Familes Say NO to
Chemically Induced Compliance

Time for the schools to quit playing doctor

When my son was in first grade his teacher became convinced that he had ADD. She said after three days of school that he needed to be failed. We spent our money trying to get answers, all test came out inconclusive. But to satisfy the teacher his doctor put him on a low dosage of Ritilin. He took it only at school and not at home. she still managed to fail him, and I decided that to get him caught up I would leave my job to tutor him.

By the time he was in the 4th grade he was convinced that Ritilin was what made him smart. The minute his medicine ran low he went all to pieces. I was noticing that he could perform the work at home without the medicine, so I decided to experiment. I had some sugar tablets that looked alot like his medicine, so I put them in his bottle and sent them to school for 6 weeks. His grades stayed at A's and B's.

After six weeks I didn't send any more medicine. I was summons to the school by the counseler. I asked her how he had performed over the last 6 weeks and she said fine but that he needed the medication. I told her that it had been sugar pills for the last six weeks. She was a little upset, but they never hounded me again about the medicine. My son was amazed that he had performed so well without his smart pills.

4 years have past and he is still making A's and B's in regular classes. Some kids just need extra study time at home and the schools to quit playing doctor.
Connie

A principal prescribes Ritalin for a Three Year Old

When my son was three years old we entered him into preschool with the highest hopes. At that time, when I looked at my child I saw a vibrant, giggling, mischief maker who was full of life, but that's not what the school saw. It took three months before I was called into a counseling session with the school's principal and informed that my son had ADD. The principal's credentials? She had three children of her own with ADD. I believed every word of it and was devastated. I was told that he had to have a mental health evaluation and then be put on Ritalin. I obediently went in for the paperwork and filled it out then gave the school their copy because it was required for the child's teacher to fill out some forms. When I went back a few days later to pick up the forms I found that they were not filled out by the teacher, but by the principal. I read her evaluation and she had put on a scale of 1 to 5 for violence, my son was a 5. I jumped out of the car and ran to my son's classroom to confront the teacher.

I asked her, "Is my son violent in the class and, if so, why wasn't I informed?"

The teacher was completely confused and said, "We've never had a problem with him."

I asked her catagorically if he had ever hit, kicked, bit, head butted or otherwise harmed another child in anger and she answered no to all of them. I then asked her if she thought my son was ADD and she was completely baffled. She said that he was "a lively little boy and he tries very hard to be cooperative. He not hard to get along with at all and doesn't disrupt the class anymore than any other healthy child."

I thanked her and headed to the front office to pick up my son's disenrollment paperwork. If it hadn't been for the blatant bias on the part of the principal I would have drugged my three year old and (I believe) permanently hampered his development.

I now homeschool him (he is now 6) and I have taught him to read and brought him a year ahead of his peers in math with very little stress on my part.

The problem isn't the children. The problem is that we have an anti-child school system that expects 5 year olds to have the impulse control and maturity of adults. Every Tom Sawyer is seen as "out of control" and drugged instead of being given room to run between lessons.

Masking a problem with psychoactives

My son was diagnosed with ADD in jr. high. The school psychologist recommended Ritalin. After a doctor's evaluation and a Connor's Report it was confirmed he had ADD. He was placed on Ritalin. He did improve on his classroom performance but his grades didn't improve that much. Soon he became more disruptive and "antsy". He had problems feeling hungry, sleeping, and resting. He seemed to be cranky all the time. Real short tempered and mad at himself. He told me he didn't want to take the medication, which they disperse at school for him, because it made him feel weird and out of control. He developed the shakes and a tic of constantly clearing his throat and was always thirsty. He also started to withdraw at home and became depressed. Once a good athlete, his interest in sports diminished.

I took him back to the doctor because of his depression and the doctor decided he was NOT hyperactive but HYPO, meaning lethargic. He placed him on Impremine. He became more lethargic and depressed and had difficulty urinating. I became fully engulfed in ADD and read everything available. I also attended seminars and classes on the subject and joined groups. We decided to take him off the medication and go with behavior modification and positive reinforcement.

The information I found out was that he had a learning disability not ADD. I took him to a neurologist and another psychologist. He was finally tested for learning disabilities and found out he had input/output communication deficit. Once we were able to identify what his difficulty was the ADD did not seem to be affecting him. The test and an IEP was finally established. This was in his sophomore year of high school. From the eighth grade to then he had gotten so far behind in school he couldn't catch up. The fight with the school keeping his IEP program intact was a battle zone. His jr. year of high school he ended up getting hooked on speed. The horrible personalities of a person on speed were now his much the same traits he had when on Ritalin. That is what made me think he was doing drugs.

School became a disaster and he dropped out. My biggest problem is the school pushes this problem on to our children but will not be responsible for their assessments. They don't follow throw on the 504 or IEP plans that they have and the teachers EXPECT a "normal" child because of the medications they are on. Most of these children have real learning disabilities and since the schools don't want to pay for a true full evaluation they are labeled as ADD or ADHD and slip through the cracks.

I have personal know 20 children with ADD/ADHD watched them grow up over the past 8 years and enter into high school. Of those 20 children, 5 of those children graduated from high school, 2 of those 5 received an amended diploma. 15 dropped out of school and 10 of those experimented with drugs and of the 10, 3 of them are in prison. These children all went to the best high school in the district and come from middle to high income families. All the parents did everything they could think of to have their children succeed. All children were on some form of medication and usually at least 2.

Drugs for a six year old

I fought with my ex-wife after our divorce about placing our son on the medication. It appears that my son was labeled ADHD by his scool and my ex-wife went whole hog into their program of analysis. Independent (?) counselors were consulted and my ex-wife and I were asked to fill out information sheets. She had been totally immersed by my sons teachers into believing this bull and correspondingly, she marked all of the questions on the complete opposite spectrum from me.

Well, he was prescribed medication, against my best wishes, and I watched him like a hawk. I was not told the medication, or the quantity. When my family reunion arrived, I told my ex-wife that I would not cross a state line with only a small baggie of pills and I needed the prescription bottle. When she gave it to me, I researched the net and found out that is was strictly amphetimines. When I confronted my ex-wife with this information, she REFUSED to even find out about it herself. Well, needless to say, noone is going to give my son black mollies, christmas trees, blue and clears...whatever you want to call them, or any other speed. I griped and complained and brought more internet articles. She finally gave in after I told her that I had stopped giving the medicine to my son. When asked why she ultimately stopped giving it to him, she stated that since I had stopped, it broke the effectiveness of the medication.

In asked the same questions you raised, if it is chemical, what medical tests are there to show it....long term studies, none....

Oh, by the way, my son was only six years old when they tried that....what will they try next

Now she can't stop

My wife has been changed into a completely different person by her ADD-expert doctor, and what I call an addiction to Zyprexa (an antipsychotic prescribed to a non-psychotic person as an antidepressant, why that doesn't raise any red flags for anyone is, to me, incomprehensible) and Cylert (for ADD).

I am desparate to get her off these drugs, so she can turn back into a human. I run into brick walls everywhere I turn, even doctors telling me they "don't know" how to get her off the drugs. I think 10 seconds with her pill bottles and a toilet should be sufficient, and I get closer to that every day.

I'm going to keep trying through some more civilized channels first, and when they have been exhausted I suppose I will raise all the hell I can, divorce her and dismiss her to live her life in a permanent drug daze.

I would be very very interested in reading you accounts of how families fought to keep their children off drugs.

I can verify much of what you say in your article. I cannot understand how doctors can be so blind to it, except when I think of my wife as an addict, and her doctors as pushers; then it makes sense.

Your articles are offering insight and help in an area where it is desperately needed and lacking, please keep it up and DON'T BACK DOWN.

Prescription for paranoia

I take Zoloft occasionally when I'm stressed out and out of sorts. I try not to take it on a regular basis because I did for a year and felt my brain cells dying.

Regarding Luvox, I took that ONCE, and that was the last time, by prescription. I ended up admitting myself to Emergency. I tripped out on it and called a friend to come over but he couldn't because my girlfriend wasn't home from work yet and he was putting the kids to bed, so I called a cab. I was paranoid beyond belief, and was afraid I was going to do something terrible but I wasn't sure what. Even Prozac caused me to have some kind of negative reaction in the form of anxiety and paranoia.

I can see possibly why Eric Harris did what he did and became the kind of child he was. Children don't know, to an extent, what is causing them harm and doing them good, particularly medication, and if they say anything to their parents, their parents probably tell them to stop complaining because it's good for them. They don't really see inside these kids heads. Or maybe he liked what it made him into.

And doctors today certainly don't have the time to monitor their patients to the extent they should be, nor do the parents for that matter.

Don't give a child Prozac, Luvox, or even Zoloft. Give them a hug, a hand and an ear instead. They're our future and future caregivers. Why are we giving kids this stuff in the first place? Microwave dinners and fast food restaurants? Food or food-additive allergies? Stressful homes? Or has it become the norm to just say 'take a pill, I can't deal with you'?

Victim no more

a little background, i started therapy at the age of 6, at 11 i was hospitalized for 6 months followed by a year and a half of "day treatment" all in the name of depression....strangely enough when my moms insurance ran out i was "healed" but there were no indications to prove so, if any thing it was the opposite, my studies only got worse through out the years between that and my reluctance to accept authorities rule just becaues "they said so" or what ever reason they thought the deserved respect even though they did no actions to prove they deserved it were my only symptoms that there was a problem. after my second freshman year a dr. prescribed ritilin for me, and when i started school the next year my grades went from d's and f's to straight A's, i thought ritilin was the wonder drug, but once again i stopped taking it when the insurance did when i graduated,

just a few years later i had a son that showed signs of ADD and ADHD as soon as six months, and have been even more apparent in the past 2 years, all along the way i couldn't wait till he was old enough to "drug up" but in light of yours and others writing, along with an honist account of my "ritilin days" i can no longer allow my self to accept ritilin or any other drug as an option any more, the problem is i dont know who else to deal with it with out taking the free range of thought from him......

i dont know, the point is were going to say no to drugs for our child

eugene