Netflix is about to premier an important new film, Take Your Pills, providing yet even more evidence of the dangers of ADD/ADHD drugs, and the astronomical numbers of people prescribed potentially dangerous psychostimulant drugs (i.e. Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin) as a result. Why do so many people use these drugs with seemingly so little concern? From my own direct clinical observations I have witnessed the increase in ADD/ADHD “diagnoses” (when pediatricians quickly provide a prescription upon request by patients, often without any true psychological assessment ever happening), and have also seen a disturbing, dramatic surge in the number of people using ADD/ADHD drugs. Are we supposed to believe we are simply an ADD/ADHD society, and desperately in need of lifelong drugs to treat our condition (one that is curiously much more rampant here than anywhere else in the world)? Or should we become much better critical consumers, and use films like Take Your Pills to generate greater scrutiny and oversight relating to what many consider a major American problem?
If you or someone you know has been ascribed the ADD/ADHD label, I strongly recommend you process the following questions:
- Has an authentic diagnosis actually taken place, or has your prescribing physician simply doled out some ADD/ADHD drugs to “fix” your self-reported issues of struggles dealing with focus?
- Speaking of an authentic psychological diagnosis, keep in mind there are no blood tests, EKG, or any other biological means for determining who is and isn’t ADD/ADHD. Instead, a diagnosis is arrived at by simply checking off boxes describing incredibly vague markers (i.e. “sometime squirms in seat”).
- Have you ever stopped to think that focus and attention are difficult life skills to master, and that it is quite normal for most people to struggle with focus and attention? Over the years pharmaceutical companies have done a terrific marketing job convincing us that only abnormal people struggle with focus and attention, when, in fact, the complete opposite is true.
- If you, or someone you love, has been placed on ADD/ADHD drugs do you know the side effects of that drug(s)? Furthermore, has the prescribing doctor outlined specific behavioral markers to use to evaluate future progress — and the eventual end of your drug regimen? If no future progress reports are established, how will you ever know if you are improving with your focus and attention?
- Do you know that no drug can direct itself to only adjust the qualities in your life that you don’t like. For example, there is no ADD/ADHD drug out there that will only positively impact focus and attention without posing any threat to other more desirable qualities, including spontaneity and creativity.
Ask around and I’m quite sure you will find that many of the people in your life right now have been “diagnosed” as ADD/ADHD. Does it seem odd to you that so many people are ADD/ADHD, and that they are taught to believe they need a lifelong drug cocktail in order to overcome their focus and attention problems? If that seems odd it’s because it is odd, and it’s time to start using our critical thinking to push back on this disturbing and dangerous trend.
drstankovich.com
