Tag Archives: Ritalin

Adderall’s on First, Ritalin’s on Second: The Ongoing Saga of PEDs in Baseball

It seems like an eternity since Major League Baseball finally got around to admitting it had a problem of the performance enhancing variety, but in reality it has barely been a half a decade. Players once thought to be first-ballot Hall of Famers are struggling to garner more than a pittance of support from sports writers and fans alike as the sport carries on the best it can. Attendance remains high—despite an ongoing quasi-recession—television revenue is streaming in and it appears that many of the measures taken by commissioner Bud Selig and his merry band of nitwits salvaged what little dignity this great sport had left in the wake of all that ugliness. But alas, as always, looks can be deceiving. I, for one, was more than a little bit surprised when MLB decided to include a ban on stimulants in its new drug program a few years back….When the league banned these drugs, an amazing thing happened. The number of players claiming and obtaining “therapeutic use” exemptions for stimulants nearly quadrupled from 28 to 103…I mean how the hell can ADHD multiply fourfold in a sport in a single year? How can it become three times as prevalent in that sport as in the adult population? Is it contagious? Can Derek Jeter give it to Dustin Pedroia if he coughs on him as he slides into second base? Of course not.

Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs (yeah, ya think???)

“ADHD, it’s just a couple of symptoms — it’s not a disease,” the Dutch researcher tells All Things Considered weekend host Guy Raz. The way we think about — and treat — these behaviors is wrong, Pelsser says. “There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, ‘OK, we have got those symptoms, now let’s start looking for a cause.’ ”

According to Pelsser, 64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. Researchers determined that by starting kids on a very elaborate diet, then restricting it over a few weeks’ time.

Concern over high medication rate among foster kids—Review of kids’ psych drugs urged

Giovan Bazan was 6 when a doctor first gave him medicine to treat his diagnosis of hyperactivity. Bazan admits he was unruly at the time. Perhaps it was because the only parent he had ever known, his foster mother since he was an infant, had just died. No one asked about that. Nor did anyone check years later to see that he was on a double dose of Ritalin when another physician, seeing a boy so mellowed out that he barely reacted, prescribed an antidepressant. “They start you on one thing for a problem, then the side effects mean you need a new medicine,” Bazan said. “As a foster kid, I’d go between all these doctors, caseworkers, therapists, and [it] seemed like every time there was a new drug to try me on.”

When he turned 18, Bazan elected to stop all medications. It turned out he didn’t need any of them.

Note to Press Re: Arizona Shooting—Before Touting Pharma’s “More Mental Health Treatment Needed” Line – Try Asking The Right Questions

Every single time there is a school shooting, or some senseless massacre, the press are quick to start touting the need for more mental health treatment to “prevent” these tragedies—well before the facts of the case have been investigated. In fact, most of the press don’t appear as interested in bringing the facts to light as they are in making “recommendations” based on assumptions and calling for more mental health services/treatments. How one can make recommendations before finding out what actually occurred seems illogical to us, and we’re hoping we’re not the only ones.