I read your article and thought you might like to know this…

I read your article and thought you might like to know this. I am a
41 year old male who was diagnosed with ADHD in 1997 while in a jail
program

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
FB: they--psychiatrists, or those with the DSM in hand have
automatic access to all in any government institution or program. Jails and
juvenile detention facilities are full of captive patients, all of whom meet
criteria for disruptive behavior disorders and many more...no one
excepted]

. My aunt has it and takes straterra, my sister has it and
takes desoxyn 

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
methamphetamine! So much for their--governments "Just
say no to drugs!" and DARE]

, I take adderal 

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
mix of amphetamine
salts]

, my nephew takeds ritalin and so does my niece. I have had a
thirty year substance abuse problem with mant arrest's and when I took the
GED in 1983 I had only 15 high school credits. I passed with pretty high
marks. I was on speed (illegal)
in 2002 I again entered yet another drug program, this time it was
different. Drug Treatment Court in Santa Clara County Ca. While in a
treatment facility I was sent to the doctors because I have a TENS machine
for bach pain. I was seen by my Dr who is the first PCP I have ever had in
my life, the only doctors I knew were the emergency room trauma Dr,s. I have
been involved in 34 car accidents, 6 motorcycle accidents, shot twice,
stabbed once, pnuemoparacardium in 1987 from freebaseing cocaine, and a
stroke in 1992 due to methamphetimine overdose. I have Hep C diagnosed in
1987, and I am disabled by a neurosuergon for  a back injury soffered in
1979 a dui in which I was a passenger of the offenders vehicle. I was
finally prescribed adderal in august of 2004 after trying
Disepramine,Straterra,Ritalin...
Since I started  I have stayed clean and sober with out even wanting or
caring about illicit drugs and started college at San Jose City College,
after  twenty three years I am able to concentrate and for the first time
since I cam rememberI am enjoying school. I have the determination and the
drive in me tofinish what I start and I am mojoring in psychology. I plan to
either get a PHD or die. I want you to know that while you are a Dr and your
opionion has validity, my life time of thinking I was a piece of garbage who
only felt normal when I was commiting felony drug abuse, has changed 180%
because of the balls of my shrink (who I would ask god to make a saint),
today I know that I have a disorder, which, carefully monitering and honesty
on my part, has enabled me to start living life as normal as I have ever
felt is due to the medication and the knowledge of ADHD. I fit the diagnoses
in EVERY catagory, since age five, and if there is one thing I am greatful
for it is knowing that I am a good person with a neurological disorder that
can and is being helped by medication, not the junkie I used to look at
(every day of my life) in the mirror. My Dr is named Robert Landeen,MD (650)
851-2875, he teaches at Stanford and is a Dr of Psych of Addictional
Medicine. Please feel free to call him or me Brian O'Callaghan (408)
209-3936 if you would further like to discuss this debate and if you would
like I will sign a release for my medical records and you can view for
yourself
what I have lived through to get a better understanding from my experiances
hopefully to learn and help more people,(which I think if there is a heaven)
is where people who help people,(because its the right thing to do) go.
In any case Thank you for your time and please learn like I am that its a
real affliction and I am living PROOF that it can be helped. Goodbye.

[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Dear Brian, your's is becoming a success story despite having been
through hell and back. However the success you have had has to do belief in
your physicians, diagnoses and treatments. The psychostimulants you take,
while legal and portrayed as prescription drugs, treatments, are no less
addictive and dangerous than the same things gotten illegally, off the
street. Your success, even if you make it all the way back, and I hope you
do, will not be due to your use of these drugs or a correct diagnosis of
ADHD, for the simple reason that ADHD is not a disease and is justification
for no medical treatment whatsoever, especially not with known drugs of
addiction, the Schedule II amphetamines, of which Ritalin is, essentially, a
member. A disease, Brian, is an objective abnormality of the body or brain,
one that can be seen, demonstrated, diagnosed--so as to be able to show,
demonstrate it to the pateint, parents, other physicians. ADHD is no such
thing and yet that is what psychiatry says to all of its pateints it is, to
get them to become patients and to get them to accept chemical
balancers--drugs for their chemical imbalances, all of which are contrived,
concocted illusions of diseases, the staple of the psychopharmaceutical
enterprise. In fact Brian, telling normal children/persons they have an
abnormal brain, a disease, when they do not, invariably does psychological
damage and this is followed by the invariable physical damage that every
single psychiatric drug does to the brain and body of normals...the
drugging, intoxication, poisoning is the only real disease psychiatric
patients have. I hope you survive all you have been through and all
psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry has done to you. Share this with
your Stanford psychiatrist and let us see his answer or put him directly in
touch with me at fredbaughmanmd@cox.net ]