This is to be one of the chapters in the book Medicine Children, having to do with the absolute hypocrisy of mainstream America hitting the panic button around children attending sacred indigenous ceremony with their parents and possibly taking a small amount of a naturally occurring plant-based (and yes psychoactive) substance that has been proven over generations to be safe and indeed helpful to the humans who use it (whew!), versus the current practice in this country of over-diagnosing and over-medicating SO many of our children with chemically produced drugs that have a plethora of harmful immediate side-effects and absolutely unknown long-term effects. Just starting to look at the research on this subject makes my brain spin. How can I tease this unwieldy and for me very emotional subject into a sane discourse? Is it even possible for me to present this information in a non-judgmental, rational, and hopefully 'bridge-building' fashion when I feel so deeply about it that I want to shake this country (and maybe the entire "civilized" world) by the shoulders and scream in its face, "STOP THIS INSANITY!", which obviously brings my point of view into the 'bridge-burning' category! However I know better - and so I will endeavor to reign it in and present my case.
You see, I WANT to connect the dots here. I want to be able to use my rational mind to develop my arguments in such a way that they cannot be written off as baseless rantings. Yet part of my difficulty in exploring this aspect of the book is the
question of how much of this subject do I address? I don't want to be
redundant, yet I would like to present enough information and reference material to prove to the average reader that there is evidence of truth in what I am writing; to make them curious enough to go to the references provided and look into it themselves; basically to make the case about the hypocrisy inherent in our cultural taboo towards psychoactive substances.
This issue is huge and many faceted, and is not isolated to just the United States, but is in fact a world-wide phenomena. There are hundreds of articles detailing the over-medication of children, the horrendous risks of very strong pharmaceuticals on developing bodies, and the risks of long-term addiction and other very serious side-effects. There are statistics available about the multi-billions of dollars being made by pharmaceutical companies, about incriminating lawsuits wherein these companies offered incentives (aka bribes) to physicians to prescribe their drug, and about docotrs receiving incentives to prescribe drugs on the basis of 'off-label' uses, despite the fact that this is illegal, a fact that is often ignored by both doctors and big pharma-companies. There is also evidence and information about the bias towards medicating welfare and foster children significantly more that other children.
Ok, now for some numbers. Today there are over seventeen million children worldwide who have been prescribed psychiatric drugs. Side effects of these medications include depression and suicide;
hostility; violent, aggressive, and psychotic behavior; and heart
attacks, strokes, and sudden death (1). Nearly eleven percent of American kids are labeled as ADHD - meaning about one in ten kids. Of these, about two-thirds are on some kind of prescription medication, which are Class Two narcotics, from which the short-term side effects may include
permanent brain damage, stunted growth, cardio-toxicity and liver damage, changes in
personality, hallucinations, paranoia, increased blood pressure, seizures, and cancer (2). The long term effects of these medications aren't even known. Yet six million US kids are taking these drugs!
To compound the issue, many claim that ADHD is not even a real disorder, as the diagnosis is based on very subjective evaluations, including teacher and parental reports. Beverly Eakman, who wrote Cloning of the American Mind, says, 'ADHD is a phenomenon, not a 'brain disease.' It may be that children are the 'canary in the coal mine' for this modern age - and that ADHD is in fact a collection of symptoms resulting from environmental toxins, dietary toxins, and allergies. Dr Mercola, a New York Times bestselling author and proponent of holistic health, suggests a list of alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs for emotional and behavioral challenges in children, including diet, exercise and exposure to sunlight (ie time out doors) (3). I recommend visiting http://articles.mercola.com/ for more detailed information.
This topic is certainly pushing my buttons. While researching today I learned that anti-psychotics and anti-depressants are being prescribed to children even younger than twelve months old. I learned that poor kids on welfare and foster children are prescribed pharmaceutical drugs four times more than other children. I learned that over one million children have been mis-diagnosed with ADHD. Here is an especially disturbing statistic:
"Today, children 5 years old and younger are the fastest-growing segment
of the non-adult
population prescribed antidepressants in the U.S.
Children as young as 4 have attempted suicide
while influenced by such
drugs and 5 year olds have committed suicide." (4)
Appalling, isn't it? I suspect that putting such young children on drugs is done more for the sake of the parents than for the children in question. According to Beverly Eakman, "These drugs make children more manageable, not necessarily
better. Because the diagnosis of
ADHD is fraudulent, it doesn't matter whether a drug 'works.' Children are
being forced to take a drug that is stronger than cocaine for a disease that is
yet to be proven."(5)
So why am I bringing this up? First of all, I want to make it clear that I am not across-the-board anti-pharmaceutical drugs. I know they have a place and I do have experience when the use of such drugs has been helpful to people I personally know. I AM however against the indiscriminate labeling of children (PLEASE go to (6) for a wonderful treatment of this subject!) and against the general mindset of 'take a pill to fix your ill.'
In addition, I am horrified at the amount of drugs we as a culture are taking, and at the thought of what is happening to our water and to all life downstream as our unused and expired drugs as well as the un-metabolized portion of this chemical soup is flushed down our collective toilets into our water systems (7). I am upset at the fact that most prescription drugs are not curative in nature, and are not aimed at healing the underlying roots of whatever problem is manifesting, but aimed instead at treating or minimizing symptoms, sometimes at serious cost. The list of side-effects from various drugs, as detailed above and even worse than that, can make you wonder if the fix isn't worse than the problem! (For a very humorous look at this serious subject, please go to (8) ).
In a recent study by the Mayo Clinic in 2009, nearly seven out of ten Americans were prescribed at least one prescription drug, and many more than one. A whopping one out of four Americans will be given medication for a mental health issue such as depression or anxiety in any given year. (9) We are, in effect, teaching our children from the youngest age to take a pill to subdue or eliminate discomfort, whether it be a headache, or psychological pain, or itching, or for more serious reasons such as heart disease. As a culture we are not, in general, teaching them to look for the root causes of the symptoms and to address these root causes with behavioral or lifestyle changes. We are teaching them to just manage the symptoms - while at the same time teaching them an absolute intolerance towards discomfort. So, when they get to be adolescents, are we really surprised when they turn to recreational drugs, to binge drinking, or to even harder and more dangerous drugs (10) to help them deal?
(See also (11) for a great documentary on this subject, The Drugging of our Children, by Dr. Mercola)
(1) http://www.fightforkids.org/facts.php
(2) http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/12/05/adhd-glyphosate.aspx
(3) ibid.
(4) http://www.fightforkids.org/facts.php
(5) http://www.fightforkids.org/adhd_facts.php
(6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv49RFo1ckQ
(7) http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water
(8) http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/s5vr7a/on-topic---colbert-case-files---side-effects-may-include---
(9) http://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-seventy-percent-of-americans-take-prescription-drugs-062113#2
(10) http://www.teenvogue.com/my-life/2013-09/teen-heroin
(11) http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/20/drugging-children.aspx
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