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Let me tell you a bit about my experience with Ritalin.

My sister has two sons. One (let's call him "Ralph") is exceedingly
bright, active, and friendly. The other ("Tommy") is also active,
exceptionally curious and athletic, but a a bit of a discipline problem.
The most notable was that he would frequently awake in the night and raid
the refrigerator, and tear up stuff.

She was told to put them on Ritalin, which she did, for years. It turned
them into zombies. The spark faded from their eyes when they were on that
drug, and they appeared listless. Their voices even changed -- gone was
the confident, fully-charged lungs voice they used when sober. That was
replaced with a light, airy, cracking and timid voice.

Needless to say, I did not like what she was willingly doing to her
innocent little boys.

My wife and I took them on a week's vacation, and we swore that they would
be going cold-turkey off of those chemicals. For a week, they didn't see
Pill One. We marched their little butts all over creation and back, and
didn't slow down a bit to wait for them, so they HAD to keep up. And they
did! We hiked, made campfires, cooked out, looked for flat rocks to skip
on the stream, worried lizards and snakes and other animal life along the
streambank, and other physical activities.

Within that week, "Tommy's" discipline problem was under control. After
the second day, at each day's end, they were both begging to go to bed, and
both of them slept throughout the night without a peep. "Tommy" also had
not been taught proper table manners, and at the beginning of the week, ate
like a wild animal. We stopped that in short order, and by the end of the
week, he was proudly showing us his new skill at eating correctly and
politely.

We knew the lessons they'd learned would be unlearned when they got back
home and were put back on drugs and plunked down in front of the hypnosis
machine again, but we felt compelled to show them "the other side". Who
knows, but maybe some day they will remember the experiences and make
better choices for themselves and their children.

I believe the biggest mistake schools make is to not match what they do
with each child to what that child needs to do. In the case of young boys,
old schoolmasters knew what they were doing -- most of them, you just WEAR
OUT. It is their "disconnect" with students that led me to vow my children
will never see the inside of a government school; and as most private
schools in many way mirror public ones, I concluded homeschooling was the
way to go.

Anyway, more specific to the below quoted post, I don't have any great love
for the forced looting of the Tobacco industry. Those warning labels have
been on cigarettes for almost forty years now; anyone who didn't quit
smoking when they were already proven to be dangerous should have borne the
full cost of their medical treatment. It's called "responsibility".

The use of Ritalin and other psychoactive substances is of a different
nature -- it is teachers, school administrators, doctors, lawyers, and drug
makers colluding to force innocent young boys (some girls too, but the vast
majority are young boys) to ingest a harmful chemical to make them docile
and compliant. The boys have no choice in the matter, unlike smokers did.

All I can say is, Just Say No to Drugs.

-- Marc Montoni


>Just a little food for thought_________________ The same attorney who just
>won the hudge case against the tobacco industry is now suing the drug
company
>that make ritalin. The basis for his case is that he claims he has proof
>that ADD was a made up disorder by the drug company and the american board
of
>pediatrics to make money and sell more drugs. Sounds crazy, but it will be
>fun to see what comes of it.
> One thing I do know is that in our area lots of people are making
>money fast and furious off of these kids. I have seen so many suposed ADD
>kids come in to homeschooling and eventually all their symptoms go away