Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and our victimized teens
If you take your teenager in to see a psychologist complaining of lack of attention, hyperactivity, inappropriate social responses, shyness, insomnia, inability to follow the teacher, dyslexia, or anything related to classroom behavior, you’re liable to be told your child has a debilitating psycho/physiological disorder that will require regular medication. Today in America, we allow a large percentage of our teens to be medicated every day while in school. If you think high school is difficult, try doing it on stimulants that calm you down and make you sleepy and disoriented. In my day, it was mononucleosis that was your problem. Nowadays, could it be the so-called three squares of bad food, mostly with a shelf life, with the hot dogs and cheese puffs and cokes (ad infinitum) for lunch?
Things were bad back then, and they are infinitely worse now. There is so much bad chemistry being dumped into young bodies, combined with the teen hormones kicking in. And don’t forget the four hours of TV every night, with its high pace and fast action, and don’t forget the three hours of video games mixed in with their rapidly changing images of minimal redundancy, with no concentration required. So the Medical establishment is having a field day with the new designer diseases—such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)–treated with designer drugs. And they can cloak themselves in deeper layers of self-deception as they really know that they are merely masking problems and mostly just squelching and controlling kids through drugging them. So kids’ grades improve, and you can easily imagine, if you know teenagers at all, that more than fifty percent are only faking taking the meds. But they improve anyway–why? They don’t want any more punishment. First, the drugs! They must be thinking… what’s next, electro-shock therapy? We have to know that these kids are thinking all the way thru this problem and they see the therapy as punishment.
In the long range, drug treatment cures few, especially not the institutionalized. A successful cure would mean the individual is dropped from the drug program and is living a normal life without need of medication or even counseling. Typically, once on the meds and into counseling, children are on this program for years, maybe even for life. When the patient starts having some side-effects to a particular medication, they switch him to another kind of medication. If the patient wants off the medication, he will lose his Medi-Cal or insurance coverage. So, he is stuck with the doctor’s orders for the rest of his life.
In the case of ADHD, often teens don’t mind the treatment, because being medicated for the first time in their lives, they finally have an excuse for everything. They can finally relax and not get caught up in all of the competition.
Another scenario goes something like this: The kid is cutting up in class. He’s sent to the principal’s office where he is seen by a counselor. The kid says he just can’t concentrate on the material, that it’s all so boring. After three or more encounters with the counselor, he or she is diagnosed as having ADHD. The teen is called into a meeting with his parents, the principal, the counselor, and the school nurse, where he and his parents are told he has ADHD and will be given a prescription drug to reduce the speed of his hyperactive mind to something under the sound barrier.
An easy solution for ADHD
It is said that the causes of these ostensible disorders range from an inherited genetic flaw to brain damage caused from the parents’ cigarette smoking or from mothers’ taking drugs while pregnant. Now let’s trace the steps of these special kids preparing for school. The kid downs a bowl of cereal coated with lots of sugar. The kid stops for soda at school or on the way to school–soda loaded with caffeine. Mountain Dew is the soda of choice by the teen set. Mountain Dew has more caffeine in it than a cup of strong coffee, more than the kids’ parents are getting in their morning coffee. The kid is legally hyped to the ceiling and bouncing off the walls by the time he gets to his first class. Add to this four hours of TV the night before–TV designed for the short attention span (20-second sound bites), with the bombardment of mind-shattering images by the second and nanosecond. We won’t go into the diet, replete with high calories and sugar. Now you’re beginning to get the picture. We have a kid who is used to being entertained by a box that has images and sound and a storyline that is super fast and much more interesting than what they are learning in English class, such as sentence structure.
The kid is in a hyper state of mental activity going at light speed, and the teacher wants him to slow down to the instructional pace, which is uninspired, slow, and redundant; and the subject matter is taught without any regard for the typical adolescent mental associations or teen vernacular. What do we have here—a student with some kind of syndrome that disallows him to focus on the lesson? No, we have a normal kid who is abnormally hyped by drugs (sugar and caffeine are drugs), with a mind that is trained by a black box to be agile and nimble in order to catch all the kitsch and drama that is presented by the second and minute. Then when it comes time to slow that mind down to the speed of the lesson, forget it!
As you can imagine, mornings are the worst, because kids are rested, full of energy, and really hyped on a sugar/caffeine buzz. Then, of course, at lunch kids get another drug boost–more sugar and caffeine and so on. Because the school systems have allowed the devil-fake food and refreshment industry into their midst, how can they expect kids to behave normally? But rather than attributing the blame to the proper source, it’s much easier for the schools to place blame on kids or on parents. But, oh—“This is what the kids want to eat and drink, so we need to give it to them”: This is the “rationale” that prevails. Since when did kids become knowledgeable dietitians with the necessary wisdom to make wise food choices for their developing minds and bodies? I suggest that schools administrators who have allowed junk food purveyors to prey on our developing youth go immediately to the nearest mirror and slap themselves silly, because they are fooling with the lives of living beings who will one day be required to act rationally in this interdependent society.
So what happens to these kids after four or five years on the state-provided and -funded drugs they are given every day? They stand a very good chance of becoming part of the welfare state and continuing their medication throughout their lives. If you ask me, this is not a life–this is a partial life, without the possibility of real self-awareness or achieving full potential.
I met one of these victims of ADHD diagnosis. He was living in Sedona , Arizona, with his wife and small child. They looked “hip-ish,” dressing in loose-fitting, colorful clothing, with long hair and colorful accessories. They didn’t work at the time, although they said they were looking for work. They lived in a tent on the property at the house I was renting with several other people. I liked them, as they were optimistic and unassuming. They looked healthy enough, and the child also looked healthy. They all seemed happy, for the most part. But the county officials found out they were living in a tent and took the child away. Naturally, they were distraught and anxious to get their little girl back. So the mother went out and found a job and began saving for an apartment, so she could regain custody. The father wasn’t really looking for work, as he would have had to take a cut in his welfare pay with the kind of job that he would likely be able to get.
The father told me they were “trailer trash” from Riverside, or some unpleasant place like that, and that he was raised by a single mom. He was diagnosed with ADHD and kept on drugs throughout his time in high school. He didn’t finish school, however, as he couldn’t see the relevance of it. When I met him, he was continuing medication of a different type and was convinced he had a mental disorder that made him rather “special”. Many who are diagnosed with ADHD or Bi-Polar Disorder say, “Oh, well, many geniuses have this, so maybe I’m one of those geniuses.”
One of this guy’s bigger dreams was to save money for a laptop computer, just so he could impress people with it as he walked down the street. He smiled broadly as he mused upon this possibility and said, “Just imagine what they will think of me then.”
Author: David Sherrod
David V. Sherrod is the author of Getting Clear - Embracing A Raw Foods Lifestyle. He is a professional artist with a background as a former Medic and Dental Tech in the Air Force. He has been an avid health food enthusiast throughout his life as well as an active mountain biker, white water river boater and all around nature buff. His approach to home cures by way of first understanding the causes of the illness makes for both instructive and interesting reading.
