The good grade pill

<p>inaweoflacs,
For students with diagnosed problems with ADHD, stimulants should hopefully be considered more like giving a person with vision problems prescription glasses so they can focus as well as those who don’t need glasses.</p>

<p>@evitaperon Yeah, but truly applied, intellectual students shouldn’t have to unnatural methods. Our culture is too centered around drugs…
Also, there is the moral argument… A student’s use of Adderall, Ritalin, and all those other meds (or even coke, pretty common nowadays) is, in my mind, analogous to an athlete taking steroids…</p>

<p>re my post #99 - I was referring to unsubscribed drug usage and not to medication prescribed by a physician for ADHD.</p>

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<p>A silly argument. Academics is not the Olympics. See Post 92.</p>

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<p>So a prescription naturally immunises people against the bad effects of study drugs…riiiight.</p>

<p>Ok, parent of soon-to-be college freshman here. My child drew the short straw when it came to brain chemistry. He has OCD and ADHD, which often are found together. He is stuck with brain chemistry that stymies his ability to realize his talents. He brings so much to the table, but is stuck with awful glitches in his chemistry. Simply creating a circumstance in which his brain works without glitches would be a god-send. As it is, he has managed to keep his OCD within mild range so he does not get meds. Now, before college, he is getting tested to see if meds for the ADHD would make sense. </p>

<p>I wouldn’t expect someone with diabetes to manage without their meds – I wish folks understood that my son’s challenges – and kids like him – should be accorded the same understanding and tolerance. Just because we, as adults, did not grow up with the treatment options that kids nowadays have does not mean that diagnosed kids should not get the help in adjusting brain chemistry.</p>

<p>I would have to agree that a person taking speed is in fact similar to a person taking steroids to enhance their performance. Whether the person who does not have a true need for the drugs and takes Adderall or steroids for one day, one week, four years or longer is not relevant. The issue is that a physician is unlikely to grant a prescription to a 90 pound weakling even under duress to turn them into a 160 pound with 6 pack abs who can run faster and jump higher. The physician who does can get in trouble. Some physicians will give parents prescriptions for ADHD drugs with little concern and some parents do not think very hard and long about giving their kids Adderall and other drugs as performance enhancers and the chance of the physician getting in any trouble is slim. </p>

<p>Anecdotally several friends of each of my kids stopped taking them as soon as they left home because they did not like the way it made them feel. That ought to be clue right there or they don’t take them with regularity. It is not analogous to glasses…kids, especially children, who need glasses don’t take them off because they can’t see without them. It is not analogous to diabetes because those kids will die without their drugs.</p>

<p>“Some physicians will give parents prescriptions for ADHD drugs with little concern and some parents do not think very hard and long about giving their kids Adderall and other drugs as performance enhancers and the chance of the physician getting in any trouble is slim.”</p>

<p>This touches on what I understand is a fairly common practice in the East. Parents will get their kids evaluated, diagnosed with ADHD, the child is given extra time to do the SATs, as well as take a SPEED drug to treat the ADHD, whether real or not.</p>

<p>I know people who have done this, and I have read that it is widely practiced.</p>

<p>While this might be something being done in our kid’s generation, right now, the standard protocol is to start with the non-stimulant focus drugs. These are very effective, and it is not going to be very common for scripts to be written for schedule 2 drugs, anymore. Docs would rather not write the controlled, triplicate scripts, anyway, and are very resistant to this, now that there are other, non DEA regulated alternatives.</p>

<p>There is a strong bias against writing schedule 2 if it can be helped, particularly for minors.</p>

<p>They have found the same thing with alcohol: there’s a sense by those who partake in an extreme activity that all the students around one person has also fell to the same pressures that he/she has. That’s because the people who don’t partake in the activity don’t talk excessively or loudly about not doing something. The ones who do tend to talk a lot (this forum, and the NY Times piece, being a prime example).</p>

<p>1/5 of college students consume 4/5ths of the alcohol on a given campus, as the famous statistic is… yet people who are drunk are less likely to notice just how many are relatively sober and sipping the same cup or two all night. My drunk roommates never caught onto the fact I’d nurse a single beer the whole night at a part, and certainly wouldn’t notice if someone was just drinking two beers per hour. Likewise, the first few parties I went to, I assumed everyone else eas as equally drunk as I was when I first started going to parties. It wasn’t until I was sober I noticed just how sober everyone else was.</p>

<p>Notice the NYTimes didn’t hunt down people with the question, “Are you a high school student who has abstained from stimulants?” – Like Shire said in the article, you’re going to find people who will say it’s a problem anywhere, but that doesn’t make it so. Those people talk a lot. </p>

<p>Note also this article is single-handedly responnsible for making kids, including the original poster, even, curious enough to try it that wouldn’t otherwise try it. Either from the article, or more likely, and as it happened with the Ectasy media hysteria of the 90’s, because their parents read articles like this and get “talked to.”</p>

<p>Despite what PSA’s all say, talking to your kid about drugs does make them curious about the drug, and it’s just another reminder for them to take the drug. The sad reality is the media hype does not, and has never once, dampended a rising trend-- it has always, without fail, led to a worsening of a given drug’s rising trend.</p>

<p>I wonder if it works for doing housework. My house is a pit and I really need to focus…</p>

<p>Despite what PSA’s all say, talking to your kid about drugs does make them curious about the drug, and it’s just another reminder for them to take the drug. The sad reality is the media hype does not, and has never once, dampended a rising trend-- it has always, without fail, led to a worsening of a given drug’s rising trend. </p>

<p>and you are basing this statement on…?</p>

<p>Agree with mytrunnow- Not aware of any literature suggesting that reading about the effects of licit and illicit drug use makes one try them.</p>

<p>The MCAT and LCAC board was at one point suggesting that individuals being tested for accomodations who were already prescribed a stimulant med should undergo a drug screen at the time of testing to be sure that they were on their med as prescribed. There are reasons that a person would want to take the accomodation test off meds (dont need extra time if your attn or processing speed issues are adequately addressed with meds). Needless to say, many people doing this psych/neuropsych testing are not equiped to run UDS (uring drug screens) so this seems to have gone quiescent.</p>

<p>I didnt know this was such a problem until I stummbled across it on the internet a few weeks ago searching popular drugs on campus. I was shocked. My college junior was surprised I never knew this and felt it was stupid kids so it cause it can affect your heart. Then told me that a friend sold pills for profit to other students . And this friend had plans to pursue law enforcement after college! Not worried about my kids since they are athletes and get drug tested. </p>

<p>on the otherhand—</p>

<p>I can use this to focus on my life — not as sharp thinking or multi-task as I once was. Hard with working. Had some concussions…and early menapause at 40. But my friends say its age that sets me back! haha Im not that old.</p>

<p>I’ve been following this thread with interest and have read all the pages - I am interested because pumacub has returned from college asking to see doc for trial of ADD meds. Pumacub has always had executive function issues and large discrepancy between verbal and performance tasks, but is highly gifted, so has gotten along fine with alot of struggles organizationally rather than academically through HS (IB diploma). Now at college cub says it is just time to try what is available to help as is struggling organizationally, with planning, breaking things into parts, “getting going” on things, etc. Cub has taken advantage of resources available (study groups, free group tutoring, etc).
I was surprised by the request but respectful of the mature way cub is approaching the topic - says this is perfect time to try since FT job plus summer class will be organizationally challenging and living at home provides others to objectively observe and share what they see. </p>

<p>Some posts here seem to believe that this is an inappropriate idea. When cub approached the pediatrician who has known cub since birth - Dr says - “wondered when this might come up” as dr has discussed possibility through childhood.</p>

<p>Am interested in opinions and voices of experience in what to look for.
Thanks</p>

<p>It sounds as if pumacub has never been properly diagnosed with ADHD (the verbal/performance IQ discrepancy is not an ADHD marker, though it does point to non-verbal learning disability, which is not drug-treatable). That diagnosis, based on a full evaluation by a professional in the field, should precede any “trial” of stimulants, and I hope his doc doesn’t just prescribe them without it. That’s bad medicine.</p>

<p>If you dig for it online, there are some scientific research papers calling for more studies on the co-morbidity of verbal retrieval LD and adhd. If the LD is diagnosed in educational testing, it can make a real difference as how teachers view your child in h.s., if the hs honors accomodations. Don’t know about college yet.</p>