By Selwyn Duke

Two articles have been posted in the news section about how ADHD drugs stunt growth and provide no long-term benefit.  I have long understood the folly of medicating kids for what is essentially bad behavior and have, in general, been opposed to the use of all mood-altering drugs.

What some of you may not realize is that I will probably lose some readers by speaking out on this issue.  Parents who have allowed their children to take these medications often react with anger when you question the drugs’ efficacy and safety.  This is no doubt for two reasons: First, to question this is to question their parenting and, in their minds, is to imply that their children’s plight is their own handiwork.  After all, if their child’s misbehavior is the result of a "disease," what could they possibly have done about it?  If it is not, however . . . you can finish the sentence.  Second, no one wants to believe that a remedy he has chosen for his child, something on which he has staked his child’s health and future, could actually be destructive.  No one wants to believe that he has bet on the wrong horse with respect to his child’s well-being.  In an attempt — probably a fruitless one — to assuage these feelings, I can only tell you that my goal isn’t to condemn, but enlighten.

I want to tell you a story.  There once was a man who believed that a certain medication was the greatest cure for depression that had ever existed.  This was a learned man, so his opinion carried much weight.  And he practiced what he preached, using the medication himself to a point where, alas, he became dependent upon it.  He eventually kicked his habit, but not before having to sojourn at a European rehabilitation center to recover.

What was the medication?  Cocaine.  Who was the man?  Sigmund Freud.

We can look back on this now and shake our heads.  "How could people have taken a hard drug?" some may say.  Remember, though, that hindsight is always 20/20, and a century ago cocaine wasn’t "coke" or "blow"; it was Prozac or Zoloft . . . or Ritalin. 

Yes, it was a drug that made people feel better, made them happier — and it was legal . . . .  Yes, legal.

My point is that our conception of what constitutes a legitimate medication is a funny thing.  A drug is on one side of the law and it’s fine, and if you take it you’re a patient; it’s on the other and it’s poison, and if you take it you’re a user.  If a drug crosses that line in the right direction, it’s prescribed as a medication; if it crosses over to the dark side, it’s proscribed as a destroyer of souls.

Obviously, legality doesn’t determine efficacy or healthfulness any more than it does morality.  Oh, I might mention that Ritalin has been illegal in Sweden since 1971.

One of these days I intend to write a full-length piece on ADD and its cousins; here, though, I’ll just make a few more points. 

I used to work with children, and sometimes I’d have those who had been "diagnosed" with these "conditions."  They would usually bounce off the walls and wreak havoc, but not with me.  Why? Because I would discipline and punish them effectively, use the correct words, and make it clear that I knew they could control their behavior.  I was sometimes the only adult in their lives who sent them a clear message that I was going to hold them — not some "disease" — responsible for their actions.

To identify the problem accurately, I’ll quote John Rosemond, one of those rare good psychologists.  He made the point that just as a civilization can embrace a dysfunctional political paradigm so can it embrace a dysfunctional parenting paradigm.  Said he (I’m paraphrasing), "Years ago parents viewed misbehavior as a moral problem; the problem nowadays is that they view it as a psychological problem."

A wise man indeed.  I can’t really do this issue justice here, but suffice it to say that a malignant permissiveness has taken hold in the West.  Couple our moral breakdown, our relativism, our reluctance to "impose values" on children and influence them the way our forefathers did with the plenitude of negative elements youth are bombarded with and that will influence them, and you have a recipe for anarchic behavior.

Getting back to drugs, I know that I won’t win many friends with this commentary.  When a doctor gives a person a pill that makes his child behave better almost immediately, it’s an easy sell.  A tough sell is making people understand that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 

Money-hungry pharmaceutical companies and physicians who love being able to offer immediate results ("Hey, doc, you’re a life-saver!" is very seductive.  Of course, they have a financial motive as well) are all too happy to prescribe today’s legal cocaine and use Western children as guinea pigs.  But what do we really know about the long-term effects? 

I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but I think a strap sounds far more compassionate.