After receiving an email from my former roommate "E" - I can't help but feeling extreme frustration over the "
Generation Rx" and what I foresee as a future crisis of a scale that truly scares me.
"E" has lived with me 5 times in her life; first at age 12, and the last time when she was age 30. She's lived with me twice since her daughter was born and her daughter and I are very close. She was put on
Ritalin for
ADHD at age 5. After endless discussions with me on this topic "E" tried to take her daughter off Ritalin, the
teacher refused to have her in class unless she was drugged.
I can't
begin to explain how strongly I feel about this topic.
I was raised in the early 70's - in those days if you acted up in school you most likely would get a good
spanking when you got home. The majority of kids did
not need to be drugged to behave; they
were able to control themselves and their behavior the majority of the time because of the deterrent of Daddy's belt or Momma's
wooden spoon. So nobody can tell me that the
only way that 1 in 10 of our
children are capable of behaving is through being drugged.
There are approximately
8 million children in the
USA currently on Ritalin - at
$60 dollars per child per month for this drug - does
anyone doubt the incentive behind this current trend? Schools receive
$400 in federal funds annually for each of the 7+ million
ADHD children in their schools. Does
anyone doubt the reasons why our
lawmakers and the
political powers that be have NOT put a stop to this? There are
billions of dollars in the kitty to encourage the drugging of
Generation Rx. But it's a
travesty and needs to be stopped.
I can only imagine the ramifications of this 10 or 15 years from now as these children many as young as 2 years old have NOT learned how to deal with and control their
emotions and
behaviors through normal ways my generation and all the generations before have had to do. They are not learning the skills they need to learn, they are being drugged so they will behave and learn their 3 R's better. But there is so much more to
childhood then the 3 R's.
The U.S.A produces and uses 90% of the worlds Ritalin. What does this tell you? I know what it tells
me - it's not about the children, it's about the $$. The life of most of the 1 in 10 children currently on Ritalin in the U.S.A can not be that much different than the life of, say, a child in Toronto and yet we use
90% of the worlds Ritalin?
We went from a few hundred thousand children on Ritalin 10 years ago to several
million now - do you honestly believe it's because of the children? I don't - not for a second.
I think because
parent's rights to raise
their children in the way
they best see fit has been taken away by
Big Brother - the increase in children acting up in school is DIRECTLY linked to that. Trust me, I do
not condone
child abuse - and that would include the abuse of the new alternative to spanking; which is now drugging them with a mind altering
addictive drug that prevents them from learning how to control their own behavior.
I had considered doing a WU on this topic, but there's a
repost here from a
Dr David Keirsey that says most I'd planned to say re: the
statistics and
facts on this. So instead I'm day logging my frustrations and would like to focus on WHY there's not enough being done to put a stop to this.
I believe it's because of the "I'm just one person what can *I* do
syndrome" - there are so many people who feel as I do on this issue, but what can they do? What can be done about this and can it be done fast enough? I don't believe so, I think the BILLIONS of dollars being made off this drugging of Generation Rx will keep anything from being done till it's to late for most of the 10+ million children in the U.S. who 10 years from now will be facing the legacy of the choices being made (at their expense) today.
Times have changed - our children at age 8 have seen and dealt with more then most of us had by age 16. There are very very good reasons why our children today (IF it's true) have behavior issues - and finding out those reasons and ways to work with them now is the key. It's called
Evolution, and WE with our computers and technology have accelerated evolution exponentially.
Drugging evolution out of children is not the answer, finding ways to
adapt to the evolution without drugs is.
Lets stop drugging them and start to find
new ways to handle their behavior in the
society we have given them birth into.
When I was 8 years old the biggest worry of my day was the
school bully picking on me. Today 8 year olds are faced with most the stresses adults are faced with and have yet to learn how to deal with their feelings and emotions on these. And now they never will.
I remember clearly in
grade school the boys who acted up. None of them were drugged, and most turned out to be great adults. One of the worst "
trouble makers" in school is the sheriff in my home town now, and "Mr. Trouble" himself is an
elected official there.
I DO believe there are many children who truly do have ADHD and some cases where a child truly does need to be drugged - probably about as many as truly needed it 10 years ago, no more no less. However those drugs should be used IN conjunction with alot of time and care on the part of the one giving them the drug. To help them learn to develop in such a way that they can start decreasing
dosage. Honestly and unfortunately I don't see that very often.
The bottom line here - Big Brother, and the drug companies are making billions at the expense of this generation and I personally have no doubt that we will all pay for it, the light at the end of the tunnel is the flame on a torch lit by the drug companies that we sit back and watch burn...
We somehow need to find a way to get something DONE about this now. NOT 10 years from now when we realize what the
Darwinism of the Generation Rx'rs will cost us all.
Side note - the fact that most of the 'school shooters' were on Ritalin or another alternative to that drug is very telling. T. J. Solomon, Shawn Cooper, Eric Harris, Kip Kinkel, Rod Mathews, Barry Loukaitis, Jeremy Strohmeyer are just a few of the examples of how well children learn to cope using Ritalin and other legal mind altering drugs.
I hate to put material that will one day be dated in a daylog but I'll include this here and delete it someday when it's irrelavant.
As little as
I think we can do to fight this multi-billion dollar
drug pushing conspiracy - can it hurt to try?
If you agree with my points here, and you'd like to be heard on this go here and sign the
petition:
http://www.americanpolicy.org/petition-stopritalin1.htm
See Also:
Natural remedies for ADHD
Treatment options for Attention Deficit Disorder
Amphetamine addiction as a cure for ADHD