The RITALIN Made Me Do It!

Remember the Scott Pittmen case from last year? A 12 year old boy on Prozac kills his grandparents, burns down the house in which they live, hides in the woods and fabricates a story to police?

Ritalin, a drug that is used to calm super hyper children down…right? Tell me this, if this is a good drug to give children, then why is it in the same category as morphine, opium, and cocaine? This drug category happens to be the highest potential for abuse.

Well if it’s so bad then Why are doctors prescribing this drug so often?

Ritalin is an amphetamine-like drug widely prescribed to children for the alleged mental disorder Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) a psychiatric label for children who fidget or are inattentive
Despite the lack of any scientific basis for this alleged psychiatric malady, children are being drugged by the millions with this cocaine-like substance even though Ritalin's manufacturer warns that "...frank psychotic episodes can occur with abusive use" and psychiatry's Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (the DSM) states that the major complication of Ritalin withdrawal is suicide!
If this were not bad enough, more than 900,000 children and adolescents between the ages of six and eighteen are now on prescribed psychiatric anti-depressant drugs. These drugs, particularly the newer anti-depressants, such as Prozac, Zoloft and Luvox called SSRIs, are also tied by extensive research and all too many news headlines to acts of violence and suicide. In fact, in just one four-year-period, between 1988 and 1992, there were reports of more than 90 children and adolescents who had suffered suicidal or violent self-destructive behavior while on Prozac.

SO IS THIS A ONE-OF-A-KIND DEAL?
No. This is all to common. I could list 300 instances, but here’s eleven:

1.. On May 25, 1997, 18-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and murdered a 7-year-old African American girl in Las Vegas, Nevada. Strohmeyer had been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Dexedrine, a Ritalin-like drug, immediately prior to the killing.

2. On October 1st, 1997, in Pearl Mississippi, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed his mother, 50-year-old Mary Woodam, to death and then went to his high school where he shot nine people - killing two teenage girls and wounding seven others. Published reports say he was on Prozac.

3. Exactly two months later on Dec 1, 1997, Michael Carneal, a 14-year-old, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded, one of whom was paralyzed. Carneal was reportedly on Ritalin.

4. Then in February, 1998 a young man in Huntsville, Alabama, while on Ritalin went psychotic - chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

5. On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 14-year-old Mitchell Johnson shot 15 people killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others. According to one report, the boys were believed to be on Ritilan.

6. Two months later another grisly school massacre occurred. On May 21, 1998 15-year-old Kip Kinkel of Springfield, Oregon murdered his parents and proceeded to his high school where he went on a rampage killing two students and wounding 22 others. Kinkel had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.

7. On April 16th, 1999, 15-year-old Shawn Cooper of Notus, Idaho took a 12-guage shot gun to school and started firing, injuring one student and holding the school hostage for about 20 minutes. Terrified students ran for their lives, some barricading themselves in classrooms. Cooper had been taking Ritalin when he fired the shotgun's rounds.

8. The incident in Idaho did not make the national press (no one, thank God, was killed). But all that changed four days later when 18-year-old Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School before killing himself. Harris was on one of the SSRI anti-depressants called Luvox.

9. One month later to the day, on May 20th of this year TJ Solomon, a 15-year-old high school student in Conyers, Georgia, while on Ritalin opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates. Thankfully, none were killed.

10. Then there's 14-year-old Rod Mathews who had been prescribed Ritalin since the third grade and beat a classmate to death with a bat.

11. And 19-year-old James Wilson who had been on psychiatric drugs for 5 years and took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school in Greenwood, South Carolina killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers!

STOP! WE HAVE THE WRONG CULPRIT!!

So what is the solution?
79 percent of hyperactive children improved when suspect foods were eliminated from their diets, only to become worse again when the foods were reintroduced. Artificial colorings and flavorings were the most serious culprits; sugar was also found to have a noticeable effect."
Another excellent study based on the Fiengold diet involved 276 youths at a detention facility in Virginia who were put on the diet for two years.
The results? Insubordination dropped 55 percent, theft decreased 77 percent, and hyperactivity fell 65 percent.
The most remarkable study of the diet was conducted over a four-year-period on a million school children in 803 public schools in New York City. The schools eliminated foods containing artificial flavors, colors and preservatives from the school cafeterias and also reduced the amount of sugar that was available. The results were startling.

MY OPINION:
I think an EIGTH GRADER (Matt Scherve) from Bethesda, Maryland summed it up best:

"Schools don't like extremists who like to think and question. They are dreamers. That doesn't mean that they are wrong. They just don't fit the norm, so they are labeled and damned, labeled as A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder).
So the doctors dope us up with Ritalin and control our minds with low doses of speed. The teachers pay us no mind until our minds are under control. It screws up our train of thought and makes us one-dimensional. We get headaches and almost depressed getting on and off it. It takes away extra imagination and flow of mind, hence destroying the true, purest ideas of my mind. I can't think right, and for six hours of the day, I'm not me. I'm what the system would like me to be.
The schools should shape our education around our idiosyncratic minds, our quaint minds, our quirky minds, our crackpot minds, our curious minds. Where would we be without eccentric people? We need them. The system should not shape our minds with dope and low doses of speed; the system should be shaped around us.
Ritalin does not help me learn; it simply lowers my mind down between the selected lines in which we are taught. Who's going to get further in life, the schmo with the same textbook answers and ideas, or the "A.D.D. kid" who can offer ideas that have never been thought of or a new perspective on something?
I truly look forward to the day when Ritalin isn't an answer. To the day when every student is labeled 'learner.'"

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SOURCES:

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=6249