What a Shocker

CHICAGO — Calls to poison control centers about teens abusing attention-deficit drugs soared 76 percent over eight years, sobering evidence about the dangerous consequences of prescription misuse, a study shows.

The calls were from worried parents, emergency room doctors and others seeking advice on how to deal with the problem, which can be deadly. Four deaths were among cases evaluated in the study.

Kids taking ADHD drugs to get high or increase alertness may not realize that misuse of the drugs can cause serious, sometimes life-threatening symptoms, including agitation, rapid heartbeat, extremely high blood pressure.

"They say, 'It's FDA approved, how dangerous could it be?'" said Steve Pasierb, head of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, based in New York.

In the study, researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center evaluated 1998-2005 data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. During that time, nationwide calls related to teen abuse of ADHD drugs, specifically stimulants, increased from 330 to 581 yearly, and there were four deaths. Overall, 42 percent of teens involved had moderate to severe side-effects and most ended up getting emergency-room treatment.

The true number of teen abusers who have bad side effects is likely much higher, because many cases don't result in calls to poison control centers, said study author Dr. Randall Bond, medical director of the hospital's Drug and Poison Information Center.

The surge, from 1998 to 2005, outpaced calls for teen substance abuse generally. It also paralleled an 86 percent rise in ADHD medicine prescriptions for kids aged 10 to 19, from about 4 million to nearly 8 million during that time.

"It's more bad news on an entrenched problem," Pasierb said. His nonprofit group was not involved in the study. Its own research suggests that about 19 percent of teens have abused prescription drugs including medicine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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We're Back...

This marks the beginning of the school year for me...getting together budgets and curricula, putting some touches (by no means final) on the art and contemplative programs, and reconstructing a morning routine that is a little earlier and a little more focused than summer requires.

  One of the best things we do at TAS is allow students to relax, let their guard down, and learn. Who would of thought that those things are intimately related:

  Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.

Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry. On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.

 Executive decision making crumbles under chronic stress? Repetitive, non productive behavior increases as well? This doesn't sound like humans at all, does it? But the good news is the remarkable re-generative nature of the brain, across the life-span. The brain searches for change and connection, that is, opportunities for growth:

  But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar. Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated.

  "...[W]ith only four weeks' vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers...": I like that line. It sounds like how some of students feel after their first month at TAS.

 

Busy on Vacation

  Lots of behind the scenes work has been getting done- especially on the office management side. The school year has begun, but slowly and invisibly, like the mycelia that establishes itself long before the mushroom pops up. Speaking of which, with all the rain we've had we can expect a great fungi season this fall: boletes, puffballs, bearded tooths, and so on. Look for TAS teachers in the woods and up in the trees.

  Parents: make your appointments for a visit and an interview soon. We have had a lot of inquiries over the last two weeks.

 

 I am going on vacation and will turn off my TAS thinking for a week, except for the couple of Kandinsky volumes I am hauling along with me. This is going to be a great school year, with some new programs and a whole batch of new students. 

 

 Back to blogging on August 18th. 

  Lots of behind the scenes work has been getting done- especially on the office management side. The school year has begun, but slowly and invisibly, like the mycelia that establishes itself long before the mushroom pops up. Speaking of which, with all the rain we've had we can expect a great fungi season this fall: boletes, puffballs, bearded tooths, and so on. Look for TAS teachers in the woods and up in the trees.

  Parents: make your appointments for a visit and an interview soon. We have had a lot of inquiries over the last two weeks.

 

 I am going on vacation and will turn off my TAS thinking for a week, except for the couple of Kandinsky volumes I am hauling along with me. This is going to be a great school year, with some new programs and a whole batch of new students. 

 

 Back to blogging on August 18th.