Kids on Adderall (Dextroamphetamines)
After working today, I must express my concern that dextroamphetamines are not substitutes for good parenting.
This morning, a mother comes into my pharmacy that I gathered was pretty agitated by the way she was talking to her son and franticly walking. We had just opened, so naturally I was starting on things to help the day run smoother: fixing the computers, clearing the work stations, catching up with the coworkers, yada yada. So, this woman comes to the “pick up” counter, slams the prescription onto the table, and says, “He needs this right now. He has none in his system, and he needs it now.” The way she said it made it seem like it was our fault that her son had run out of medication and that we were responsible for his rowdiness.
So, naturally, I smiled and said, “okay!” The customer is always right, which the is the sad truth of the pharmacy, even though, as a practitioner speaking to a patient, I would have scolded her. My pharmacist told her that it would take some time because at the moment I was reassembling the computer so that I could hide all the exposed wires. She then continues to attack us, “Well, then it’s on you if he decides to run a muck.”
She turns around, and we all look at each other like … what the f*ck? So here was a kid, really young, taking the max modified release dosage of Adderall for a very severe case of bad parenting. It breaks my heart to see kids on these medication when I know all they need is to run around and expel all that energy.
I’m not in any way saying that there aren’t kids who really need it, but I want to emphasize that drugs like dexroamphetamines are for very specific disease states: ADHD and narcolepsy. It upsets me to no end when doctors prescribe these drug to people who simply need to have better concentration for an exam, perform better at concentration-based tasks, or, ironically, keeping kids under control. What are doctors thinking now-a-days? Why have people become so dependent on drugs?
