Let's face it
"Just Say No!" to (doctor prescribed) Drugs for Children and Adults
The other day my sister and I were chatting with her husband and he related some of the behavioral problems he remembered from his high school days. He talked about the teen pregnancies and fights and drugs and my sister and I just looked at each other blankly.
"Do you remember any of that in school?" she asked.
"No," I said. "I don't remember any of that."
Her husband scoffed at us. "Oh, you are making that up."
But we weren't. We couldn't remember any violence in the school, we remember only one girl who was spirited away with whispered rumors of possible pregnancy, no parents were divorced, and behavior in the classroom was orderly. Occasionally we heard a mild disagreement in the halls. Oh, and my sister recalled some teenagers might have been drinking beer on the weekends. We don't even remember anyone who had dyslexia, bipolar syndrome, ADD problems or who was violent or suicidal. Everyone could read and behave and make it through the day or at least function well enough not to be a real problem for others. Of course, we lived in a fairly wealthy suburb where crime and public display of private problems rarely occurred in those days.
Looking back, I probably would have gotten an ADD or bipolar label if I hadn't been born in the fifties. I had bad handwriting. I was sloppy, careless, lazy and overweight. I was easily distracted from my lessons. I had to be forced out of bed in the morning and I fell asleep constantly in class. I got a C average in high school and took no distinguishing courses. I played the flute and eventually quit when I realized that my lack of practice would finally toss me from last chair to the floor.
As an adult, I quit jobs within weeks (sometimes days or hours). I changed colleges seven times. I was the "problem" child of my family; the one who should be "more like her sisters." But, no one thought I had some kind of biologically determined malfunction, or chemical imbalance. My poor performance in school and my moodiness at home was chalked up to an attitude problem.
Today, professionals would be horrified that I was blamed for my childhood difficulties. But, at least in one way, those folks from the fifties were right. I DID have a crappy attitude; a crappy attitude that resulted from and a difficult (or at least unusual) personality that was not understood by most folks in American society. My family and teachers didn't recognize that my personality was a mismatch to the educational and societal system of the day. Even today, few parents and teachers understand some children's inability to function well in certain prescribed settings. The only difference in the "old" days is that they didn't tolerate misbehavior and excuses and they didn't try to medicate away the problems. Today an awful lot of dreadful behavior is acceptable and when teachers and parents finally do get fed up with it, instead of finding a different learning and living environment for these students, they make up medical and psychiatric problems for them and give them drugs to make them tolerable to deal with.
If I were growing up in the United States today, I wouldn't be labeled as dyslexic because I was a fast reader and good in math. I would, however, been easily labeled ADHD or possibly bipolar. As an adult today, I now see friends of mine being labeled as ADD in their forties and fifties! These people are dealing with overload and much rushing around and have difficulty concentrating and remembering things. Others are taking Zoloft and other medications for depression. They think they have a chemical imbalance when their life simply sucks. They are in bad relationships, unchallenging jobs, ruts that include mind numbing repetitiveness and major boredom, and some are suffering the symptoms of midlife crisis and empty nest syndrome.
Others that I know have been diagnosed as bipolar, and while they are indeed mentally ill (at that time of their lives); they are not chemically or biologically defective. These are people who have found the path of life very difficult. They may have very artistic personalities and are people striving for success in fields that rapidly eat folks up and spit them out. Writers, actors, singers, comedians, artists - the chances of even a few of these people becoming noted in their fields or earning a living from their art is remote. Struggling to be recognized, being raked over the coals by the critics, being insulted and humiliated, is not very easy on the psyche. Along with the emotional damage such fields mete out, the fight for survival and success may require performing in dumps far away from home for months at a time, being paid peanuts for shows, selling only a dozen copies of one's self-published books (and only to relatives), or struggling for a dozen years to make it in Hollywood or on Broadway and still working a job as a waiter while getting no more than bit part. These are not elements that make up a prescription for a happy life. No wonder these determined folks become depressed and suicidal. But do they need medication? Perhaps, yes, but only as a temporary measure if they are thinking of killing themselves; not as a lifelong way of covering up what is making them unhappy. Unhappiness doesn't just come out of nowhere, regardless of how quickly it sneaks up on us. Mentally ill people who describe a horrible black cloud rolling in or the sudden inability to function are not victims of a sudden imbalance in their systems. They are dealing with the return of unresolved issues, failure, and reality slapping them in the face yet again. But even as adults we may find it easier to look for a medical "reason" instead of figuring out what our real problems are and dealing with them.
Let's go back to my somewhat unsuccessful childhood. Bad handwriting may well have been at the crux of my problems. I found writing with a pencil ungodly slow. My mind moves at fairly fast rate of thinking and I couldn't make my pencil keep up with it. Therefore, I wrote quickly and readable and attractive penmanship was the loser. I never developed the ability to slow down my thought to match a fine style of handwriting. I suffered with this problem into college. By then my writing was so appalling, I couldn't read my notes from class. I lacked the patience to scrawl my way through tests and papers. I simply hated school.
But, my father did do me a great favor in life. He forced (actually bribed) me to take typing. I had refused to take the class for fear learning typing meant I would end up a secretary, a fate I considered worse than hell. But, the bribe was good enough (a summer camp I really wanted to attend) that I relented and took the class. I was an excellent typist. My only problem with actually enjoying typing in those days was the inability to erase and edit on those ancient machines we called typewriters. I lacked the temperament to deal with this and often ripped papers out of my typewriter, crunched them angrily into balls and threw them onto the ground. I was still waiting for technology to catch up with my brain.
Finally, it did. Computers arrived and, suddenly, I was not incompetent with writing any more (at least my literary agent doesn't thinks so). I can write as fast as I can think, I can edit in a flash, and I no longer suffer frustration when taking a class or writing a paper. I write for work and I write for pleasure. I send emails now instead feeling bad about not writing letters, another area of life I had failed miserably in. Now, I am considered a good communicator. Technology has made a success out of me, not medication.
Consider another of my youthful problems. I was deemed lazy and distracted. My mother had to yell at me to get out of bed every morning. I struggled through school in a half daze, my left elbow sliding on the slanted desk until it fell off the edge and jolted me out of my daydreams. If I was going to school today, I would be on Ritalin because the simple diagnosis would have required work to deal with. My real problem was that I was bored and a night person.
I quit job after job until I finally realized that I need challenge and a workday that didn't require getting up with the sun. It took until my thirties to work outside the home in a successful job situation. I became a medical sign language interpreter and worked for hospitals on call to the emergency room. I had some daytime work, too, early morning surgeries and an occasional early morning doctor appointment and I bitched my way to those, but I still showed up on time and in a pleasant frame of mind. Most of the time I worked erratic hours, often through the night, as one of the crazies who inhabit the emergency room night shift. I loved it. I managed the interpreter service and was a well loved interpreter for ten years. I was called dedicated, hardworking, extremely competent, good natured and dependable. I worked days on end without sleep (long births and difficult emergencies cases) and never complained when I had to get up at three in the morning and drive through a snowstorm. I always had a smile on my face. I had gone from being an unhappy employee who quit in short time to one in extreme demand. What caused the change? A challenging work environment that didn't require eight hours of repetitive work in an office starting at 8 AM in the morning.
I was "lazy" in school because I had to get up to early every day (after staying up reading as a night person will do to two or three in the morning) and because the schoolwork was not challenging enough for me. I was told to reread chapters because other students hadn't done their homework. I listened to endless explanations to what I considered stupid questions. I was tired and bored. I didn't need medication. I needed a different kind of school. The problems continued into college with me staggering into early morning classes, being bored with the slowness of the lesson plans, and struggling still with my writing utensil difficulties. It wasn't until I became a stay-at-home mom and homeschooled my children that I began to understand what my problems were. I was suddenly happy. The one person in the world people thought would be miserable with motherhood turned out to love it. I had freedom, I had challenge, and I was in control of making a successful program of my work. When I finally chose to go back into the work world outside of the house, I knew what kind of situation would work for me.
Then, after ten years of sign language interpreting, I changed fields. Running my own criminal profiling agency has also afforded me great challenge and excellent control of my work environment. I work hard and sometimes long and odd hours; I deal with a lot of frustrations and setbacks and a heavy work load. I have to put up with stupid battles with people over turf and egos in this field. But, still, I love the work and I am never bored. When I get up at ten in the morning (on days when I don't get stuck doing early morning news appearances), no one thinks I am lazy. They know I have been up half the night working on a case or writing on my computer.
Yes, I was "cured" without medication. I didn't grow out of my "condition"; I grew to appreciate it. I learned that my personality was a fine fit for certain circumstances of life. People with my personality are needed. People with other kinds of personalities are needed also. If everyone were like me, there would be no one to do office work. If there were no personalities like mine, you would have no police officers or emergency workers manning the wee hours of the morning.
But, there is more to dealing with "ADD" and "bipolar" children than understanding their personality. We need to fix the crazy world around them. One can't expect certain children to do well with their activities if they have so many of them they can't possibly become good at any. We can't expect our children to learn to read and not be "dyslexic" (another condition created by psychologists and the failing education system) if we don't have quiet times to sit and read together with our young children or make reading a priority for our older ones. We have to always make sure our children don't get left behind if they exhibit "learning difficulties." They may need more of our time, less television and video games, and a better home and educational environment. Some kids these days are falling behind in their schoolwork because the bad behavior of their classmates leaves little time teachers to actually instruct. Others fear for their physical safety and can't pass that hurdle to be focus in their lessons.
One of my children received the terrible label "learning disabled" before he entered our lives (at age six) and it was expected he would be put in special education classes. I chose to home school instead. He did indeed struggle with learning which can be expected when you have spent six years in a less than stable home environment. School just isn't high on the level of priorities of kids who don't know where they are going to be sleeping the next day and fear of failing makes it difficult for them to approach any kind of learning without being afraid of losing again. But, he eventually DID learn and he learned well.
My supposedly learning disabled son grew up just fine. He attended college, played beautiful piano, and excelled at baseball. He reads voraciously, is a very upstanding citizen, and is successfully employed in the law enforcement field. There was nothing at all wrong with his brain and, if I had left him in school, he would have been put on medication and shunted off into classes of a very depressing nature. He simply needed the extra time and attention he had been deprived of earlier in his life to catch up in the areas he was struggling with.
And what about these adults on medications? Who sold us this stupid idea that depression is a chemical problem in the brain? Depression is a sign of mental health. It means you are clearly seeing the reality of your life and you are not happy with it. Depression is like pain; it is intended to be a warning sign that you need to take action. Depression can also be very normal. When one is dealing with divorce or death, job loss or retirement, or an empty nest after years of raising children, it would be ABNORMAL to be feeling ecstatic (unless you hated the deceased, wanted to get rid of the mate, or were totally fed up with the kids or your job). Unexpected tragedies of life have to be struggled through, accepted, and fought back against.
I became both single again and an empty nester in the same year. This was not life as I knew it or planned it. Not only that, I had to leave my beloved home, the state my three grown kids were living in, my pets, and move away to live at my sister's home in another state. This was not the easiest thing I had ever done and I felt a large loss in my life and a state of being left unanchored and adrift.
Yes, I was depressed. But, I fought back. I didn't get drugs. I got a life. I made new friends, took up new hobbies, and thanked God my life wasn't worse. I had a great sister who I am best friends with, wonderful children, kind parents who are still alive, and a fulfilling career. I joined a dance group and a book club, picked a new foreign language to learn, made new friends, traveled, and accepted the exciting challenges in my life. Three years have passed and I am thrilled with every day I am able to experience life on earth.
My feelings weren't something to medicate away. They were telling me to take stock of my life and what I wanted. They told me to analyze my situation, get new ideas, and take chances. Medication would have prevented me from moving on.
Let's face it. "Medication" for children and adults is nothing more than street drugs given a blessing. We should be aware that - instead of seeking to correct our out-of-balance lives and improve our physical and mental health - we are taking what is the equivalent of amphetamines (speed) to make ourselves artificially happy or at least oblivious to caring whether we are achieving success in life. Doctors who give this crap out as a long-term measure are no better than the pushers down on the street corner and if we take this stuff for longer than an emergency period of our lives, we are drug users, plain and simple. If we give this poison to our kids, we are contributing to the delinquency of minors. Let's start seeing drugs for what they are - drugs. As parents and teachers and physicians, we should, "Just say no to drugs," shouldn't we?
Pat Brown
October 29, 2005
