I keep losing the directions for submission to the Brin List. Please send again. Then submit to the list the letter below. Dear Fellow Brin Listers, My daughter has brain damage from oxygen deprivation. The cord was wrapped around her neck before birth. She is almost 17 years old and has been diagnosed with, among other things, attention deficit and hyperactivity. At age 8 or so, for a few months she was on a light dose of Cylert. It did a little, but not much to calm her down. (I understand large doses are popular now.) Then we tried Ritalin. It was a dramatic difference. A squirmy, distractible, unfocused kid was suddenly "on task." Now, I hate "tasks" as much as anybody, but she wasn't able to happily do the task of being a kid. She could just barely (sometimes) sit down and listen to a story. She couldn't play a game because she couldn't sit still long enough to learn the game. She couldn't make friends because she couldn't pay attention to anybody long enough to connect to them. Not the makings of a happy childhood. With Ritalin she was happier because she could spend enough time on something to enjoy it. In the beginning she was on 5 mg doses twice per day, seven days a week. Then it went up to three doses per day. Then we started her day with 10 mg, with two more 5 mg doses. Then we jumped to three 10 mg doses per day, seven days a week. Her body weight had gone up during this time, so a dosage rise wasn't too troubling, but after a while the Ritalin didn't seem very effective. We began to give her Ritalin holidays on the weekend. (I am going to use "Ritalin Holiday" as my band name so don't try to steal it.) And that made a world of difference. We were able to back off of the dosage, to two 10 mg doses on the school days and only one (for church) on the weekends. During vacation she might not get a Ritalin for weeks. And the Ritalin became more effective after the time off from it. Now she has gone through puberty, her body chemistry has changed, and she was showing no difference while on Ritalin, so we took her off of it. She has been off for 2 or 3 years now. Ritalin, as I understand it is a stimulant, as they say, but it its a very special kind of stimulant. It seems to stimulate the controlling-focusing-concentrating part of the brain. In a chaotic easily stimulated and distracted brain, Ritalin inspires the brain to focus and become orderly. I once gave my daughter her Ritalin, and she sipped my orange juice to wash it down. As I finished up my orange juice later, I felt myself swallow her Ritalin tablet that she had washed into the cup instead of swallowing. I felt a very slight effect, beginning about an hour later and lasting a couple of hours. I was a little more focused, like on a good productive work day, nothing dramatic. I think that Ritalin is no threat to our children. It is not a "narcotic" like heroin. It can't be used to extract conformity and compliance from our children. A focused brat is just as likely to be focusing on a way to booby-trap a teacher's seat as they are to be focusing on learning the Gettysburg Address. Focus is, personally and socially, a good thing. Ritalin may be over-prescribed. It would probably be better to change environmental factors first, to see if they can make a difference. Change classrooms. Change teachers. Try to be less boring. And I am unconvinced that diet has much to do with it. Parents say that all that sugar at Halloween gets their children hyper. As though dressing in a costume and running around the neighborhood at night had nothing to do with making them "hyper." Or all the social buildup, or the people ringing your doorbell, or imagining that there may be real ghosts and witches. Compare it to a non-eating holiday like Independence Day and you'll see that kids just get hyper on the holidays. There's a lot of talk about diet having an effect on hyperactivity, but aside from a few idiosyncratic individualized effects, they've been debunked. If you take out the placebo effect and the effect of dietary ideologues, little of the diet assertions will hold water. Lord knows we tried it all. Modern medical science is a wonderful thing. Of course you have to be an informed consumer. By informed, I mean, find out what science says about your condition and your medications and therapies. Listen to what the alternative medicine people are saying, but listen harder when the scientists debunk it. Get a doctor you can talk to, a good explainer. They know this stuff inside out. But it was me who suggested the Ritalin holidays when the doctor was suggesting higher doses to get the effect. As I say, be an informed consumer. You are your own best advocate. Nobody can do it for you. I don't want to talk more about Ritalin on the list. I just thought I could shed some light. Let's go back to talking about science fiction. Like why "Gattaca" was so cool but disappointing. Just saw it the other day again.
