Yep, this is pretty much how it is lately.
From Worth1000.com’s Fun With Propaganda contest
In Soviet Canuckistan, Fun has YOU! I don’t know what it means, but I’m a little fried lately so I’ll take what I can get, inspiration-wise. This could ramble; you’ve been warned.
Is this the time to mention (will there ever be another time?) that my mother was on Ritalin for years; or rather, she was prescribed Ritalin for years (and remember the episode of Star Trek, the original series I’m talking here, none of this Under the Planet of the Son of Deep Sixing the Next Generation crap, puh-leez, in which Ritalin had a supporting role? And didn’t even die in the climax, although it did get eaten I think? That was pretty edgy for Star Trek
See, narcolepsy means never having to say you’re actually boring me to sleep. Narcoleptics fall asleep basically any time their focus wanders, particularly during repetitive activities such as oh, say, driving, which is why it’s illegal for a narcoleptic to have a driver’s license and why Mother always dragged me or my sister around when she had to drive somewhere. And narcoleptics lose muscle control when they laugh; they don’t pee themselves, but they are entirely capable of collapsing to the floor like fainting goats during a George Carlin
Ritalin. It’s a blog post about Ritalin.
So, basically, for a narcoleptic the effect of Ritalin is the opposite of what it is on a normal person or (and you may make of this what you will) its effect on someone suffering from ADD or AHDHDHD or whatever it is they are calling it today. So, basically narcoleptics’ baseline of alertness goes up when they’re on the stuff, while everyone else’s goes down. And I guess my mother woke up, took a look around, and preferred to go back to sleep again, and who among us can say we never felt the same, eh? I ask you.
And this is definitely the point at which to bring up Tom Wolfe
Anyone with a child in school knows the signs all too well. I have children in school, and I am intrigued by the faith parents now invest–the craze began about 1990–in psychologists who diagnose their children as suffering from a defect known as attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this “disorder” is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. The symptoms of this supposed malady are always the same. The child, or, rather, the boy–forty-nine out of fifty cases are boys–fidgets around in school, slides off his chair, doesn’t pay attention, distracts his classmates during class, and performs poorly. In an earlier era he would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self-discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy’s problem is… he’s wired wrong! The poor little tyke –the fix has been in since birth! Invariably the parents complain, “All he wants to do is sit in front of the television set and watch cartoons and play Sega Genesis.” For how long? “How long? For hours at a time.” Hours at a time; as even any young neuroscientist will tell you, that boy may have a problem, but it is not an attention deficit.
Quite so.
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raincoaster 
My mother always said there were not so many attention defecit disordered kids as there were mothers who said so.
My own observation is that as the prevalence of single motherhood has risen, so have ritalin prescriptions. And 75% of all ritalin is prescribed to boys.
In my experience, all but one child I have seen placed on drug-based behavioural controls was the child of a single mother. And all but two were boys.
I asked a paediatrician about this once. She explained thus: “Imagine you’re a single mother trying to raise a little boy and a little girl.
“Little girls are co-operative, communicative, and often want to do just what mummy does. They’ll help bake, fold laundry, or play quietly for hours with their dollies.
“Little boys are obstreporous, quasi-human savages who will interrupt your coffee-and-chat by stomping naked through the kitchen pretending to be a tyrannosaurus and biting you when you try and stop him. And he’s yours. Completely. Twenty-four hours a day without letup.
“But with ritalin, all that disappears, and your little boy suddenly becomes easy to direct and to manage. From the outside, he starts behaving like your little girl.”
I’m not saying no-one should ever be on ritalin. And god knows I sympathize with any single mother who finds herself at her wits’ end. But there’s clearly massive over-prescription somewhere, and that issue needs to be addressed.
It’s not so much single motherhood as Generation X’s preference for convenience in all things, including children. Ritalin didn’t used to be thought useful for calming people down: it’s speed. Only in the past ten years has its use for this purpose become widespread.
I was a nanny once (yes, god help the children) and I know a woman (no single mom, she!) who put all her kids on some crackpot food combining diet because it calmed the boy down. Honestly, the kid never left the house or got a lick of exercise if he didn’t raise hell indoors, so no wonder he was a bit wild. The diet “worked” because he basically wasn’t taking in enough nutrients and didn’t have the strength to raise hell.
Well at least she went the natural route–no drugs for her kids!
And precious little hair, skin tone, or eventually vital signs.
The pharma industry is just doing with Ritalin what every other does when its major market – adults – nears saturation: find new ones! Advertising makes it happen, don’t forget.
I forgot to add that back in the early Eighties my mother was offered anywhere from eight to twenty dollars per pill by the Ritalin Heads that Wolfe alludes to in his article. It’s not kid stuff.
@ian: yes, that’s exactly right. And remember when they simply renamed Prozac and invented a specially debilitating kind of monthly period, for which this “new” drug was the only solution. Also: you can trademark and protect a new drug name and thus protect yourself from generics for that use in the US for a number of years. That’s why Prozac came up with this fake name and fake disease: so they could get patent protection for another few years for something actually too old.
Ah, but you’ve missed the conservative medical establishment conspiracy conenction – James Daly was promoting ritalin use and its production in special, uncontaminated facilities in a prelude to his propagandizing on ‘Medical Center’ – how else could he keep Chad Everett’s attention span throughout an hour-long television drama?
Who ARE these people? Should I know them from old reruns of The Prisoner or something?
Thank you for making me feel very, very, very old . . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Daly_%28actor%29
D’oh! I shoulda remembered him; my parents used to wake me up to watch Mission Impossible. And of course there’s the Requiem for Methuselah link, which is almost too perfect.
I thought they were obscure White House staffers. Sorry, American politics overload.
I feel better now, like anyone cares . . . . sniff, sniff. Maybe I need something to lift my spirits and help me focus . . .
@FFF – I recommend this herbal leaf of which I just happen to have a small dried amount. You could smoke it, but I prefer to use it as an ingredient in cookies – – –
Cookies? What is this, revisionist Eightiesism? If brownies were good enough for your grampa, young man, they are good enough for you!
Sesame Street has a lot to answer for – – –
But I don’t have glaucoma yet . . . .
Do you want to take the risk of getting it?
I’ll take a dozen Toke House cookies then . . . .
Great post. I always find that you hit the nail on the head somewhere in your comments. I agree about the inconvenience thing completely.
I used to substitute teach, and after lunch all the students would line up for their meds. The line was so long it went down the hall and around the corner. I’d teach these little kids who were completely zombied out at various times of day, falling asleep or barely coherent (I’d like to think that it wasn’t because of my teaching style).
It’s not just the parents who want the comfort though. My nephew was always bored in school, and the administrators insisted that my sister and her hubby come in for a consultation, where they were told in no uncertain terms that he’d been tested for ADHD and needed to be put on medication. My sis agreed, and started giving him a baby aspirin every morning (so that he’d be able to tell his teacher each day that he’d had his medication). Magically, the school reported that his behavior was MUCH improved, though according to my sister, he wasn’t acting any differently, and he’d never had an ounce of Ritalin.
I know I’m rambling here, but I had a hard time falling asleep last night thinking about how we’re overmedicating our kids. It changes their brain chemistry, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when we read about school shootings, the killers just happen to be in their late teens or early twenties, and are either on medications or have recently stopped taking them. Ugh. I’m so sorry for taking up all of this space here. Just ranting.
Your sister is VERY, VERY SMART! I love that. Flintstones vitamins would have been a little obvious, I guess.
Also: never apologize for taking up space in the comments section. It’s free! And that was a great comment, not least because it starts out with glorious flattery!
We have a friend whose daughter died after a horrible confluence – a school whose administrators also ‘recommended’ Ritalin, a doctor who overwrote the prescription, and a pharmacist who apparently didn’t spend a lot of time the reading the contraindications section of the PDR.
I’m f***in against Ritalin, period.
Ritalin is crap and so for the most part is ADHD. I should know, considering I’ve “had it” for years. My mom never let them put me on Ritalin though. With me it was combined with tourrettes and I was already on mediction for that (which turned out to be a nightmare of a whole different story).
In the end I always felt sort of half awake on anything they put me on. I didn’t like that. Sure it helped somewhat with the “problem areas” of my brain, but it also silenced my creative and witty sides, which are pretty much all I’ve got going for me since I’m not exactly Rico Suave in the looks department. :)
Oh my god! I had no idea you could actually die from an overdose of Ritalin! How horrible. I hope, but cannot imagine, that those responsible have been punished.
kstaff: Tourettes is a PROBLEM? Jesus fucking Christ with Mary and Joseph on a donkey, I think in this day and age it’s a GIVEN. And a healthy fucking outlet.
Metro that may be your experience but the only children I’ve seen diagnosed with ADHD have been from married families. And remember that in ‘my’ day it was common for parents to ‘medicate’ their children with scotch to shut them up and make them sleep, and parents weren’t prosecuted for giving the raging little monkey a good hiding if he did wrong, and if the police caught him and marched him home he’d know he’d get a telling off. Nowadays the parents would prosecute the policeman or get accused of child abuse if they smacked thier child. No wonder drugs are on the increase. But I agree completely that Ritalin is over subscribed. Pardon my typing, my daughter is hanging around my neck.
Scotch is obviously much cheaper where you live. But have you given your daughter a toot?
Nooo she was simply wanting to see what I was doing – she’s going to be a journalist remember.
I put ‘my’ day in diddlybobs (technical term) because before the 60’s there used to be a gripe-water remedy that contained alcohol I think, and a cough medicine that contained morphine or laudenum or something and Mum used to dose us with Kaolin and morphine. You could get high as a kite with a victorian medicine chest.
I think there is an issue with labelling and have wondered if being diagnosed with ADHD or ADD would help a child. I think there are arguments for and against that one.
Judging by what I’ve seen, it’s more beneficial for the parents; they don’t lose any more sleep over their kids. They just up the dosage.
Punished? The doctor’s insurance company paid a significant settlement, but the doctor went somewhere else and practices. The administrator? Haven’t heard anything in years. The pharmacist? He oversees pharmacies for a regional supermarket chain.
Yeah, someone got punished. Her parents.
@Philipa:
When you refer to “Victorian medicine chests” are you referring to the era or the Australian state? Because “my day” correlated with the Victorian era is likely to cause confusion. People will start thinking you’re almost as old as Raincoaster.
Are you thinking of paragoric?
An entertainer named Rosalie Sorrels, on an album entitled, if memory serves, Be Careful, There’s a Baby in the House, once said:
“Paragoric is a liquid opiate. You don’t pour the baby full of it. Just rub a little on the gums, and baby smiles, and goes to sleep. Then you pour a few drops into a glass over ice with a little water, and you drink it while rocking the baby, and you smile and go to sleep.”
According to Sorrels, paragoric was banned in the sixties when folks “started drinking it by the quart.”
As to the prosecution of police officers, anyone from Vancouver knows that the local force have a sometimes-deserved reputation for heavy-handedness. This is a characteristic they have shared with any number of police departments, and I have to say that were one of my hypothetical kids brought home by the cops, I would deifinitely inquire as to their treatment.
Most of the cases in which parents are prosecuted for administering discipline seem, to my mind, to have features in common with this case.
Evidently I need to stop drinking paragoric by the quart. RC, can you fix the Sorrels tag, please-n-thanx?
Yep Paragoric was made of opium and was used to treat diarrhoea, they even prescribed it to pregnant women according to Google, who then noted the “lack of fetal movement (“the baby is being lulled by the gurgling of my upset stomach…” he [the doctor] said)”
Sorry about the confusion Metro, I was remembering how things used to be in 1960’s Britain, in the burbs, and of the meds spoken warmly of by older relatives.
This is what you get when you hoard paragoric.
Did you know that up until it closed Woodwards was selling “Gripe Water” which was over 40% alcohol? I know, because I worked in that department and every Welfare Wednesday they’d take it off the shelves and pretend it was sold out. So the rummies just bought Lysol instead. They may have died, but they died clean!
Metro – I did respond to your comment but it disappeared. I diagnose this broadband connection with ADD. Either that or Raincoasters sweet alcoholic breath can melt ethernet cabling. Or it’s the fairies at the gin again!
It’s WordPress.com. It’s been farked since Thursday. I will dig around and try to find your response; wish me luck.
First of all, that Ritalin propaganda poster is just a hoot.
I’m a pediatric nurse, parent, coach and have worked as a camp nurse. I think Ritalin is way, way overprescribed. when you look at the disparity between how many boys are on this, or concerta, it’s stunning, to say the least. I feel that the education system in the US is letting boys down in a big, big way. Boys are overeprsented in special education, on ritalin,not going to college, not graduating, being put in the juvenile justice system…it’s a very, very serious problem that nobody wants to mention. You look at an education system that punishes boys for “masculine” or boyish behavior and play, that wants boys to be more passive and feminine, add to that the number of boys being raised by single moms with no dad in their lives(a true epidemeic in the African American Community)…the Ritalin issue is the tip of the iceberg on the bigger issue of how we educate and bring up boys to be men…and how much we have failed at it in the last 20+ years. Anyway, excellent post.
Steve – a camp nurse? Forgive my humour on this serious issue but… ooh Matron!
Seriously though, it’s not the fault of the fact of single mums, you are COMPLETELY mistaken. My reasoning is not that I am a single Mum with a fabulous son but that after the great wars there were many many widows, so many, and we never had problems like this. This is a modern construct, not a fact of single mothers.
Raincoaster – I wish you luck but I think the fairies have been at the gin again.
Philipa, I think he’s talking about entire communities where there really are no male role models. The English village is a very different place from the Projects. You make an interesting point about the Second World War, but at that time society also had widespread, agreed-upon standards of behaviour. That isn’t the case now.
The whole question of raising boys to be healthy, happy men is a critical one in our times. I’m not so worried about them not doing as well in school as girls. After all, they are disproportionately represented on the billionaire’s list and the CEO list and elsewhere in management; somehow being boys seems to make up for not being as good in schools. But we have no real sense of modern masculinity; I know two writers who’ve struggled and made this issue the central one of their life’s work, and everywhere they find men searching for identity and not finding it.
about the Second World War, but at that time society also had widespread, agreed-upon standards of behaviour. That isn’t the case now
indeed, that’s exactly my point, Rain.
The Tory party in the UK is headed by people brought up by a succession on nannies until the age of 7 then straight into boarding school. These sort of people with that model of childhood used to pretty much rule the world – who needs parents??
I can’t really imagine a community where there are no male role models – that means there are no adult males. I find that difficult to imagine as I’ve found that single mums are quite vulnerable and seen as easy prey by some males.
At any given time, over 10% of the African American male population between 18-35 is serving time. Trust me when I say that the Projects per-se are effectively a matriarchy, and it is the goal of all children, male and female, to leave them; males, because they earn sufficient income at a faster rate, leave them first. In terms of male role models, it’s really rather desert-like.
And with regard to your point about “easy prey,” it’s important to realize the difference between where you fuck and where you live.
I no longer have sex. What I meant was that single mums get housing and some men see that as a nice little set up to lay their head, get fed and fucked, before they fuck off when it pleases them. It’s up to the mums to not let a succesion of ‘uncles’ happen.