ADD drugs don't heal.   Ritalin.  Concerta.  Adderall.  Vyvanse.  Attend.  Regardless of which prescription medication or dietary supplement you consider, all have one thing in common; they don't heal the condition of ADD.  Because they do not heal, you must continue to take the medication, everyday, or else the symptoms will return the next day.  Some of these medications work quickly, reducing symptoms within 30 minutes.  But if you stop taking them, all the symptoms come raging back, as if you never took the medication in the first place.  That's concealing, not healing.

Medications are the foundation of psychiatric treatment today.  The medications prescribed for ADD are accepted as the "standard of care" in medical practice.  If a physician fails to prescribe one of the accepted ADD medications when indicated, she risks malpractice for not following the "standard of care" established by the profession.  Prescription medications have become accepted as mainstream treatment for ADD, and the demand for these drugs is steadily increasing. Global sales of ADD medications are projected to reach $3.3 billion by 2010.

To put this accepted practice into perspective, consider a similar situation to see how you might respond.  Your child has a severe headache, you give him an accepted OTC medication, say ibuprofen, and the headache soon goes away.  The headache returns the next day.  Do you give your child ibuprofen again, or do you call your doctor for advice?  Imagine the doctor telling you to keep giving your child the ibuprofen for his headache, everyday, for the rest of his life.  Would you do it?  Or would you insist on finding out what is causing the headache and correcting it once and for all?  The best that western medicine can offer today for ADD is a lifelong prescription for extremely potent medications.

Most ADD drugs are chemical cousins of cocaine and cause negative side-effects. Stimulant medications such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, and Vyvanse are all Class II substances like many narcotics, so chemically similar to cocaine and "meth" amphetamine that their use is highly controlled by the federal government. No doctor can simply phone in a prescription for these stimulant drugs to the pharmacy because they are "controlled substances".  The physician must provide you with a written prescription which you then take to your pharmacist to be filled. These medications increase the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain to suppress the symptoms of ADD. Taken as directed, stimulant medications do not cause a drug "rush" because their effect is more controlled than cocaine, but they stimulate the brain even more than cocaine!  These drugs are now frequently misused or abused by middle school, high school and college students today.

Because stimulant medications are so powerful, they frequently cause unwanted side-effects in those who take them as prescribed.  Side-effects from taking stimulants for ADD include dry mouth, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, anxiety, weight loss, stunted growth, facial or motor tics, elevated blood pressure, psychotic symptoms like seeing things or becoming paranoid, and even sudden death.  The federal government recognizes research that stimulants increase the risk of sudden death in children and adolescents, even those not medically at risk (having a heart condition), but they still encourage parents to continue giving their children the stimulant medication.

ADD drugs don't teach needed skills. The only thing medications teach you is to use them. Medications encourage dependency. They don't encourage you to become a better person or to learn new skills or overcome bad habits. If you find a medication that relieves symptoms of a disorder for even a few hours, you're unlikely to go anywhere without it.  You become dependent on the medication to do its work for you.  By becoming dependent on the medication you give up the struggle to find a better way, to develop strengths, to overcome weaknesses.  Why bother learning new skills when you have a pill?  Medications encourage us to take the easy way out of difficult situations, perpetuating the "quick-fix" mentality so prevalent today.

No medication ever taught a person a new skill in life.  What would happen to the enormous pharmaceutical industry if they ever developed a medication that actually corrected a disorder once and for all?  No one would need to buy their medication again.  So it is important for repeat sales and pharmaceutical industry profits not to heal disorders but to merely relieve the symptoms temporarily. Healing conditions loses customers.

ADD drugs quit working after a few years.  After a few years of taking stimulant medications, children and adolescents show no better symptom reduction or behavioral performance than their peers who have the same condition and do not take medication.  It's research-proven but has never made headlines. The MTA (Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD), the largest ever study of ADD treatment, began revealing in year three of the follow-up studies that children taking stimulant medications were doing no better than their ADD peers who were not taking medication.  After 2-3 years of ADHD drug use, children "actually showed increased [symptoms]... relative to those not taking medication." Those on ADHD drugs had higher "delinquency scores", and after 6 years in the study ADHD drug use was "associated with worse hyperactivity-impulsivity and oppositional-defiant disorder symptoms" and with greater ""overall functional impairment" than those who never took ADHD medication. This assumes that the children still agreed to take the medication which many do not as they mature.  And failing to give your child ADD drugs has resulted in parents being brought before the courts.

There is enormous pressure from schools, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies and even the courts for parents to medicate their children when they experience symptoms of ADD.  This continues today despite the facts that these drugs don't heal, cause negative side-effects, don't teach needed skills, and quit working after repeated use.  ADD Longmont provides drug-free long-term solutions for adults and children with attention and related issues.