Pediatricians report increasing requests for 'academic doping':

Parents want their kids to excel in school, and they've heard about the illegal use of stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall for "academic doping." Hoping to obtain the drugs legally, they pressure pediatricians for them. Some even request the drugs after openly admitting they don't believe their child has ADHD.

Ignorance is one thing, but endangering your children because you're an idiot -- even a well-meaning idiot -- is another. Having a child who actually has ADHD, and knowing the hell he goes through and we go through in relation to medicating for it, I can't imagine putting a child through the same thing just to boost grades.

Not to mention, if your child really has ADHD, we're talking semi-weekly therapy sessions, plus family therapy sessions, changing medication levels, enrolling them in the special education program at school, and doing a whole lot more than just giving them a pill, because that's what ADHD requires.

The meds take the edge off the problem to make it more manageable, and that's all. It doesn't fix a thing. It doesn't just turn the ADHD off and magically change your child into a wonderful, homework-spewing, happy angel who actually sleeps through the night.

It keeps them from talking so fast no one can understand them, from literally bouncing off the walls, from changing activities every two minutes, from being unable to follow even the most simple instructions, from forgetting what you told them thirty-seconds ago. It doesn't stop them from daydreaming or fidgeting or being bored, because that's what kids do.

Of course, if your child doesn't have ADHD, then medicating them for such is a bust anyways:

Furthermore, doctors warn that if a kid doesn’t have ADHD, the benefit from taking the drugs is unpredictable and, despite the lore, most likely extremely modest.

And if that isn't enough to keep you from trying it:

...children who take prescription drugs for ADHD but do not have the disorder may be at higher risk for developing depressive symptoms in adulthood.

Drugs given to a child over the long term permanently alter brain chemistry, because they affect the child's brain while it is still developing. If your child's brain is fine, and you give him or her drugs that do things to the brain, you will screw something up. (Not to mention the recently reported physiological effects of those meds on the body.)

ADHD meds are not vitamins, kids. You do not just pop it and go in the morning, like Flinstones-brand Ritalin or something. They do not do a body good and they have serious side-effects.

Earlier tonight, I had a brief conversation with a die-hard Christian fundamentalist whom I work with. A few interesting things came up when talking science and religion. This is Part II and it's about, well, science, religion, education, free will and things of that sort.

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