Mother's Little Helper

Sure, we need pharmaceutical drugs. Medicine has made tremendous advancements in the modern world, and has proven to increase human life spans in many, many cases. I know that before my wonderful grandmother passed on from breast cancer in 2008, modern medicine had afforded her many more years with her loved ones than we had expected. She also experienced a tremendous amount of pain from the drugs. And, without diving into a completely new topic, I cannot deny that her social status ensured elite care. So drugs are important. Some drugs are important. If you can afford them.

When I was a younger, I was diagnosed with “ADD”. Yes, I bet a lot of you were too. I didn’t take it seriously at all. It just felt like an excuse to slack off and not get as much shit for it. I know that most of my friends had been diagnosed with ADD, too. As well as all of my older sister’s friends, and my older brother’s friends. Really? We all had ADD? Well…I know we all had Adderall. Or Ritalin. Or, before that, the diet pill fad. Or, eventually for some, cocaine. The drug companies have been feeding us amphetamines forever. It is part of popular culture. I could make the same case for Xanax, Valium, Quaaludes, Klonopin, and the rest of the benzo and barbiturate brood. And let’s not even get into the heroin epidemic and its early causes. These types of drugs are synonymous with Rock and Roll. The Rolling Stones song “Mother’s little Helper”, released in 1966, is about Valium:

“What a drag it is getting old
"Kids are different today,"
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day”

*http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rollingstones/motherslittlehelper.html

And one need not dig too deep into their Eminem or Lil’ Wayne album to hear more talk about getting high on highly dangerous drug combinations. I have no issue with that though. It’s not their fault that these drugs are so abundantly available. It was part of navigating our childhood, and still is today for kids, I assume. I took Adderall for many, many years before I realized that it was doing me more harm than good. And then I took it for some more years. But here I am today, Adderall free, studying and doing my homework. Thinking clearly. Synapses sparking away.

The reality is that a high percentage of kids probably just aren’t cut out for the rigid school system that awaits them. I am a creative type person. There is nothing going on in the public-school system to truly stimulate that need, so of course I had a hard time paying attention. But instead of saying that our children are diagnosed with a clinical disease as early as 7 or 8 years old and giving them a highly addictive controlled substance to focus better, maybe we should take a look at the education system. Looking at you Betsy DeVos. Oh, what’s that? You’ve never stepped foot in a public school? Oh, right on….sweet. This should be great for our future generations.