J*** G. D***, Sr. wrote:
While I have no experience with the other drugs re treatment for
Narcolepsy (which in my case is manifested by excessive daytime sleepiness).
After sleeping through highschool and the first two years at Vanderbilt GPA
.94 (on a three point system for the first two years), entered USAF Pilot
Training (where entrance tests eliminate all but the top 5%) went to sleep
while standingat "parade rest" at the back of the class room during ground
training and instructor recognized that I had Narcolepsy (as did he) and
told me about Ritalin. At age of 20 years I began taking Ritalin, finished
pilot training was commissioned as a 2nd Lt logged approximately 1000 hours
in single seat jet day fighter/phot recon and another 3400 hours as
transport pilot in MATS (approximately 2400 hours of which was as the
Aircraft Commander before resigning my commission as a Major in 1971. In the
meantime returned to Vanderbilt where I completed my undergraduate work with
straight A's, went through Vanderbilt Law on scholarship.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Dear J***,
As a private practice neurologist/child neurologist, career-long, I saw
4-5 legitimate, real cases of narcolepsy, like yours, and treated almost
all of those legitimate cases, successfully, with Ritalin, almost never
other amphetamines or other drugs. Narcolepsy is a real disease with
real physical manifestations (cataplexy, distribution of REM sleep on
eeg) which sets squarely apart from ADD, ADHD, conduct and oppositional
defiant disorders, which, like all psychiatric conditions, diagnoses,
are not true physical, organic diseases. And yet today in the US and
most of the developed world 99.9% of the world supply of Ritalin and
other of the schedule II, addictive stimulants are prescribed not for
Narcolepsy, a real disease but for ADHD, CD, ODD, for-profit inventions
of the American Psychiatric Association and now all others in US
medicine that practice mental health.
I am glad Ritalin has served you well. I have become alarmed at the
cardiac risk that acrues with the use of Ritalin and amphetamines over
time, you should have extra attention to your cardiac status in your
periodic physical exams.
By adding ADHD to narcolepsy as the only two legitimate causes for the
Schedule II stimulants, the DEA and International Narcotic Control
Board, give ADHD the status of something for which these drugs can
legally and legitimately be prescribed, where medical science has
provided it no such status. For more on the fraud of psychiatric
"diseases" and asking the public to pay for their own defrauding see the
article on mental health "parity" buy Kelly P O'Meara:
Money and Madness
Insightmag.com, 6/24/02
Thanks for writing. Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD]
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