The weekend brought yet another warning by an American website about Ritalin. Addiction.org wants people to know about the dangers of the ‘abuse’ of the drug when it’s taken OTHER THAN PRESCRIBED. The capital letters are theirs – but the quote marks around ‘abuse’ are mine because I think the distinction between using and abusing Ritalin is somewhat artificial. As, indeed, is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the condition for which an estimated two million children in the US receive the drug – named, I kid you not, after ‘Rita’, the wife of the chemist who concocted it.
As the hilarious 1960s ad above suggests, Ritalin – the original trade name for methylphenidate, which gives you a nice fat squirt of dopamine – was originally marketed to bored housewives. The message: it makes peeling potatoes fun by helping you concentrate on the task. I can’t vouch for that, as I’ve never peeled spuds under its influence.
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