Stimulants and ADHD—A Tragic Path to Follow
Few young people or their parents have been told that short-term studies of stimulants for ADHD show they are not effective beyond a week or two during which time they suppress the individual’s spontaneous thoughts, feelings and activities.
These young people and families have not been told that long-term studies demonstrate that stimulants become a gateway to additional psychiatric drugs.
The latest scientific literature indicates that boys averaging age 7-9, given a diagnosis of mild hyperactivity in the 1970s and treated with Ritalin (methylphenidate) in small doses, have come to a tragic outcome as a group.
Compared to a control group of normal children from the same time period, they have much higher rates of early death, atrophy of the brain, suicide, psychiatric hospitalization, incarceration, and drug addiction. By almost every measure, they have reduced quality of life and a shortened life.
Ritalin, Focalin, Adderall, Dexedrine and other stimulants are in themselves damaging to the brain and to behavior. But these most devastating lifelong outcomes are the result of how stimulant drugs often lead to use of a wide variety of psychiatric medications over many years.
The children are demoralized by the diagnosis and the lies they are told about how they must suffer from disabilities in attention, concentration, self-control and motor activity for the rest of their lives. They also develop multiple adverse effects such as lethargy and apathy; depression; OCD and even psychosis in a significant number.
These drug-induced symptoms are then mistakenly treated as part of the child’s expanding mental illness. In addition, these addictive drugs change the brains of children, making them more likely to abuse other drugs, especially amphetamines, as young adults.
Instead of hope and enthusiasm for their futures, too many children now grow up believing they are inherently defective, and controlled by bad genes and biochemical imbalances. Then the neurotoxicity of the drugs make them feel that it must be true—the are defective and doomed.
SUMMARIZING THE HARMS INFLICTED ON CHILDREN BY THE ADHD DIAGNOSIS AND STIMULANT DRUGS
(1) The initial stimulant causes adverse effects such as depression, anxiety, agitation, insomnia, psychosis, and aggression, which the health professionals then fail to recognize as harmful drug effects. Often these drug effects are dismissed, overlooked or viewed as the unmasking of other mental disorders, leading to the prescription of cocktails of drugs that over the years ruin the individuals life.
(2) The drugs “work” by stifling spontaneous behavior and enforcing OCD so that the child socializes less, thinks and imagines in a more constricted fashion, and simple cannot take advantage of ordinary growth experiences because of the limits on his social and psychological capacities.
(3) The have not been shown to help academic performance, mental well-being or another other measurement of psychological or physical well-being. Instead, they have been shown to stunt physical growth.
(4) The initial diagnosis of ADHD ruins the child’s sense of personal responsibility and self-control, so that the child no longer thinks he can control himself. The most important aspect of growing up—taking responsibility for one’s thoughts, emotions and conduct—is undermined. This renders the child less able to grow up into a mature adult.
(5) The initial diagnosis of ADHD undermines parental emphasis on teaching discipline and devoting the necessary time to the child. Professionals absolve the parents of parental responsibility, so they do not take classes or get therapy to help them improving their parenting.
(6) The initial diagnosis of ADHD discourages teachers from teaching discipline to children who need attention, and so the child is robbed of learning self-discipline in the classroom.
Source: Dr. Breggin’s website
Not satisfied with this huge expansion of the drug marketplace, psychiatrists advocating on behalf of drug companies began to diagnose thousands of children with bipolar disorder. The purpose? To justify giving more “mood stabilizer” and “antipsychotic” drugs to children. The FDA has cooperated by approving Risperdal for some diagnostic categories in childhood.
As An overall result, millions of children are growing up with drug-intoxicated brains. They are given no hope that they can learn to control their own behavior and grow up to be effective adults—goals they will never achieve with medication-drenched brains.
At the same time, parents and teachers have become indoctrinated into believing that they cannot effectively raise or teach the children in their care and must instead resort to medical management by “experts.” This massive disenfranchisement of parents and teachers has huge consequences in terms of depriving children of the care they need and depriving parents and teachers of the opportunity to exercise their skills and authority, and to improve their approaches to individual children, families and classrooms.
Many drug-treated children will suffer from irreversible brain changes that hamper their mental life. In the case of stimulants, many will have their growth stunted and become prone to cocaine addiction in young adulthood. As a result of neuroleptics like Zyprexa, Risperdal and Abilify, many will suffer from development delays and from tardive dyskinesia with its irreversible abnormal movements that impair and stigmatize them. Dr. Breggin has evaluated dozens of children in his practice who have developed tardive dyskinesia from the newer antipsychotic drugs.
Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society.
Fortunately, there is a way to mitigate many of the symptoms of ADHD without dangerous prescription stimulants. Natural remedies include supplements, a healthy diet and lifestyle changes that can help to ease the devastating symptoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp8TMxUQ_LE
Psychiatric Medications and School Shootings
What is it we never see in the press about the tragic mass shootings that are happening now on a routine basis? What pharmaceutical drugs these shooters are on, their health history and who the doctors are who are responsible for the physical and mental health of of these mass murders, that’s what!
The Guardian reported in 2017, “Pharmaceutical companies spend far more than any other industry to influence politicians,” having poured “close to $2.5bn into lobbying and funding members of Congress over the past decade.” This dwarfs the “gun lobby’s” political contributions, mind you. A correlation between mass shooters and psychiatric drug use certainly exists, but is never addressed by mainstream media because these companies alo pour in millions in advertising to the networks.
Twenty-seven drug regulatory agency warnings cite psychiatric drug side effects of mania, psychosis, violence and homicidal ideation; 1,531 cases of psychiatric drug induced homicide/homicidal ideation have been reported to the US FDA; 65 high profile cases of mass shootings/murder have been committed by individuals under the influence of these drugs, yet there has never been a federal investigation into the link between seemingly senseless acts of violence and the use of mind-altering psychotropic drugs.
Yet in the Associated Press and several Washington newspapers we read a hysterical wave of protest after the National Rifle Association’s incoming president linked school shootings and other violence to using medications such as Ritalin:
George DuPaul, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania said, “There’s really no evidence whatsoever that links treatment for ADHD with Ritalin and drugs like that with violence, let alone gun violence.” If anything, DuPaul said, children tend to be less aggressive. Right here in this statement we see how mass killings have become sanctioned by the press and mainstream institutions.
Dr. Leonard Sax, who is both a physician and a psychologist, says in the New York Times, “The next time you hear a doctor say, with regard to prescribing stimulant medications, “let’s try it and see whether it helps,” I suggest that you run – do not walk – to the nearest exit.”
Chemically similar to cocaine, the short-term side effects of Ritalin include “nervousness, agitation, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, palpitations, headache, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and psychosis.” Criminal Justice Research states plainly, “Several infamous school shooters had been taking prescription drugs at the time of their attacks. T. J. Solomon was taking Ritalin when he went on a shooting spree at his Georgia high school, and some evidence suggests Kip Kinkel had taken Ritalin as well.” Several does not cover it, more like a horde!
Dr. Kelly Brogan writes, “We know that all drugs have side effects. That’s just part of the deal, right? But is it really possible that an antidepressant can cause a sane person to act like a cold-blooded criminal?” The answer is yes and worse, they cause people to become mass murders going on killing sprees, that are destroying the fabric of society in America, and the press do not have the integrity to report on it.”
As reported in The New York Times, three million children in this country take drugs for ADHD. In the past 30 years, there has been a 2,000 percent increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder. Among many children, the abuse of Ritalin has become commonplace.
The result of the damage done by Ritalin in the brain is similar to frontal lobe syndrome. Over time, frontal lobe syndrome can render a person increasingly incapable of inhibiting impulsive behaviors. In addition, such damage contributes to the onset of clinical depression.
And no, side effects are not part of the deal, they are the main deal. Side effects, we are learning, are the main effects of these horrific drugs that pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, medical organizations and doctors are jumping for joy to ram down our children’s’ throats while they get rich doing it.
The mass murders we are seeing weekly in American schools do not start with the guns that are being used or the witless people who are pulling the triggers but with the owners and editors of major news papers, everyone who works at the FDA, pharmaceutical executives and politicians everywhere who do not know an important issue when they see one.
There have been 65 high profile acts of senseless violence, including mass school shootings, mass stabbings, and even the intentional crashing of a commercial airplane, committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs since October 9, 2017, according to CCHR International. Since then the list has grown tragically with the number of young people being mowed down accelerating and yet the pharmaceutical paradigm of death by drugs lives on.
The New American Magazine published, “From Prozac to Parkland: Are Psychiatric Drugs Causing Mass Shootings?” listing many shootings leading off with:
The Parkland, Florida, shooter who murdered 17 on Valentine’s Day, was on medication for emotional issues, his aunt related. As information about a “perpetrator emerges, a relative confides to a newspaper that the ‘troubled youth’ who committed the mass murder was on psychiatric medications — you know, those powerful, little understood, mind-altering drugs with fearsome side effects including ‘suicidal ideation’ and even ‘homicidal ideation.’”
Connecticut, killer Adam Lanza, who killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2013. He also was on medication, according to family friend Louise Tambascio. Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox — like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and many others, a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.”
“The drug Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was prescribed Valium, which is a benzodiazepine documented by several studies to cause violence, aggression, homicidal ideation and suicide risk or attempts. New court records obtained by CNN indicate Paddock had been prescribed the drug as far back as 2013.”
Dr. Hyla Cass writes, “Why a shooter killed twenty children and six adults in a Newtown elementary school. 60 Minutes reported that Adam Lanza was taking prescribed medication, but the mainstream media failed to follow up on this. The Virginia Tech shooter murdered thirty-two. Cho was prescribed the antidepressant drug Prozac prior to his rampage. Jeffrey Weiss went on a shooting rampage on March 21, 2005, at Red Lake High School that left ten dead, including him. Earlier that day, Weiss had killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend. He was on Prozac and the dosage had recently been increased.”
Dan Roberts wrote back in 2013, “Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and its not the weapons used. The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.”
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