Brad was frequently disciplined at breakfast, when, free from the effects of Ritalin, his appetite would spike and he would try to compensate for three meals in one fell swoop. Of course he was denied a larger portion, because each camper had a limited amount of food available to them in any one sitting.
The largest amount of food I ever saw Brad eat in one sitting was at a night game at Fenway Park, where he ordered a hot dog, popcorn, cracker jacks, pretzels and cotton candy. He ate them all. At the time I viewed the indulgence as 12-year-old consumer culture run amok; today, I wonder if the binge might not also have been triggered by the fact that for once that summer, Brad had access to large quantities of food at 9 p.m., after the effects of the Ritalin were beginning to wear off, but before he had received his sleep-inducing pill.
Speculation? Perhaps, but in a harmless fashion, unlike the dangerous speculation that the psychiatric professional makes everytime he diagnoses a child with ADD and prescribes Ritalin or other similar medicines whose effects have not been conclusively determined.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture lists Ritalin as a Schedule II Controlled Substance, placing it on a list next to Cocaine and Methamphetamine. It is a potentially dangerous drug whose long term effects are unclear, and its emergence as a street drug may be quashed only by the disproportionate amount of negative to positive effects on consciousness.
Despite the uncertainties and unsavories of Ritalin, over one million children currently take Ritalin to counteract the manifestations of ADD. In a recent Newsweek article, Dr. Laurence Greenhill of Columbia Medical School called Ritalin "one of the raving successes in psychiatry." Parents everywhere are seeking a mandate from medicine, taking unmanageable children to doctors who tend with very little resistance to diagnose them as ADD and put them on a regular diet of Ritalin, sometimes supplementing the prescription with Prozac.
Such "early detection" is more common at higher income levels, where parents can afford to and often depend on clinical salvation. ADD has become so stylish in recent years that school psychiatrists have picked up on the trend, and the numbers of ADD-diagnosed children has skyrocketed. Consumption has quadrupled in the past decade, and Ritalin use is five times higher in the United States than in any other country. Some medical experts are willing to go so far as to assert that one in every 20 children is ADD, with a significant number of those being ADHD.
While few will argue the reality of our nation's rapidly declining attention span, I find it harder to believe in modern science than in the children who have become its guinea pigs. Without making any clear diagnosis, it is clear that many of today's children have trouble interacting with peers and staying on task. These are not deliberately mischievous, and they are not in need of a chemical or genetic makeover. They are vibrant contributors to the playground and the snack table, and they are not the enemy.
I wish that Brad had been given a more fair chance by my fellow counselors. He had two strikes against him going in as an ADHD kid, and he certainly didn't make a very strong case for himself. But was kicking him out of camp the most productive solution? I struggle to see a scenario in which it was.
Rather than sweeping the differences of ADD-diagnosed children under the rug, we must break out the vacuum of personal engagement and clean off the residue left by years of clinical and medicinal approaches. Only when the dust clears can those exceptional children in our ranks begin to show us what they have to offer in a constructive, healthy and productive way.
Jim Cocola is a junior living in Winthrop House.