[lbo-talk] RE: The opium of children

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Dec 12 08:52:52 PST 2003


joanna bujes wrote:
>
>
> For the kids, it was a choice between opium or starvation (if the mother couldn't work). Today we do it with Ritalin.
>

I doubt that there exists a medicine that is not grossly overused in some instances and grossly underused in others.

But a friend of mine had been miserable for around 30 years (including extreme fatigue as well as clinical depression), and was on the verge of losing his job (first job in his life that he really liked and that paid well). And then his therapist gave him the test for ADHD -- and he had it bad. Now he's on dexadrine (which would destroy me) and he's sleeping well, getting up rested, and being able to concentrate on an intellectual task for almost the first time in his life.

There is no way to prevent misuse of ritalin -- but for those cases where it is called for it is the difference between life and death-in-life.

Carrol



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