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| View Larger Image | Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD
by Peter R. Breggin, Dick Scruggs
| | List Price: | $18.50 | | Price: | $16.65 | | You Save: | $1.85 (10%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 78447 | | Studio: | Da Capo Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 464 | | Publication Date: | December 31, 1969 | | Publisher: | Da Capo Press |
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Product Description
Millions of children take Ritalin for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The drug's manufacturer, Novartis, claims that Ritalin is the "solution" to this widespread problem. But hidden behind the well-oiled public-relations machine is a potentially devastating reality: children are being given a drug that can cause the same bad effects as amphetamine and cocaine, including behavioral disorders, growth suppression, neurological tics, agitation, addiction, and psychosis. Talking Back to Ritalin uncovers these and other startling facts and translates the research findings for parents and doctors alike. An advocate for education not medication, Dr. Breggin empowers parents to channel distracted, disenchanted, and energetic children into powerful, confident, and brilliant members of the family and society. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 25 reviews)
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Needed this book years ago. 
Any book that can be a warning against stimulants is a very good thing. I know from personal experience what Adderall can do and other stimulants. It is not a problem for everyone but I know one thing I would never give stimulant medication to my child. Never. Life depending on any stimulants is no life. This book is just trying to give people some knowledge before it's too late.
April 13, 2007 | |
Dear NICKNO 
You have NO idea what you are talking about, WE who DO have children DO NOT WANT them sitting still for 6 hours a day. you have missed the picture.you are a complete moron, who obviously have no children . before you spout off get your facts straight.
you can't judge if you haven't experienced it.You have no idea the heart break parents go through with their children who need spiecial help.and im not saying we do or do not use the drugs, You just dont know sh$#.and about the book, who the hell really knows the truth???????
March 24, 2006 | |
If you are wondering about what to do for your child, read this book! 
I read this book after my son started having trouble in first grade and was sent to the principal so many times he had earned his way up to 3 days of in-school suspension. His infractions, although inappropriate, didn't seem incredibly bad to me (humming in the bathroom, putting a spider on his private area during show and tell, batting a girl with the long sleeves of his teacher's shirt, saying "middle finger", spitting out water over another child's desk and backpack), and in-school suspension didn't seem to be changing his behavior either.
However, my son has always been active and moving, and definitely does not respond well to pure authority. I suspected ADHD and took him to a doctor. I grew up with a chiropractor as a father and didn't want to put him on drugs, but thought maybe it would be necessary.
I also have a Ph.D. and checked out armfuls of books about ADHD and began reading. I picked up whatever was newest and available in the library, with no regard to ideology. I read lots of the books and identified with many things my son was doing. I took my son to a psychologist who said he probably had a bit of ADHD and maybe some sensory integration issues. But she pointed out that the trouble was at school. "You wouldn't be here except for school, right?" she asked. That's right. Our son is challenging but we manage him just fine at home and have a very happy home life. The psychologist gave me pause about just where the problem lay.
Then I read Talking Back to Ritalin. And I got mad. You mean, there is absolutely no evidence for these claims in all these other books I read that there is anything wrong with the brains of kids diagnosed ADHD? You mean that these stimulant drugs don't really 'attach' to the deficient receptors and 'correct' the imbalance, like all the other books were claiming? They claimed this, but where was their proof? They had no citations, no hard evidence behind these claims, nothing! Dr. Breggin, on the other hand, was reporting the available scientific evidence. The real stuff, that the doctors publish in journals, not what they say in books for the public. Now I haven't read those articles, but when he quotes Barkley who admitted that there is no way technologically to tell the difference between brains of 'normal' kids and 'ADHD' kids, it's pretty convincing that nothing has really been found.
And he makes sense. My latent unease over drugs became horror that I might have possibly done this to my son. Breggin quotes one study (p. 29) where 122 kids were put on stimulants for 1-23 weeks, and 9% of the children developed tics, including one who developed an irreversible Tourette's syndrome! Is this the kind of probability of a drug CAUSING a problem that I want to subject my kid to?
I saw school administrators and doctors talking about medication, for my son with his problems, as if it were harmless. Doesn't sound harmless to me. Stunts growth? Causes loss of appetite? Is as addictive as cocaine? Causes a rebound effect after they come off it, that could make them behave worse? Flatlines kids so they don't feel emotions? This is a drug that should not even be talked about with kids like mine, who just like to move and explore!
Read this book. You owe it to yourself to hear the other side of the story, because there is a LOT out there about the medication side. Maybe you won't be convinced, but for me, this guy has the scientific evidence on his side, and it all makes sense too.
Oh, and by the way, I watched my son's teacher, and was dismayed to find a very negative attitude. A voice inside me said, "Get him out of this classroom." I did, and he is now with another teacher who is calm, kind and loving, and he is doing great. I'm shaking with fear from what I might have done to my son because of this great big drug-company-pushed engine.
November 08, 2005 | |
Excellent! - Thorough and well reasoned argument
I think this book is one of the best researched in the alternative view about drugs. It gives well reasoned arguments that aught to give pause for the knee jerk phenemoma that is going on with Stimulant drugs and our youth.
Yes Dr. Breggin is thoroughly biased, but that is a given for all human beings. Being biased in itself is not a bad thing, because it often is simply the expression of passion and certainty. Bias is a problem when there are no clear arguments or good reason to support the bias. Dr. Breggin is always quite thorough in supporting his point of view.
To be fair, he gives almost no credibility to the opposite view. Since I happen to mostly share his bias, it is not something I have a problem with.
While it is apparent that for many children, stimulant medications have effects and do help, the question is really about the cost of that help for the long term. Should we be using these drugs as the first and often only solution? If we can help these kids without resorting to drugs, wouldn't that be best? Once that diagnosis is surrendered to along with a lifetime of stimulant medications, is that the best option? That is what Breggin is getting at here, are we really looking at this thoroughly or simply swallowing what we are told?
I'm biased against the drugs because I've been successfully treating adults and children with ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc with homeopathic medicine for several years now. Many of my collegues in homeoapthy report similar success.
There is a good book out called "Ritalin Free Kids" By the Ullman's that goes into some depth about homeopathy - one of the best solutions for ADD, ADHD, etc. The book, "Impossible Cure" (Amy Lansky), is also a wonderful primer for those interested in researching homeopathy.
The only dissappointment I have for Breggins' books in general, is he is simply not thorough enough for my tastes in talking about solutions. There are many kids who have VERY disturbing problems in this spectrum, and some of his solutions are too simplistic and not realistic. It is with some of these extreme cases that we see homeopathy really shine, in a way that drugs can't match. There must be other alternative methods as well that really work. So that is my only concern with this book, lack of research into alternative solutions.
August 26, 2004 | |
Let psychiatry rebut this point for point
I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact. It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery. Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published. The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable. Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs. I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health. These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs). But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point. This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science". Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16). If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
March 04, 2004 | |
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