From the Author
My commitment to helping people with ADHD started decades ago. During the fifteen years in which I provided medical and psychological care to support the recoveries of addicted patients and their families, I noticed that most had long histories of ADHD. The loss of self-esteem and reactive depression that often accompany untreated ADHD in kids obviously sets them up for addiction later on. Many of the biochemical imbalances in brain chemistry that we have found to underlie ADHD are the same ones associated with addictions. It occurred to me then, that if we can reach kids with ADHD early on, many would be spared the misery of alcoholism and other addictions later.
My hunch is that the nutritional assistance provided to ADHD kids prevents addiction whereas treating ADHD kids with potentially brain-injurious and addictive substances sets them up to abuse other substances later in life. I have no hard data to substantiate this hypothesis, but if it were not true, much of what I know about ADHD and addiction would be contradictory. If it is true, the consequences are unthinkable. We cannot afford to wait for the data to come filtering in decades from now proving that the use of cocaine-like and amphetamine-like drugs has rendered millions of kids brain-injured and addiction-prone. Especially now that we have natural, medically sound alternatives, the use of drugs to treat ADHD can no longer be justified. We must act now! I hope that this book will ignite your concern and that along with others, you may feel compelled to join us in this noble and important effort.
