Things go better with Crystal

This story shows that kids, or at least the kids’ doctors, are pushing drugs to the teachers. But it also exposes a pop science paradigm supporting drugging the ADHD kids, and denying performance enhancing drugs to the non ADHD among us. Ritalin, the likely subject of the story, is a pharma version of amphetamine, a variety of crystal taken off the streets and given a graduate degree [or at least a year in business school.]

Generations of college students have taken speed to help with finals. In Afghanistan, the American pilots who bombed a Canadian patrol blamed it on the "go pills" [speed] routinely prescribed for military purposes. It would be folly to deny that some or many ADHD kids do better on speed.

Nevertheless, the metaphor supporting ADHD as a somatic disorder treatable by speed is the differential diagnostic that speed slows ADHD kids [or adults] down, but makes “normal” subjects hyper.

BrooklynDodger doubts that an outsider in any field can find a seminal paper through Medline. The critical issue for this metaphor is whether “normal” non-ADHD people objectively score better on speed, and whether this improvement is in the same ballpark as the ADHD victims. That said, the references below support the notion that for victims and non-victims, things go better on coke [or at least crystal].


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Friday, February 11, 2005
Police say educator stole kids' Ritalin
Former Livonia assistant principal is charged with raiding medicine cabinet
By Karen Bouffard / The Detroit News
LIVONIA -- An assistant principal was arraigned Thursday on charges that he stole Ritalin intended for children from his school's medicine cabinet.
…
School officials noticed on two occasions, in November and December, that pills were missing from children's medicine bottles….
Ritalin is a stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which makes it difficult for kids to focus on schoolwork….
The topic was highlighted on the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and in a People magazine article that profiled moms who take the drug to lose weight and increase energy.
..."If you don't have ADHD, Ritalin will make you hyper. But for people who have ADHD, it calms them down and helps them focus."

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J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1996 Nov;37(8):971-87.

Psychostimulant plasma concentration and learning performance.

Kupietz SS, Bartlik B, Angrist B, Winsberg BG.

Six normal adults were administered an oral dose of 0.25 mg/kg of dextroamphetamine, and their learning performance on a paired-associate task and drug blood level were measured at hourly intervals for 5 hours postdrug intake. Dextroamphetamine plasma concentration peaked at 2 to 3 hours following the oral dose, and learning errors were lowest during the same period. A self-report measure of mood also yielded findings consistent with peak plasma concentration. Similar findings obtained with hyperactive children treated with methylphenidate (Ritalin) lead the authors to conclude that the paired-associate learning task may be useful as an indicator of psychostimulant plasma levels, as a predictor of clinical response after an acute dose, and as a highly controlled task for studying psychostimulant drug effects on learning.