Think Right Now Series:
The ADHD Lie!
by Mike Brescia

The ADHD Lie!
by Mike Brescia

I'd like you to share with you a shocking story from one of the world's most respected experts in the danger of psychiatric drugs. It's a story about a patient of his, normal kid - a kid with no abnormalities whatsoever... a kid like yours, mine, your sister's, your brother's, your neighbor's - who's life was forever altered because of complete ignorance and greed. He's like millïons of other childrën living in a world where we're being guided by supposed professionals who have no earthly idea what they are doing. People who don't have the time or desire or energy to do what is right.

With permission from the publisher, I'd like to share with you a segment of the book, 'The Ritalin Fact Book - What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About ADHD And Stimulant Drugs' by Peter Breggin, MD. His background includes Harvard College and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He has been on Oprah 3 times as well as other major news programs such as 20/20, 60 Minutes, Nightline and many others. He is the author of a dozen books.

Here's Alec's story from The Ritalin Fact Book:

'Alec's journey through drug-oriented biological psyhciatry will seem uncannily familiar to many parents who have accompanied their childrën through similar experiences. Stories like this are becoming unfortunately common in modern psychiatry. They are living, painful illustrations of the dangers of the psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of childrën.

Alec arrived in my office in terrible shape. At the age of eleven, he was physically and psychologically immature. He was skinny, and his ability to control his emotional reactions was minimal. Alec had driven away all his friends, and his older brother never wanted to speak to him again. Even his soccer coach had given up on him, and his school was pushing to transfer him to a facility for the seriously emotionally disturbed.

Alec whined, whimpered, or threw a temper tantrum at the slightest provocation. But it was easy to see the vulnerable, scared kid beneath his manipulative bravado. When he talked about how he 'wanted to die' or how 'everyone hates me,' I saw real despair over his life. When I showed genuine concern for him, he stopped complaining and became eager to hear what I had to say.

By the time he came to see me, Alec had been psychiatric drugs for more than five years. His psychiatrist had him on five (5) psychoactive drugs: the long-acting stimulant Concerta, the mood stabilizer Depakote (divalproex), the tranquilizer sedative Klonopin (clonozepam), the sedating antihypertension agent clonidine, and the adult antipsychotic drug Risperdal (risperidone).

Alex had developed facial twitches and spasms and had lately been describing how 'ghosts' were appearing in his room at night before he fell asleep. His previous psychiatrist had explained that Alec was having hallucinations. He warned that Alec was showing signs of 'emerging childhood schizophrenia' and might need hospitalization for increased medication.

What does a case like this have to do with ADHD?

ADHD was Alec's initial diagnosis at the age of six (6). At that time, he was placed on Ritalin. However, he could have been started on any of the stimulants and the results would probably have been the same.

I suggested to Alec's parents that we conduct the initial evaluation with the adults and that we then include Alec on a separate day. I wanted to establish from the start the importance of the adults getting together to understand the sources and the solution for Alec's problems. At the start, I wanted to make clear that Alec's emotional problems did not spring forth, as they had been previously told, from some abnormality in his brain. I knew we would find stresses and conflicts in his environment and that resolving them would set Alec on the right road. While Alec would have to work on changing his own attitudes and behavior, his parents and teachers would have to improve their approaches to raising and educating him.

At my suggestion, Alec's parents brought along his maternal grandmother, who was involved in his everyday care while both parents worked. Within the first half hour, it became obvious that the entire family had forgotten a critical fact about Alec's life story-that Alec had been a normal child at the age of six when his pediatrician originally stated him on Ritalin.

The medicating had begun, as it most often does, with a recommendation from school for an evaluation. At the start of second grade, Alec's teacher told his parents that he was not paying attention in class, that he was daydreaming and easily distractible, and the he sometimes exhibited 'ADHD behaviors' such as talking out of turn and leaving his seat without permission. She recommended an evaluation for ADHD and gave them a sheet labeled 'Connors Scale,' on which she had checked off the specific behaviors that Alec displayed.

The Connors Scale, like the official diagnostic criteria for ADHD, is nothing more than a list of all the behaviors that can require extra attention in a classroom. However, the teacher had attended a workshop on ADHD and had been told the Connors Scale was a valid diagnostic tool for identifying ADHD.

Up to this point, Alec had never been a problem at home. He was a sweet little boy who got along with everyone, even his older brother. However, the pediatrician, after glancing at the Connors Scale, agreed that Alec had ADHD and prescribed Ritalin.

The school and medical records that the parents brought along with them indicated that Alec had 'improved' within days after starting on Ritalin. That is, his teacher reported that the little boy was 'much nice to have in class' and that all of the 'disruptive behaviors' had disappeared. It seemed like a miracle.

However, within a few months Alec's behavior worsened, and for the first time, he became a little difficult at home. The pediatrician raised the does of Ritalin, and for a while Alec 'improve' again. The pediatrician reassured them that it was just a matter of finding the right does of stimulant.

Eventually the cycle was repeated several times. With a raise in does and then with changes in stimulant medication, Alec would temporarily become calmer and easier to be at home and in school. And then his behavior would get worse than ever before and the medication would be raised or changed again.

In my first session with the adults in the family, it became obvious that the ups and downs on medication kept their hopes alive and obscured the reality that overall the drugs were making him worse.

Within a few weeks after starting Ritalin, his grandmother now remembered, Alec became increasingly 'agitated' at night. He became anxious and rebellious, and refused to go to bed. His pediatrician-apparently unaware that stimulants are contraindicated for agitated childrën- actually increased Alec's Ritalin by adding an afternoon dose. When Alec continued to get more agitated later into the evening, the doctor added the sedative tranquilizer Klonopin to quiet him down and help him sleep.

When Alec's parents forgot on one occasion to bring his medications along on a weekend vacation trip, Alec's behavior deteriorated to a shocking level. He turned into a 'monster,' requiring physical restraint to prevent him from hurting himself or his family. Alec's parents made an emergency phone call to the doctor that weekend, but the pediatrician said nothing about Ritalin and Klonopin causing serious withdrawal reactions. He didn't even hint that Alec's deterioration could be an acute withdrawal reaction from Ritalin and Klonopin. Instead, the doctor said Alec should 'never stop taking the drugs'-even for the rest of his life. Alec was eight at the time.

Alec's behavior continued to get worse on the medications. Toward the end of third grade, the pediatrician referred the family to a local psychiatrist described as a nationally recognized specialist in treating childrën with drugs.

The psychiatrist listened to the story and explained, 'Your son's bipolar disorder is emerging.' The pediatrician's treatment was fine as far as it had gone, he explained, but now an underlying genetic and biological 'bipolar disorder' was coming to the surface. He explained that bipolar disorder was another name for manic-depression and that Alec was having mood swings from manic-like irritability to depression. He fully agreed with the pediatrician that Alec would have to take medication for the remained of his life.

The psychiatrist never mentioned that Ritalin, like any stimulant, can cause extremely out-of-control behavior and that in combination with Klonopin or any tranquilizer, the probability increase for 'disinhibition' with a potentially violent loss of emotional control. Instead, the psychiatrist added Depakote to Alec's regimen, with the intention of controlling his 'bipolar disorder.'

Alec was now nine and a half years old and going into the fourth grade. When Alec became afraid to go to school and displayed increasing anxiety and agitation, the psychiatrist added an adult antihypertensive agent, clonidine, to the boy's regimen. This brought the total drug regimen to four, including Adderall, Klonopin, Depakote, and clonidine.

The psychiatrist failed to mention that clonidine is not approved for the treatment of any psychiatric disorders. Instead, he told them it was used as a 'mood stabilizer'. In reality, clonidine is a dangerous drug used to control hypertension in adults that has become a fad treatment for upset childrën because if tends to heavily sedate them. I have seen childrën nod off in a session due to clonidine. The psychiatrist also failed to tell them that coniine and stimulants, in combination, can impair heart function and cause fatal arrhythmias. He did, however, correctly warn them that clonidine could cause a spiking of blood pressure if abruptly stopped.

When Alec's behavior became more violent and explosive on the four drugs, the psychiatrist reaffirmed that Alec had bipolar disorder. During the school year, he changed some of the drug doses and experimented with different kinds of stimulants. Meanwhile, Alec began to talk about killing himself.

In fear and frustration, his parents took Alec for evaluation to a world-famous psychiatrist at the Nation Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland. The new doctor completely approved of 'everything' the previous two doctors had done. He did, however, offer a new opinion. Alec's emerging bipolar disorder, he explained, was actually an emerging schizoaffective disorder-a mixture of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He added the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to Alec's treatment regimen, for a grand total of five psychiatric drugs, several in adult doses. Alec was now ten and a half years old and weighed less than seventy pounds.

The psychiatrist did not explain that Risperdal is FDA approved only for adults and only for psychoses such as schizophrenia. He also left out something else that by any ethical or medical standard he was especially required to tell the parents, something they would tragically discover on their own.

Three months after starting on Risperdal, Alec began to make off chewing movements as if struggling with a large gob of gum. His puzzled parents, already frustrated with his behavior, tried to force open his mouth to see what he was chewing. Then they decided he was 'making faces' at them, or even worse, at some unseen imaginary person. Soon Alec also began to squint his eyes as if experiencing bursts of glaring light.

When his parents drew Alec's condition to the attention of the NIMH expert, he explained that Alec was showing signs of Tourette's, a disorder of unknown origin that involves a combination of tics and vocalizations. He did not tell them that antipsychotic agents like Risperdal commonly cause permanent twitches identical to those that Alec was displaying.

The psychiatrist decided that Alec's increasing reports of 'ghosts' and 'odd shapes' in his room might be hallucinations caused by his schizophrenic-like illness. He wanted to increase Alec's Risperdal in the hope it would 'control' both the tics and the hallucinations.

Indeed, Risperdal-like other antipsychotic agents-can temporarily suppress the very tics and abnormal movements that it causes; but in doing so, it can eventually make them much more disfiguring and even physically disabling.

In my clinical and legal consultation, I have evaluated childrën whose necks are painfully wrenched out of shape by Risperdal induced spasms of the neck and shoulders. I've seen childrën whose eyes periodically roll up in their sockets. I've evaluated another whose breathing is impaired by spasms of the diaphragm.

Childrën with these drug-induced tics and spasms are among the most tragic cases I have had to evaluate in my work as a psychiatrist. There is no effective treatment for this disorder, and only a few of the childrën with such obvious tics and spasms have recovered despite months or years off the drug. Once the disorder had persisted for a few weeks or months, it usually becomes irreversible.

Alec's Grandmother Rescues Him from the Psychiatrist

After Alec started to display these peculiar symptoms, his grandmother began to suspect that the drugs might have something to do with his worsening condition. In libraries and bookstores and on the Web, she began to research the drugs on her own. She came upon one of my books, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications (1999), coauthored with David Cohen, Ph.D. She learned that Alec's twitches and spasms were tardive dyskinesia, a neurological disorder commonly caused by antipsychotic drugs such as Risperdal, Mellaril, Navane, Prolixin, Thorazine, and Haldol. The FDA requires all antipsychotic drugs (also called neuroleptics) to carry a warning about tardive dyskinesia, including all of the newest antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel.

Antipsychotics produce tardive dyskinesia in an astounding 5-8 percent of patients for each year of exposure, for a cumulative rate of 20-32 percent after a mere four years of exposure. With no scientific justification, some doctors got the idea that, unlike other antipsychotics, Risperdal might not produce tardive dyskinesia at such a high rate. This encouraged its widespread prescription to childrën. I am seeing many cases of Risperdal induced tardive dyskinesia, and others are being reported in the literature.

After reading my book, Alec's grandmother urged his parents to make an appointment to see me. My practice was full at the time, but when my wife heard the familiar, tragic themes being repeated by Alec's mother on our answering machine, she made it a priority for me to return the call. Alec was now eleven years old and in the fifth grade.

From my initial visit with the parents, it was apparent that psychiatric drugs were destroying Alec. If the process continued, he would probably end up in adulthood as a chronic mental patient with disfiguring and even disabling twitches and spasms in his face and body that would make him look crazy to everyone who met him. I explained that all of the stimulants can cause or contribute to permanent tics, but less often and usually with less severity than the antipsychotic drugs. I asked his parents to bring Alec to my office on an emergency basis that evening.

When I first met Alec, he was displaying the unmistakable signs of tardive dyskinesia. Although I've been through this many times before, I was still saddened by what I found. And once again, I was dismayed that one of my colleagues could have prescribed Risperdal to a child at all and then have gone on to ignore the devastating results.

The chewing movements and facial tics were already so obvious that Alec's schoolmates were teasing him about them. If Alec's twitches did not improve or go away, they would gravely interfere with his social life as he entered his teens. Since they were affecting his jaw, they could end up impairing his eating and his teeth. If the drugs weren't stopped, the disorder could progress to afflict any muscle in his body, from his arms, legs, and torso to his speech, swallowing, and breathing.

Because Alec had been taking Risperdal for only a few months and because his parents were willing to stay in close touch with me, I planned a rapid one-week taper. Within a week, his parents already felt that he seemed 'much more like our Alec.' However, his tics and spasms temporarily worsened, as they often do during the withdrawal period after the drugs are reduced in dosage or stopped.

Working with Alec

Alec was a spirited, courageous child struggling with all his might to content with the confusion in his life and the toxins in his brain. I could easily find the sweet and gentle boy who had thrived before the advent of psychiatric drugs in his life.

I explained to Alec that his story indicated that he didn't have any kind of psychiatric disorder and that most of his disturbed behavior came from a combination of the drugs and his parents' difficulties in learning to discipline him. I further explained that it would require a great deal of work on his part to learn to control his behavior.

Alec was reassured when I reminded him that before the drugs, he had no problems controlling his behavior as well as any other kid. He responded with surprising eagerness to my explanations about how hard he would have to work to get his behavior back under control. The Alec demanded, 'What about them?' and made a vigorous gesture in his parents' direction. I explained that he should refer to his parents in a more respectful manner. He could tell I was serious about this, and to his parents' surprise, he agreed to this as well. I went on to tell him that when he did ask a question respectfully, I would always try to answer him. In this spirit, I explained that his parents and grandmother would indeed have their own work to do. They would have to develop a more consistent, rational plan of discipline for him and would have to find more time to spend with him.

'Its clear your parents and your grandmother love you,' I explained, 'but they've been misled by doctors into thinking that you can't control your behavior and that they can't help you get control over yourself. This has been very harmful to the whole family. We'll be able to fix this situation quickly if everyone can get together on a plan for more self-restraint and more respect in the family.'

'If you say so, Doc,' Alec said, and then, laughing at his own disrespectful tone of voice and demonstrating his capacity for self-control, he added more respectfully, 'Dr. Breggin.' I laughed, too. I liked this spirited child.

After rapidly stopping Alec's Risperdal on an emergency basis, I continued to remove Alec from his other drugs over the next few months. His parents were deeply grateful to see their son returning to them. During this time, I worked with the entire family and on occasion with Alec's teachers and principal on how to handle his sometimes difficult behavior.

When alone with Alec on occasion, I emphasized that changing his behavior was not 'giving in' to adults as he feared. I explained how it was actually in his own self- interest to gain more self-discipline and responsibility. childrën are much more able to respond to rational discussion than most health-care professionals seem to realize. They want to know why and how they should change their behavior. Unfortunately, not one of Alec's previous physicians had talked with him about his inherent capacity to control his conduct, why he should want to do so, and how he could go about it.

Alec's grades went from flunking across the board to mostly C's and then to a mixture of A's and B's. He was once again becoming the bright child he had been before he started talking psychiatric drugs.

After Alec was free of psychiatric drugs for several months, he became one of the few fortunate childrën whose tardive dyskinesia almost completely resolved. A careful examination still discloses some abnormal movements of his tongue and jaw, especially if he is stressed or fatigues, but if noticed by anyone they are likely to seem like nervous habits. Alec probably recovered so well because his grandmother became suspicious as soon as the tics developed and we were able to stop the drugs before he had taken them for months or years.

Alec and his parents stopped coming regularly for treatment after about two years, but I continue to hear from Alec occasionally. He likes to call to say hello once in a while. He's doing well in regular classes in public high school, presents no serious behavior problems in the classroom or home, and is even getting along better with his older brother. He is looking forward to going to college. Now that he no longer thinks of himself as mentally ill and now that his brain is free of toxins, I am sure he will continue to blossom.

Alec should never have been put on psychiatric drugs. His intention and restlessness in the classroom in the second grade could have been handled with more patience, attention to his needs, and better teaching methods. At that time, he didn't have problems at home, but if he had been a 'difficult child,' that too could have been handled with improved parenting. There was no reason whatsoever to expöse this child to any psychoactive substances, let alone a several-year regimen of multiple psychiatric drugs. In my experience, childrën do not need psychoactive agents. They need improved adult attention to their basic needs for discipline, love, and inspired teaching.

Is Alec's story unusual? No, his story is being repeated with hundreds of thousands and perhaps millïons of childrën throughout America. Almost all of these childrën have conflicts with adults that could be handled by improved, individualized approaches to teaching and parenting. Instead, a doctor starts them on a stimulant drug such at Ritalin, Concerta, or Adderall; the drug cause new problems, and the child end up on multiple psychoactive substances. In this way, the stimulants can become the gateway to a lifetime on multiple psychiatric drugs. Meanwhile, doctors who advocate drugs will often ignore and even openly deny that the drugs could be causing any of the problems, even after the child begins to have persisting tics and spasms induced by stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, or more likely by antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal.'

I hope that began to shed some light on this subject.

This story is being repeated hundreds of thousands of times in homes across the country and around the world.

We are under attack because of greed.

There is no gentler way to put it.

Ignorance is simply igniting the fire.

And do not let false studies sway you to believe that 'ADHD' childrën's brains are different than 'normal' childrën.

These studies are always done on childrën and adults who have been on psychiatric drugs for many months and years. Always. The studies are clear about this. But what the pharmaceutical manufacturers say is, 'See, people who have ADHD have brains that have shrunk.'

But their own records show that these studies are always done on people who have been taking drugs, not on those who have been 'diagnosed' but have not been taking drugs.

It's a sham. Period.

This information does not reach the doctors who prescribe these drugs. They are not being told. They hear what you hear on TV by the paid talking head on the morning talk shows. This is a grim situation that is getting more dire by the day.

I am not tempted to believe that this problem will go away tomorrow. Millïons of chïldren will take their medication tomorrow and the next day and the next.

But you can at least help yourself and your childrën.

Ignorance is not bliss. At worst, it can turn people into mental patients who get locked away for the rest of their lives.

If you disagree, then you did not read this email and you have done zero research on your own about the dangers and about what is really going on. Go to Google and type in 'Ritalin side-effects' if you want to be shocked. I am not yelling that the sky is falling. It really IS. The information is all around us. I am just giving a little bit of it to you.

If it makes any sense, pass it on to people who have childrën.

You never know what friend of yours will be told tomorrow that their childrën are broken by their pediatricians or teachers who went to an 'ADHD Seminar' sponsored (paid for) by a pharmaceutical manufacturer.

Much more to come... there is an avalanche of data on this subject.

As always, make it a great day.

I love you all!

Mike Brescia

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