I hate this shit
Nov. 22nd, 2009 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilstarchildSomething I am getting really tired of: jokes about ADHD medications and/or people with ADHD. Oooh, I'm so fucking edgy and/or hilarious because I referenced ADHD medications! HA HA HA.
My current example, and the reason I'm posting:
I love Bitch magazine. It's smart, it always makes me think. The writing is usually terrific. There's a column in each issue called "the bitch list," which is a list of eclectic things their authors are currently into/obsessed with, and the list is, for the most part, not very serious. One author admits she really likes the Maru videos (cute Japanese videos of a cat obsessed with boxes), another really likes a guy who writes for The Nation, another can't stop eating a particular kind of cereal...you get the idea.
Another writer just reread Anne of Green Gables. I loved the book, reread it an insane amount of times, read a few of the sequels even. Excellent books, yes? This is part of what she wrote about rereading it (emphasis all mine):
...But one classic that made me sit up and take notice was Lucy Maud Montgomery's tale of a feisty red-haired orphan on Prince Edward Island. From her essential optimism and dogged love of her own imagination to her mile-a-minute speech patterns, this is a girl who, were she in school today, would be shot with blow darts full of Adderall. Thankfully, her friends, neighbors, and especially her adoptive parents, come to love Anne, and she repays that love in kind.
What. the FLYING FUCK.
Let's take a look at some of these assumptions (and my responses to them), shall we?
1. All girls who talk too much are, nowadays, given Adderall to shut them up.
First of all: Adderall doesn't shut me up. It means I'm less likely to interrupt people, that I am more likely to stay on topic when I talk, and that I am less likely to blurt out things impulsively. But yes: I'm talkative and I always will be.
Second of all: ADHD is still often underdiagnosed in girls.
2. Medicating "feisty" kids is bad.
There's a difference between being imaginative or active or talkative, and having ADHD.
3. People who love you don't medicate you. Or conversely, if people love you, they won't medicate you.
Okay, there is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start. How about mentioning that I wish to GOD someone had diagnosed me as a kid and tried medication? How awful it was not to be able to pay attention in class, how torturous it was to be rejected as a kid because you haven't learned the same social skills? My parents loved me plenty, but they were just as frustrated as I was about my apparent inability to finish my schoolwork despite my high intelligence. I grew up thinking I was a horrible person, instead of knowing I was someone whose brain just works differently.
I'm sure the writer wasn't trying to be insulting. But reading things like this hurts. It dismisses my experiences as a person with ADHD, and dismisses the incredible degree to which ADHD medications have improved my life.
I'm probably going to send a letter to the magazine...but one worded a little more calmly. This is a safer place to vent.
Cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
adults_add
My current example, and the reason I'm posting:
I love Bitch magazine. It's smart, it always makes me think. The writing is usually terrific. There's a column in each issue called "the bitch list," which is a list of eclectic things their authors are currently into/obsessed with, and the list is, for the most part, not very serious. One author admits she really likes the Maru videos (cute Japanese videos of a cat obsessed with boxes), another really likes a guy who writes for The Nation, another can't stop eating a particular kind of cereal...you get the idea.
Another writer just reread Anne of Green Gables. I loved the book, reread it an insane amount of times, read a few of the sequels even. Excellent books, yes? This is part of what she wrote about rereading it (emphasis all mine):
...But one classic that made me sit up and take notice was Lucy Maud Montgomery's tale of a feisty red-haired orphan on Prince Edward Island. From her essential optimism and dogged love of her own imagination to her mile-a-minute speech patterns, this is a girl who, were she in school today, would be shot with blow darts full of Adderall. Thankfully, her friends, neighbors, and especially her adoptive parents, come to love Anne, and she repays that love in kind.
What. the FLYING FUCK.
Let's take a look at some of these assumptions (and my responses to them), shall we?
1. All girls who talk too much are, nowadays, given Adderall to shut them up.
First of all: Adderall doesn't shut me up. It means I'm less likely to interrupt people, that I am more likely to stay on topic when I talk, and that I am less likely to blurt out things impulsively. But yes: I'm talkative and I always will be.
Second of all: ADHD is still often underdiagnosed in girls.
2. Medicating "feisty" kids is bad.
There's a difference between being imaginative or active or talkative, and having ADHD.
3. People who love you don't medicate you. Or conversely, if people love you, they won't medicate you.
Okay, there is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start. How about mentioning that I wish to GOD someone had diagnosed me as a kid and tried medication? How awful it was not to be able to pay attention in class, how torturous it was to be rejected as a kid because you haven't learned the same social skills? My parents loved me plenty, but they were just as frustrated as I was about my apparent inability to finish my schoolwork despite my high intelligence. I grew up thinking I was a horrible person, instead of knowing I was someone whose brain just works differently.
I'm sure the writer wasn't trying to be insulting. But reading things like this hurts. It dismisses my experiences as a person with ADHD, and dismisses the incredible degree to which ADHD medications have improved my life.
I'm probably going to send a letter to the magazine...but one worded a little more calmly. This is a safer place to vent.
Cross-posted to
adults_add
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 10:27 pm (UTC)You know what happened to kids who couldn't pay attention or sit still for many decades in schools? They were beaten and/or sent home, and did not get an education at all.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 12:12 am (UTC)Anne of Green Gables studied constantly while in school. She also had the patience of a saint. Hardly ADHD material there.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 12:30 am (UTC)I should re-read those books, come to think of it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 11:46 pm (UTC)I'm also pretty offended that she implies anyone that loves you wouldn't allow you to be medicated. I would have never gotten into therapy or on my meds if it wasn't for Eric and I can't even begin to quantify how much better my life is because of it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 12:11 am (UTC)