these three symptoms without addressing more discriminating criteria. Doctors have an ethical duty to their patients to use proper diagnostic information in make their decisions. Doctors are supposed to use the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to make an accurate diagnosis (Weiten 565). The DSM-IV utilizes five major categories that address the importance of patient history, environment, personality, genetics, addiction susceptibility, other syndromes, and severity levels of disorders. The DSM-IV is particularly important when you realize that all of the symptoms of A.D.D. could point to anxiety and mood disorders as well as learning disabilities (Matthews 43). Without regulations pertaining to the proper usage of this information the diagnosis of this disorder is flawed.

The problem is that the doctor has ethical guidelines but no actual regulations to follow when diagnosing the disorder. Some doctors have been known to diagnose A.D.D. in children from just seeing them in the waiting room at their office. One doctor in particular diagnoses A.D.D. based on whether a child is fidgety while they wait (Breggin 144). This is appalling to me. Couldn't the child just be nervous to see the doctor? Until things change this frivolous type of diagnosis will continue.

Once the diagnosis is made the very next step is medication. It is very rare for a doctor to try any alternative routes for treatment as prescription amphetamines are the standard for this disorder. All medications prescribed for A.D.D. are schedule II controlled substances ("Methylphenidate; The Use and Misuse of Ritalin). The most common is Ritalin being closely followed by Adderal and Dexidrine (Breggin 6). It is commonly disputed that these drugs are not addictive by neurologists, pediatricians, and family practitioners (Baughman, "The Case against Diagnosis and Treatment of A.D.H.D. and Related Disorders and their Treatment with Stimulants"). Our governments own DEA defines schedule II controlled substances as highly addictive (Baughman, "The Case against Diagnosis and Treatment of A.D.H.D. and Related Disorders and their Treatment with Stimulants"). Does it really seem like a good idea to prescribe our precious children with highly addictive amphetamines? That is the last thing a knowledgeable parent would want for their child. The abuse potential of these drugs has been recognized for years by doctors and government officials