Troubled Teens Resources

Attention Deficit Disorder when treated with medication has a definite downside that is not fully or adequately discussed by advocates of Ritalin and other various amphetamines. It can start a troubled teen down the road to addiction. Be it Ritalin or any other mood altering drug, when administered without any attempt to address the behavioral problems sans drugs you are instructing an adolescent that the answer to all of his problems will lie in a pill.

And for teens who experience some kind “high” from their medication, the next step is to see if doubling up on the dose makes them even higher.

“At least one boy admitted to police that he snorted prescription medication in a bathroom at Lake Denoon Middle School on April 3. Four kids had their hands on the bag of attention deficit drugs, according to Muskego police.
[..]
Many drugs now abused by teens are found in the family medicine cabinet.”

Unfortunately,a teens education can be derailed when being treated for ADHD.

“One former addict is not surprised that middle school kids abused attention deficit pills. Jordan Neary, 23, said he started on the same destructive path in his early teens.

“I ended up in the ICU at the age of 16,” he told TODAY’S TMJ4 reporter Tom Murray. “I overdosed right in my high school.

Doctors prescribed Adderall and Ritalin for Neary’s attention deficit disorder, but medical use turned to dangerous abuse.”

The middle school teens now face expulsion and the young man quoted above struggled with his addiction for years before being able to achieve sobriety.

He’s been sober for four years and now counsels incoming addicts at Teen Challenge of Wisconsin, a Christian-based drug rehab program. He said he sees a lot of his own struggle in the people he treats.

“So many of them make statements of how, as a young boy, they started snorting and taking larger amounts of their Ritalin,” he said. “It made them more comfortable with taking a pill.”
(Source)

Parents will want to investigate all alternatives to medication and consult with more than one authority before deciding how to work with their teen’s ADD.