Zombie Down: The Adhd Overdose

The number of people being diagnosed with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other mental illnesses alike is on the rise.  What’s the reason for this?  Well, the answer isn’t really too easy take beyond a speculative standpoint.  There are myriad theories as to the cause or causes – but there remains no conclusive evidence to support any of the proposed findings.  This bolsters wonder about the drugs being used to treat mental disorders, such as ADHD, and whether or not they are the appropriate ones to administer to patients – especially to children.

  In order to answer the proposed question, one must first discern whether ADHD is a disorder or just a terrifically poor euphemism for daydreamer.   Patients that harbor the so called disorder are viewed as rebels of what is perceived to be reality, at least in the eyes of social consensus.  Children that exhibit the hyperkinetic and inattentive symptoms that fit the basis criteria for most ADHD diagnoses can become banes of parental sanity like the reiterative and sonorous splash of a drippy faucet nozzle, amid the silent decorum of the night.  Parents, befuddled by their child’s behavior, seek the aid of doctors and psychiatrists who determine and exploit the notion that they are ‘experts’ on the illness and the various methods that are applied to disavow its content in the patient, turning the patients into docilely limp attendants at a rowdy affair.   The problem, as aforementioned, is that there is absolutely no way of telling whether a child, or adult, for that matter, has ADHD or just an over-active imagination.

The most common treatment of ADHD in both children and adults is the use of stimulants such as Ritalin, which is chemically related to cocaine, or Adderall – an amphetamine.  There is also an atypical non-stimulant drug, Strattera – a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor – that was originally conceived to be an antidepressant medication but failed to prove effective against placebo in clinical studies.  Presumably to evade the loss of millions of dollars in the drug’s research and development of the medication, Eli Lilly, the drug’s patent holder, took the approach of using it in the treatment of ADHD and was successful in doing so.  Some of the ‘medications’ that are condoned for the treatment of this ubiquitously doted diagnosis are considered controlled substances outside of a medical office, yet deemed as credible to relieve a patient of symptoms the supposed condition remits.  It is estimated that within the last thirty-plus years, the diagnosis of ADHD and other behavioral and mood disorders in children has leaped up like a dingo with its tail on fire from about 200,000 to between six and fifteen million.  The contrast is magnanimously disconcerting, insofar that it suggests that it is being over and, more importantly, misdiagnosed – and in ways that venture way beyond compunction in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.  But to incite the misconduct of either would be going into an entirely different issue.  So, in regards to the topic at hand, the conclusion of this story can bare no real answer, for no clear reasoning can be resulted.  But just remember the next time you find yourself within the pensive confines of lucid reverie that everyone is prone to not paying attention.