Let me preface this by explaining that I am a little biased due to my history. When I was 8 years old (back around 2002), my teachers recommended that I be "tested" for "ADD" due to my lack of ability to concentrate in class. I went to the doctor's office and of course it turned out that I had "ADD" so they put me on meds.

When you're a little kid, you aren't super aware of what is going on/what you're putting into your body, so I didn't really think twice about it. A few months later, I began to show signs of disobedience and had quite a temper. I could no longer get to sleep without lying awake for hours on end. At 8 years old, I learned what it feels like to become dependent on amphetamines and what it feels like to come down from them. I was strung out all of the time.

Fast forward to my freshman year of high school. I had been on various stimulant medications for around 7 years. I had developed suicidal depression and anxiety. I couldn't eat breakfast or lunch due to the nature of stimulants and their ability to suppress appetite. I was a skeleton, and almost physically unable to eat. By this point, I had become so dependent on the medication that I was back to where I was before I was taking it while I took the medecine. Only when I did not take it, I would have debilitating nausea, muscle cramps, headaches, lethargy, worsen my deepening depression, etc.

One day I had enough. I told my mom I was done with the meds. So I quit the first day of summer after my freshman year of high school. I threw up every day for about a week. I was cold and hot at the same time, sweating and shivering. I LITERALLY did not have the energy to leave my house and hang out with friends. I moped around the house for about two weeks, just eating everything in sight. This rebound effect made me gain tons of weight in an unhealthy amount of time.

It took about two years of no ADD meds to get my brain functioning back to normal. School was an ENORMOUS struggle for me those next two years, because I had become so dependent on it to function. Without it, I was naked. I can't even explain to you what it feels like to have to read your textbook readings 5 times over because you literally cannot remember what you just read. What it feels like to sit and class and not have any idea what is going on because of all of the depressing and anxious thoughts filling every crevice of your consciousness. It was absolute hell.

I found meditation and psychedelics and they undoubtedly helped me learn how to control my brain again. I have my life back. But so many of my friends don't, and I really feel for them. My brain STILL isn't 100% back to normal and its been 4 years since I quit taking the meds. I won't be able to save them or the millions of children that will become dependent on them the rest of their lives because a pharmaceutical company paid their family physician to recommend the medication.

WAKE UP PEOPLE! It is true that some people absolutely NEED medication to function. But when judging on a case-to-case basis, remember that drugs create tolerance, both mental and physical. The medicine will sure as hell help for a little while, until the brain becomes used to the medicine and suddenly you are back to square one, only now without it you are worse off than before. Drugs are not the answer in helping a child be happy or productive. Do we really want a generation of Americans that cannot function without amphetamines every single waking hour of their lives?

Love and Light.