Heartbreaking New York Times ADD Article

Don’t Drink the Kool-ade

Another wonderful graphic courtesy of aritist/educator Phillip Martin

“Ritalin, like all medications, can be useful when used properly and dangerous when used improperly. Why is it so difficult for so many people to hold to that middle ground?”
~ Dr. Edward Hallowell

Regarding the opinion piece “Ritalin Gone Wrong” by Alan Sroufe, Ph.D.
(NY Times, Jan. 29, 2012):

• You don’t have to believe in medication.
• You don’t have to take it.
• You don’t have to give it to your kids.

You don’t EVEN have to do unbiased research before you ring in with an opinion on medication or anything else having to do with ADD/ADHD.

HOWEVER, when you’re writing a piece to be published in a newspaper with the stature of The New York Times, it is simply unprofessional – of the writer, the editors, and the paper itself — to publish personal OPINION in a manner that will lead many to conclude that the piece quotes scientific fact.  

For a rebuttal, please take the time to read Dr. Hallowell’s blog article in response to Sroufe (linked to his quote, above, and in the “related content” list below). Nothing I could say along those lines could be nearly as eloquent or effective – or charge neutral – as his words.

This post will take another tact, just as soon as I get my feelings off my chest.

I’m appalled.  And bitterly disappointed in what I have always
considered MY hometown paper, regardless of where else in
the United States I lay me down to sleep.

What Happened to the Times?

It’s ironic that this recent article appears in the very paper where, on October 11, 1987, an article in their Magazine Section led to my own diagnosis — and the medication that saved my life.

The day I discovered that article that altered the trajectory of my being forever, I had just spent an hour on the telephone with my best friend Robin, a therapist, sobbing hysterically because my latest attempt to organize my office created such chaos that I found myself in the middle of the room holding a sheet of paper with, literally, no clear space to put it down.

I had, as I’ve learned to describe it, “Boggled.”  Action was impossible.  My whole being was on “TILT,” to use an old pinball term. I was finally desperate enough to stop trying to look good and tell the truth about what life was like for me.

And then the skies parted

At Robin’s suggestion, I took my two little Shi Tzu’s for a walk, to try to put some physical distance between myself and my problem.  Distracted by leash logistics, I left behind anything to clean up after them  – a “pooper scooper” law in New York City that carried a $50 per dog fine I couldn’t afford.

Spying some slick pages in a sidewalk garbage can, I retrieved The New York Times Magazine section.  Distracted again, I began to read rather than scoop.

The article was Frank Wolkenberg‘s Out of a Darkness.  The tears of recognition began to fall almost immediately.  I was openly sobbing when I got to the list of symptoms — mindless of the fact that I was making a public spectacle of myself, crying over garbage.

Finally, I know what’s wrong with me!  And there’s a drug!

I took that article with me to my therapist the next day, barely intelligible as I blubbered my way through it with her.  I began to put my list of symptoms together and bawled with every new discovery.  And I began the long process of recovery.

With an IQ in the gifted range, my life simply did not BEGIN until I was properly medicated at 39.  When  you take away my medication, like the patients in the movie Awakenings, I go back to that time when I could not function well enough to have any sort of a life worth living.

Better Late than Never – but even better, much earlier

I am a [life] coaching pioneer, founder of the ADD Coaching field, and The ADD Poster Girl. Side effects preclude methylphenidate [generic Ritalin] in my case, but I have taken dexedrin-based ADD stimulant medication for over 20 years now.

Don’t tell ME there is no long term efficacy!

• I struggle still, remnants of conclusions formed from numerous mistakes made during the almost four decades prior to diagnosis and medication.
• My life will never be what it might have been, had I been able to take advantage of the support of diagnosis and medication since childhood.

It breaks my heart that many parents will take the recent Times article as gospel, dooming their children to a life of needless struggle and under-performance
similar to my own, simply because they will be afraid to pursue medication.

“Information is the Booby Prize”
~ mentor & coaching field founder, Thomas, J. Leonard

I am now an ADD expert – globally well-informed on anything and everything impacting Executive Functioning Dysregulations right down to neurochemistry. Believe me, I KNOW what to do to work with and around ADD. I teach it. I coach it. I train others to coach it.

Without my medication, however, I can’t DO what I know, any more than I can focus on the words I am typing without my glasses. But still, I’d have to know how to read!

Glasses Gone Wrong

I think someone needs to write that article.

I’ll bet we could do a study where we gave 6,000 illiterates glasses and VERY few would be able to read without further interventions and supports.

If we weren’t diligent about screening and appropriate prescription strength, I’ll bet many of them would suddenly develop headaches, broken bones from accidents due to visual misperceptions, and who knows what else.

Glasses have dangerous side-effects!

Next, we go after the optometrists and all of the businesses that create frames and lenses – those capitalist pigs who are pushing glasses on well-intended parents.  Because, we’ll be able to prove, many of the illiterate will be able to learn to read just as effectively without glasses.

Ridiculous, yes?

So is the New York Times article. And sad.

And harmful.

Don’t drink the Kool-ade.

Related Articles

• 59 year old’s response to Out of A Darkness
• Orloff/Hallowell conversation about Medication in response to another Time’s article
• Dr. Ned Hallowell’s Rebuttal to Ritalin Gone Wrong
• International [all-Expert] Consensus Statement
• Top Ten Stupid Comments from ADD-Docs (addandsomuchmore.com)
• Sis Boom Bah! (addandsomuchmore.com)

• Ritalin Gone Right: Children, Medications and ADHD (psychcentral.com)
• Psychology Professor Writes Poorly Focused Article about Ritalin in the New York Times (psychologytoday.com)
• Why Ritalin Gone Wrong is Wrong (huffingtonpost.com)
• ADHD: A Modest Proposal (pdresources.wordpress.com)
• ADHD: Is Stigma Back in Style? (ideas.time.com)
• Why we should eliminate the diagnosis of ADHD (kevinmd.com)
• Ritalin Beginnings (attentiondeficitwhatever.wordpress.com)
• Motherlode Blog: Blaming parents for the overuse of ADHD drugs isn’t the best way to bring about change. (parenting.blogs.nytimes.com)
• To Medicate or Not to Medicate (rakadd.wordpress.com)
• NY Times Article Blaims Parents (CH.A.D.D. Leadership Blog response)