Kids Need More Coffee and Less Ritalin

16.89K

Hamilton Nolan

08/09/13 11:21AM

Filed to: health

Kids these days are straight up zooted and bouncing off the emergency room walls, thanks to copious supplies of Adderrall and Ritalin and all the other ADHD drugs that they got from you. (They learned it by watching you, okay?) If we'd simply been giving our kids Vivarin this whole time, none of this would have happened.

Between 2005 and 2011, the number of emergency room visits by 18-34-year-olds due to prescription and non-prescription stimulant overdoses almost quadrupled, from 5,600 to nearly 23,000. The majority were due to ADHD drugs, often combined with booze. Who the hell is overdosing on snorted Adderrall and Popov vodka, for chrissake?

The kids.

The kids, to whom you gave bottle after bottle of powerful prescription stimulant, in the fantasy expectation that they would take these powerful drugs according to the directions on the label. The kids, who you hoped to pacify pharmaceutically. The kids, who you tried to sap of youthful free-form energy by giving them a pill that would channel that energy directly into schoolwork and chores and accomplishments, rather into writing on walls and breaking things and asking, "Daddy, what is pornography? PORNOGRAPHHHHHYYYYYYYY!!!!" The kids, who were too loud. So loud that you made a deal with the devil— the devil called Adderrall, and Ritalin, and Vyvanse, bargaining that you could just keep them from wilding out, and maybe the side effects of access to these powerful stimulants would not come back to bite us all on the ass. Hoping that they would not crush them up and snort them and guzzle booze and end up in the emergency room one night. Well, they did. I hope it was worth it.

Should have just tried giving your preschoolers Red Bull because the report indicates that energy drinks were only responsible for a very small portion of emergency room visits. Would Red Bull instead of Ritalin have "done the trick," for your child? I guess we'll never know. You are a bad parent for not giving your children Red Bull.

[SAMHSA via the New York Times. Photo: Flickr]

The following replies are approved. To see additional replies that are pending approval, click Show Pending. Warning: These may contain graphic material.

14

ScottRaphael Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 11:27AM

My friend directly attributes his 2006-2007 cokehead phase to the ten years his parents had him on Ritalin. Ritalin, by the way, is methylphenidate, which is chemically very similar to cocaine but acts slower in the brain. So, same high, just no coked out rush.

We're feeding our children slow coke.

2

Conniemack ScottRaphael 08/09/13 11:31AM

Yeah but it's way less cool to be like, "hey man lets party! break out a line of Ritalin for me!"

...or at least it used to not be cool. Who knows, maybe the kids don't do coke anymore since they've got coke-light (half the calories, 1/8 of the fun) in their medicine cabinet?

2

Gemmabeta ScottRaphael 08/09/13 11:31AM

And codeine is also chemically similar to Heroin. Yes. you are feeding your feverish kid Heroin.

2

gilbertkittens ScottRaphael 08/09/13 11:32AM

"Slow coke" has extremely high branding potential. I'd trademark that right away.

1

ToddBoumansTractor24 ScottRaphael 08/09/13 11:33AM

I think you mean "Diet Coke".

4

gilbertkittens Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 11:34AM

Back in the day it was all dexedrine, you stayed up drinking for days, smoking cartons of cigarettes, and there was no illusion that it was good for you. If you aren't good at school, get a vocation.

SuperHybridSystem3 gilbertkittens 08/09/13 11:57AM

Dexadrine is a different drug and is still used.

nachotaco gilbertkittens 08/09/13 12:26PM

Man, I was just about to say this! We were all hopped up on diet pills back in the day.

4

gilbertkittens SuperHybridSystem3 08/09/13 12:32PM

Adderall is basically just re-branded dexedrine.

SuperHybridSystem3 gilbertkittens 08/09/13 12:38PM

Not entirely true. It's reformulated. Adderall has dexadrine in it, but that's not all, and often works very differently. I can say that as someone who took dexadrine for years until it became hard to get and switched to Adderall and found it had an entirely opposite effect.

Johnny Chunders Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 11:28AM

There is an associated problem with college age kids hitting the wall. Though they are maxed out on their dosages, they still can't get enough and get crippling withdrawal symptoms.

2

joeyt045 Johnny Chunders 08/09/13 11:37AM

I take Adderall. 26y/o male. I take breaks, will have the Dr. lower my dose once and awhile because tolerance to it builds up quick.

Johnny Chunders joeyt045 08/09/13 11:37AM

Yeah, this is the right way to do it.

joeyt045 Johnny Chunders 08/09/13 11:40AM

I should also mention that I have been to rehab for opiate addiction, so I am very cautious with it because of its addictive nature.

13

SevenSummits2013 Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 11:52AM

Just a side observation: no one ever talks about the affect living with ADD or ADHD has on aspects of a person's life outside school/work, probably because it is much more difficult to quantify those effects, but those effects are real. For example, someone with undiagnosed or untreated ADD or ADHD may have a hard time sustaining friendships and relationships, given their relative lack of impulse control and their inability to pay attention during important conversations. Where medications are effective in treating ADD/ADHD, it often has a positive impact on those other aspects of the person's life, too. I think this observation isn't discussed enough.

3

Incognigro SevenSummits2013 08/09/13 12:08PM

In my case, it made me socially more awkward......Any sense of humor I had for that day was gone the minute i took those pills.

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AliceW SevenSummits2013 08/09/13 12:20PM

So true! I know a man who remained untreated and ended up in jail repeatedly andlosing jobs repeated because of his poor impulse control. His son, with the same ADHD problem, was night and day when using proper medication. People need to understand that ADD can be part of Acquired Brain Injury, and that Adderall can play a good part in chronic pain management, reducing reliance on opiates. But Congress, in its insanity, gave control of physician licensing and the base ingredients of that medication to the DEA - which purposely created a shortage that put legitimate patients through hell. Yep! The DEA stands between patients and their physicians. So. Want to guess who profits most from pushing this anti-treatment agenda so very, very hard? Critics really need to stick that in their crack pipes and smoke it!

rageON1776 SevenSummits2013 08/09/13 12:39PM

I'm okay with the attention, but have a harder time with the Giving a Fuck. What kind of drug do they have for that?

1

SevenSummits2013 Incognigro 08/09/13 12:50PM

I hear you. I'm definitely less bubbly now (at age 32) than I was before I started taking Vyvanse (at age 27), but my relationships and my bank account have both drastically improved...pros and cons, right?!?