The "medicated generation" is all grown up. What are the implications?

Starting around 30 years ago and escalating quickly, children began to be dosed with psychoactive pharmaceuticals...for attention deficit syndrome, alleged antisocial behavior, depression (especially mopey teens), OCD, and other ills.

Now, I do not mean to trivialize mental health problems in the young or in anyone else. They exist, they are real, they can be catastrophic.

But was such a large number of new cases suddenly "discovered" a real spike or simply an attempt to medicate rather than the more difficult acts of disciplining, nurturing, and even tolerating some rambunctious behavior as normal? Were so many new syndromes and pills really needed? Why has it only increased?

Nobody knew the long term effects of medicating young minds with so many powerful new chemicals. Now as the older members of this generation enter their 30s and even 40s, we will learn.

Another "side effect" beyond the purely neurological is the tendency to "pathologize" everything. It's not a "hard time" or a "rough patch" or "growing pains" anymore: it's a syndrome. This removes agency and responsibility for one's acts to a large degree ("she can't help screaming, she's sick. Suggesting she calm down and talk rationally is invalidating her condition.")

Again, there are real issues real people suffer from and they should be given assistance and care. But there is also such a thing as "overdiagnosis" and "overmedication." Particularly among the young and rising generations, it has been a lifetime of medicine for some.

I mean, in 2006, my parents were blackmailed into putting me on the seroquel trials. Google Minnesota Seroquel Scandal and tell me we haven't failed a generation.

I'm still learning how to cope with the effects.

Once I came off 1200mg - 1400mg daily, I felt like a blank slate. No longer had same interests (or any interests that is). Had to relearn my friends that stuck around, relearn how to interact with my family.

I'm still suffering from these issues. I was nominated for the trial because of a break down I had from a storm clearing 100 trees on our property and when they tested me for various tests and IQ ones, I came across highly above average.

I feel to this day, they wanted to stupify me.

Edit: And as of 2017, I was diagnosed with Aspergers. I've tried to get assistance for it, nothing. Follow up care from the seroquel is non existent as well. Almost impossible for me to hold a job.

And people tell me theres help with a straight face.

I'm 29 now, I was 14-15 when put on the medication. I always had a photographic memory, but those years of my life are black voids.

Sorry for all the edits, things keep popping up that I feel should be included.

They tried to label me with psychosis, but as recent diagnosis has shown, it was aspergers, not psychosis.

a reply to: Nivhk

A friend of mine was put on seroquil for anxiety. It's completely messed him up. He doesn't know what time of day it is any more, has actually called me in the middle of the day to ask me what time it is, forgets things that happened moments before, needs to be told not to break his own neck because he developed this tic where he tries to twist his head around.

Came over to visit one time after he was put on it. Ended up watching part of that tron movie. Went to bed at like one or something. Sometime between the time I went to bed and my roommate getting home at 3 he'd somehow unplugged the wifi router. When my roommate got home he was staring at the wall with an unlit smoke in his mouth. When I woke up at 6am for work he was still staring at the wall. Apparently, according to him, he'd watched tron 3 times that night.

There wouldn't have even been time to finish it once before the internet was cut off, there wasn't even enough time in the night to have watched it three times, it's a three hour movie.

a reply to: dug88
It's a scary drug. I've recently looked and max dosage is 400mg.

I was tested at 1400mg by the end of the trial. My parents would ask me a question and 3 days later in the middle of the night, I'd go and answer them.

I don't remember this, but they have stories. And it is all blacked out in my memories.

How's he doing now? Is he still on seroquel or quit taking it?

Edit: I've never actually been able to find someone else who's taken high enough dosages and haven't killed themselves. Not to be morbid.

I have the tics in my neck occasionally and does feel like if I wasn't paying attention that I'd snap my neck. Luckily I had good memory before so with meditation it doesn't bother me too much. Though there are times like how someone who walks into a room and forgets what they were doing, happen to me. Drives me up the walls.

a reply to: Never Despise
I wanted to apologize if this wasn't the direction of the thread you wanted to go.

I thought I fit the description of what you were talking about and thought I would share my experiences and personally hope for some insight or advice of what to do.

I'll step out if you had another direction in mind.

originally posted by: Nivhk
a reply to: Never Despise
I wanted to apologize if this wasn't the direction of the thread you wanted to go.

I thought I fit the description of what you were talking about and thought I would share my experiences and personally hope for some insight or advice of what to do.

I'll step out if you had another direction in mind.

Not at all, post on. This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.

I am saddened by your story and I wish you swiftly and fully recover.

originally posted by: Never Despise
But was such a large number of new cases suddenly "discovered" a real spike or simply an attempt to medicate rather than the more difficult acts of disciplining, nurturing, and even tolerating some rambunctious behavior as normal

I used to live in an area where there were a lot of Amish people. My girlfriend's (at that time) young daughter went to counciling with all that attention deficit disorder crap. My girlfriend's husband had died a few years back and he had been the one to discipline the daughter. From what I saw, my girlfriend didn't really do any discipling of the child. Anyway, I noticed that there weren't any Amish kids with ADHD or hyperactivity. I wonder why? (Nudge, Nudge. Wink, Wink.) Could it be you were right and parents just don't take care of their children properly? Kids will be kids. But only if you let them.


TCB

Is it the same group that got participation trophies?

a reply to: Never Despise
Thank you, I've gotten to the point I have to live with the effects, I wish my parents kept the little records they had so I could get some legal action going.

But now I just want what is happening, brought to light.

Especially with this rushed vaccine. I was a literal lab rat and suffer from it with absolutely no assistance from our government.

a reply to: wdkirk
Sure, come on over. I'll show you my wall.

a reply to: Nivhk

I’ll pass but thanks anyway.

a reply to: Nivhk

I’ll pass but thanks anyway.

a reply to: Never Despise

The ONLY reason my youngest wasn't on neurotropics was because at a confrontational meeting at a principals's office she TOLD me to get him medicated, I stated after looking on the floor, "Where do you want my dead body because that's the only way it's getting done!"

When she responded that she had a Master's in Education I replied, "My Masters is in Developmental Neurobiology".

(I was in uniform at the time, and could (sometimes) be very scary.)

The bitch backed off.

a reply to: wdkirk
Shame, I was making a trophy for you with my lab wrist bands.

Maybe DBC wants it.

What about the generation that grew up on moonshine and tobacco? Do we know the “implications” for those people?

originally posted by: Assassin82
What about the generation that grew up on moonshine and tobacco? Do we know the “implications” for those people?

We all have larger penis's and have super powers.

a reply to: DBCowboy


My penis has super powers.
Or is it my super power is being a penis? The moonshine clouds my memory.

a reply to: Assassin82

Sure do. And mostly speaking it ain't pretty and never was.

However true backwoods popskull-whisky-swilling, barefoot tobackey-chewing five-year-olds were already going extinct by the early 1900s, even in appalachia. Their descendents have had ups and downs over the last 100 years but there is nothing romantic about rural poverty. It breeds a pinched kind of meanness and sullenness that does it's bearers no favors.

But that's another topic, if you ask me.

originally posted by: wdkirk
Is it the same group that got participation trophies?

You are more right than you think.

Not sure my voice is valid in this as your post is about a younger generation and, while I've met a few people in this age group that feel they should not have been medicated, I perhaps should have been.

In my fifties now and only a couple years ago diagnosed with severe adhd and several learning disabilities. For me the meds have given me my life over again. It is like night and day. One of the strongest emotions I felt throughout this discovery was a kind of anger that no one, family or school, saw my struggling as part of a disability and instead saw it as moral failing. That wears on a person psyche.

That said, I am glad I didn't get my kids diagnosed early. One has it mild and the other was one of those rare statistics that outgrew much of it. He went from ultra hyper to calm just through the changes of puberty. It is now up to them to decide with fully mature brains from their own inner perspective.