
The Drugging of the American Boy (2014) - walterbell
http://www.esquire.com/features/drugging-of-the-american-boy-0414
======
spodek
The comments here don't seem to capture the importance of the "Boy" part.
Imagine we were mostly drugging girls. The headlines and reactions would be
greater.

The story recalls how when Michelle Obama publicized #BringBackOurGirls,
laudably promoting saving many innocent girls from kidnapping and worse, Boko
Haram had been burning alive and hacking to death many innocent boys for years
to little western outcry.

We keep changing our culture from the world our emotional systems evolved to
handle. Then we declare groups sick who can't handle the change, which happen
to be boys mostly, and drug them.

When we create problems for girls, we ask "what have we done?", recognize
we're hurting them, and try to change the culture we created stop hurting
them. We may take time, but we don't want to hurt them.

When we create problems for boys, we say "we'll fix you," as if they were
broken. If boys' behavior was adapted to a different world than sitting in
rows for most of the day, why don't we change the culture we created to stop
hurting them?

~~~
soundwave106
The question I would have here is, what has changed in the last century or so
that would make it that way? Regarding sitting in rows for most of the day,
school methodologies I don't think have noticeably changed; at least, from
what I see, it doesn't seem like a school in 1950 would be that much different
than a school today.

From my perspective, the root of this is more yet another case of medicine
being over-sold well beyond their intended purpose. In this case, energetic
boys are the ones that get caught in the cross fire. But this seems overall
like a systemic problem of current medicine, well beyond ADHD medicine...
ranging from the over-prescription of antibiotics, to the roots of the opioid
addiction crisis. Our medical system just plain and simple seems to dish out
too many pills, even when the chances of help is marginal.

I'm guessing (to be fair) that many times this is due to patient demand, I
just wish doctors would sometimes push back sometimes. People are looking for
easy solutions to life's problems, and don't necessarily realize the whole
picture that comes from medication (side effects and whatnot). Your child is
energetic and a handle sometimes, right? That's often _normal_. You don't need
to necessarily give your child powerful stimulants, what is essentially
commercialized speed, to "cure" this, unless you are _really_ sure of the
diagnosis, in my opinion.

~~~
supreme_sublime
I think a pretty obvious starting point is the supposed decline of recess in
schools. I couldn't find any numbers on how many schools had recess as a
normal part of their day or rates. However it does seem as though in many
schools, certainly more than ever before, there isn't any recess time.

Which is sad because a very common trope (especially for young boys) is recess
being their favorite "class". It is also pretty well documented to help in all
kinds of behavioral issues as well as being a valuable learning environment in
its own right.

[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/1/183](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/1/183)

~~~
soundwave106
This is definitely a starting point. I'm not finding any hard numbers for a
"decline" either -- the one table I found (from 2005) indicated the average
was about 27 minutes a day.
([https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/nutrition/tables/tab15.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/nutrition/tables/tab15.asp))
and this hasn't changed too much recently (see 2017 data --
[https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2017/ramstetter_and_murray](https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2017/ramstetter_and_murray)),
but I'm having trouble finding any studies with past data from, say, the 1950s
and 1960s. Little nuggets of data I'm finding suggest more that the problem is
inconsistency -- half an hour might be "okay", but some schools don't even
implement any recess at all... which for many little children sounds like it
would be awful.

Most of the research out there seems to support the idea that recess or other
unstructured play is quite beneficial, for quite a number of reasons, so it's
quite possible that half an hour is not enough. I'd certainly suspect more
recess would do a lot more good for energetic children than powerful
stimulants!

~~~
supreme_sublime
Hmm, that seems like an odd way to represent how much recess time kids have.
I'm not familiar with elementary schools, but I'd guess that class periods are
somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. The average kid is getting less than
30 minutes of recess time which seems to indicate that this average takes into
account kids who don't get recess time at all.

If recess periods for schools that have it are an hour long, then less than
half of the kids actually have recess. Anyway, what a frustratingly useless
statistic since I didn't know how they got it.

------
BugsJustFindMe
This article, like nearly every other article on the subject, is about _over_
diagnosis. Fine. But readers miss that overdiagnosis doesn't mean always
wrong. And it's important to remember that.

It's easy to dismiss the value of these medicines if you've never felt saved
by them. It's hard to understand how painful and frustrating it is for a child
to not be able to complete an exam because when he gets a few words into a
question he has to start over from the beginning again and again and again and
again and again because the words just keep slipping away from him. It's hard
to explain that, no, extra time doesn't actually mean a special edge against
other children who don't have the same problem. It's hard feeling really bad
at subjects that you're actually really good at because you can't keep your
thoughts together. It's hard to walk out of an exam room crying because you
can feel yourself starting to lose your grip. It's hard as an adult to say
"this saved my life" to another adult who doesn't understand it. But it's just
weird when adults who are perfectly happy to drug themselves on the regular
for no other reason than because it feels good are like "yeah, but..." when
there are kids out there who will gladly take negative side effects over the
alternative.

~~~
hnuser1234
I'm sorry, but every time I read shit like this I have to wonder if I'm
reading from some big pharma social media bot.

Concerta doesn't magically give you attention abilities you didn't have
before. It's a nervous system stimulant. It makes you neurotic, trapped in
your own head. Maybe this makes it easier for some people to focus, but I have
enough experience with it to explain why. It forces your attention from the
world around you to your own mind. You will be more physically still and
"studious", only because you are mentally struggling more. It makes you feel
sick. Food seems abhorrent. You will eat a small fraction of what other kids
your age eat, you will be below the 99th percentile in height and weight for
your age and you will stay that way for the rest of your life. You will be
paranoid and anxious, more than ever before the meds. When things are
illogical, when you see other people make bad decisions that seem so simple to
you, you will be ANGRY. You will be inhumanly smart, but you will be inhuman.

~~~
huffmsa
Here's where anecdotes run into trouble. I experience mostly the opposite. I
no longer need to lock myself away from the world in order to focus. I can
have a single, main thread of thought and focus and allocate other threads for
dealing with external information. I've always been good at synthesizing 5-6
bits at a time (smaller than average working memory), but now I can perform in
the 7-9 bit range. I can start the alphabet from any point, without relying on
my chunking heuristics from childhood.

The food, yes, the frustrations with illogical decisions, yes. I'd never
recommend the drugs to a child, just run them outside until they wear out, but
for adults who have trouble keeping multiple plates spinning; yes, use science
to overcome your random genealogical assignment.

~~~
manjushri
>yes, use science to overcome your random genealogical assignment.

There is no proof that social disorders like ADHD/ADD are genetically
deterministic. Which is why the diagnosis relies solely on social observations
rather than biological tests. That is of course not to say that drugs can't
enhance desired brain functions.

~~~
EamonnMR
Well, there are some possible genes:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854824/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854824/)

~~~
manjushri
From your source:

>Finally, one of the key goals of genetic studies of ADHD is to understand its
aetiology and mechanisms. The challenge undoubtedly will not only be in
identifying risk factors but more importantly testing causal mechanisms.

Again, there is no proof, only hypothesis. This is in stark contrast with
actual biological pathologies which have proven genetic causes, such as sickle
cell anemia.

------
FlyingSideKick
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and given medication which made me feel
numb and completely changed my personality. After a year or so my father
decided to stop giving me the medication and I returned to normal which
must’ve been hell for my teachers.

Besides science classes, I received Ds in every class through my sophomore
year. At the time I looked like a failure but today Id consider myself happy
and successful as I’ve travelled the world, become a father and started a
number of innovative businesses.

ADD is a gift as it has enabled me to make creative connections that others
simply don’t see.

If you have kids please focus on their long-term well being. Please love your
kids and support the things they find interest in. Getting good grades being
well behaved in class aren’t everything are not necessarily an indicator of
future success.

~~~
aorth
Can confirm. I'm an American male and was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary
school in the mid 1990s. I took Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta for something
like seven years. It totally changed my personality and suppressed my
appetite, but I did do very well in school for awhile (advanced placement
classes etc).

High school sucks and everything is weird and I was depressed at some point.
Eventually I decided on my own to stop taking the medication and it was like I
woke up. I started enjoying life, surfing, going to concerts, being creative,
etc. I've also traveled all around the world since then and been very
successful.

I don't think I'd change anything about my experience, but in retrospect I
think I was probably misdiagnosed. Also it's important to realize that
everyone is different and we need to try to accept that.

~~~
hnuser1234
Dude holy shit. I wish I could've woke up. I woke up a tiny bit, but I'm still
mostly subdued by all the negative thoughts that crept in while I was taking
it. These sold-for-profit pills took my adult body away. I can't believe
nobody is seeing through this, but big pharma seems to have an incredible PR
arm. You can't find discussion of these drugs without someone singing the same
old praises, and I have a hard time believing it every time when it was such a
definitively HARMFUL experience.

------
doitLP
When a full 20% of the population is diagnosed with a disorder, that's either
a serious epidemic or there's something wrong with the term disorder. Teachers
and parents want tractable kids...just sayin.

~~~
arkades
There’s a combination. Psych sets it’s cutoff for disease at traits that
seriously hamper your ability to function successfully in life. It has a very
tough time grappling with questions like, “what if the problem is with modern
life, and not with the patient?”

Which is why so much failed social policy ultimately ends up in the ED getting
sedated into pliability.

------
thomastjeffery
The most frustrating thing about this subject (to me) is that it is all about
_doing_ education _to_ children.

If children weren't _forced_ to sit in classrooms 7 hours a day, 5 days a week
(or similar), ADHD, ADD, etc. would not get the negative focus it does.

Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the
detrimental effects of its implementation

~~~
reificator
> _Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the
> detrimental effects of its implementation_

I have long believed that education and schooling are not as linked as society
pretends.

Children aren't served by locking them in a room with barred windows for hours
on end and telling them to pay attention and not fidget and do your work and
go home and do several more hours of work and then repeat.

Distraction is a part of being a child. There are productive distractions and
unproductive ones, but the solution is not to pump children full of drugs.
You're robbing them off their natural connection-making process, and of the
chance to learn how to handle distractions as they grow up in a society of
smartphones and advertisements.

And all that is assuming that we're even trying to educate the kids while
they're in school.
[https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

~~~
VLM
Its interesting that if you have legacy baggage and technical debt, you can't
NOT lock kids in cages for a whole day and all that industrial era
foolishness, which would actually be pretty valuable if we ever get sent back
thru a one or two century time warp. We have the best 1850 education system
money can buy; of course its useless in 2010s but whatever.

At least for boys, if you grassroots up from first principles and implement
what works pragmatically, rather than what we've always done or whats in the
union contract, you end up with something like cub scouts or boy scouts.

Given the wildly divergent goals of school and scouts, where school exists to
perpetuate and expand the bureaucracy and scouts exists because organized
screwing around provides more learning opportunities than disorganized
screwing around, they will continue to diverge until they're unrecognizable.
But at least in theory boys learn at both organizations. Much more at boy
scouts than at school of course, but they are kinda similar.

There exist merit badges in boy scouting for semi-academic topics like
electricity or programming. The time investment has to be limited but its
intellectually interesting to imagine that someday the only way to teach a boy
geometry would be a boy scout geometry merit badge. Unimaginable amounts of
time and money will be spent in schools on a line item named "geometry" but
the legacy school system does not have any goal of teaching boys geometry so
ironically thats the one thing boys will definitely not learn in geometry
class, they'll have to go to scouts to learn.

I have no personal experience with girl scouts because of their "no male
leadership" rule, which is about as appropriate as the now removed "no gay
leadership" rule in boy scouts; My lack of praising girl scouts is due to a
lack of girl scout experience not implying its bad or wrong. Its possible,
even likely, girl scouts is just as good for girls. I do find the ratio
bizarre where per capita girl scouting is around ten times less popular than
boy scouts, that might indicate a problem in girl scouting.

~~~
watwut
Originally, scouts exists, because founder thought that young UK boys are not
raised to be ready enough to be soldiers.

More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish
activities and girls doing proper girly activities. E.g. boy version is more
about camping and tracking, girl version developed from traditionally female
crafts. They are not equivalent in terms of child raising goals.

~~~
thomastjeffery
The BSA is much less about gender distinction now. They are even letting girls
join the program now, which is great progress considering their history. Young
women have also been working at scout camps for decades.

------
peterwwillis
This is not _just_ about ADD/ADHD medication, or about "boyhood". This is
about the unnecessary prescribing of psychoactive drugs with powerful side-
effects to people who cannot consent.

I am yet another person who, around 7, was prescribed strong stimulants. Yes,
it turned me into a robot, and yes, I did better in school. For a while. Until
finally I grew so bored of pointless academic striving that I completely gave
up doing any school work. At the same time, I discovered the computer.

When I first told my mother "I don't want to live anymore", she asked me,
"Good lord, why would you want to kill yourself?!" We had just recently moved
back to the states, to a place I didn't know or like, to a school I didn't
like. My parents fought, partly over us. My brother despised me. Due to my
medicated existence, I had no real emotional connection to anything. At
fourteen, I didn't see much value in life. "I don't want to die," I said, "I
just don't really want to keep on living. There's no meaning to life. It's
just pain."

Soon there was the anti-depressants, and when those didn't work, the anti-
psychotics, and more stimulants. Sometimes I couldn't sleep for weeks.
Sometimes I couldn't stay awake for months. I needed blood tests to make sure
my kidneys weren't failing on new medications. I was kicked out of schools,
and was unable to complete any work. The only thing I noticed about this time
was the kids at public schools were somewhat nicer, and the work was somewhat
harder. I remember reading Ray Bradbury's short story collection and thinking,
wow, maybe there is something to life.

Dropping out of high school and not attending college, I was pretty fortunate
to have found a medium for my attention that was both intellectually and
fiscally rewarding. I doubt the rest of the kids who endure chemical tinkering
at the hands of unscrupulous "doctors" are as fortunate as I to make a good
living after a normal mental/emotional childhood is taken away from them.

------
forgotmypw
I had trouble in high school. I fell behind because I did not have glasses,
and I didn't find the material motivating enough, and because things were kind
of tumultuous at home, and so on. By the time my dad caught on, I was 3 months
behind in Physics.

So he sat me down after work, and we went through the material together. It
took less than a week for me to catch up.

It makes me wonder what a kid could accomplish with a little bit of individual
attention. I am not the dumbest person in the world, but I am also far from
the smartest. Compared to the rest of the class, I was probably about average.

~~~
briatx
> It makes me wonder what a kid could accomplish with a little bit of
> individual attention.

I thought the same thing as I read through these comments. Perhaps the
attention deficit is not that of the child, but that of the parents/teachers.

------
thaumasiotes
Compare:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/09/sex_selection_in_babies_through_pgd_americans_are_paying_to_have_daughters_rather_than_sons_.html)

> Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender
> selection patients. A study published in 2009 by the online journal
> Reproductive Biomedicine Online found Caucasian-Americans preferentially
> select females through PGD 70 percent of the time.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/well/family/the-fear-
of-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/well/family/the-fear-of-having-a-
son.html?_r=0)

> a 2010 study [] discovered, among other things, that adoptive American
> parents preferred girls to boys by nearly a third. [] Adoptive parents are
> even willing to pay an average of $16,000 more in finalization costs for a
> girl than a boy.

~~~
thaumasiotes
This is one of those times where I'm going to ask about the downvotes.

~~~
telesilla
Let's just stick to the facts related to the argument. The article was not
about comparing girls to boys except a small side-note about diagnosis ratios
and the increasing expectation that children sit quietly at school. Your
comment is a non-sequitur about boys being undesirable, which is not relevant
to this particular discussion.

~~~
thaumasiotes
So, we've got two stylized facts:

1\. In modern American culture, young boys, but not girls, are diagnosed with
personality disorders and drugged into submission at rates so alarming that
skeptics refer to things like "Youthful Tendency Disorder". (
[https://www.theonion.com/more-u-s-children-being-
diagnosed-w...](https://www.theonion.com/more-u-s-children-being-diagnosed-
with-youthful-tenden-1819565754) )

2\. Also in modern American culture, there appears to be a very strong
preference for having female children over males.

But you don't think these could be related?

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The children in the study—forty-four boys, four girls, all diagnosed with
ADHD—were given varying doses of medication and behavioral therapy, and
researchers monitored their episodes of "noncompliance" each day.

When I read about studies like that I like to imagine two scientists in lab
coats, one with a clipboard, the other with a complicated piece of equipment,
looking at a kid throwing a wild tantrum:

\- Dr Smith, what does the Noncompliance-o-scope say?

\- It's off the charts, Dr Brown. Off. The. Charts.

Except -alas- there's no such machine that can tell you how much, or when, a
child is non-complying so I have never any idea what those studies are
supposed to be, you know, actually measuring.

~~~
sova
I hate to laugh at such a scenario but you may want to consider standup comedy
as a fallback.

------
ggg9990
Got hauled to the school psychologist in elementary school for calling my
teacher an idiot. Was prescribed Ritalin. My parents told them absolutely not
and I've had a great life without it.

I'm sure there are some people who need these medications. But realize that
the incentives of the system are to give you pills. It's not even as debauched
as bribery or kickbacks -- it's simply that a person who studies psychoactive
medications rather than parenting will, when asked to solve the problem of an
unruly child, naturally come up with medications as the solution rather than
alternative parenting.

~~~
throwaway1748
Wow, that's insane that a kid would ever be prescribed medication by a school
doctor/nurse. That seems like a doctor's visit a parent should book & not just
be informed afterwards that thier child was prescribed a dangerous stimulant
like Ritalin.

~~~
ggg9990
I think a doctor did come in but on school grounds. And there was a meeting
with my parents where they told him to fuck himself. This was also 30 years
ago

------
castle-bravo
I don't have kids and I don't know anybody who has kids on ADHD medication, so
I'm ignorant about this, but I have a hard time believing that people put
their kids on stimulants without knowing what these drugs are and what they
do; especially when it's possible to look up the Wikipedia article on Adderall
and see that it's nothing but amphetamine. I'd be further surprised if none of
these parents were interested enough to try out their kids' prescriptions on
themselves; I would be.

It's awfully cynical, but I think that a lot of parents have a good idea what
they're giving to their kids and do it anyway because they think the
stimulants will give them a competitive edge in school, college admissions,
and ultimately lead to higher incomes. The cost of not drugging your kid might
be that they don't fit in, are singled out for punishment by school staff, and
end up handicapped by their negative experiences in school. It's a very tough
decision, even if you know what's in those pills.

I just wish the dosages were lower. Having tried a few of my friends'
prescriptions over the years, I've found that even "low" doses get me high and
then leave me with a hangover. I might be particularly sensitive (I get
euphoric from taking 30mg of pseudoephedrine), but I'm a 180-pound adult. I
can't imagine what an 18mg dose of methylphenidate does to a prepubescent boy.
At worst, the 'high' from taking these drugs therapeutically should be
subliminal.

~~~
oldcynic
_> I just wish the dosages were lower_

Two things.

First, the first 1-2 days of ADHD meds can have a _dramatic_ effect that have
you thinking "this can't be right". It's normal, expected, and goes away very
quickly. You should be warned to expect it by the prescribing doctor. After 3
days or so you barely know you're taking them.

Second, the dosage and effect on a non-ADHD person is entirely different to
that an ADHD person will get. That's presuming it's the right med for them[0].
_You_ will have a stimulating, speed, effect. An ADHD person (well most) will
get little to no stimulation, and a calming effect, and might sit down to do
their homework, or even just sit _still_ for a couple of hours - for the first
time ever. Amphetamines don't do that to normal neurology, thus you can't
compare.

The dosage is putting them closer to typical, but putting you far _away_ from
typical. If you were normal vision or long sighted and tried your friend's
short sight prescription glasses you wouldn't wish their glasses were weaker,
would you? Same principle.

It's also common for one or other parent to discover they have it too after
they have tried their child's meds.

[0] Getting the right medication is a bit of a trial and error minefield, but
should be a standard part of treatment. Not all doctors are as willing to
switch medication or titrate dosage as they should be.

~~~
goldenkey
Amphetamines affect physicality for everyone in similar ways. Heart rate,
metabolism, blood pressure, etc. Please don't spread misinformation.

~~~
oldcynic
OK, the specialist at the ADHD centre may have advised me incorrectly, and I
am imagining the effects. Effects that are basically the opposite of what you
and hnuser1234 describe in the thread above, and rather like huffmsa and many
others have reported. For example, I have never once experienced "a cold
robotic mind space" on medication, or anything close, even on the very first
day. Which variant of ADHD do you have btw?

Not surprising there are a range of effects, when it's fairly common to need
to try 3 or 4 different drugs before finding one that works. For a minority,
none work.

Perhaps it's not "misinformation" but an attempt to honestly report what I
gleaned from the specialist, and what I and others have experienced.

~~~
goldenkey
A stimulant isn't a therepeutic drug. It's a hard drug with straightforward
effects. Increased pleasure and increased activity, via dopaminergic and
norepinephrine pathways, respectively.[1]

If you aren't having those effects you are most likely taking close to a
maintanence dose, to avoid the rebound effect that comes with physical
dependence.

If a person has trouble sleeping due to self control issues, should they just
patch it over with addictive drugs like benzodiazepenes? Or should they try to
discipline themselves by adapting to their unique brain and body, for lasting
change?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine)

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484204)

------
ohf
I think this is a product the space we raise children in.

Kids spend hours casually absorbed in phones, tablets, and consoles (basically
the heroin of screen-based entertainment), and then we sit them in a room for
eight hours. So they get restless. And we drug them.

What's the right thing to do here?

The only defense I have against "girls have tech, too; why aren't they on
speed" is that boys spend more time on screens, which is just a casual
hypothesis.

------
Pulcinella
Much of Glasser’s emotional problems seemed to be because he was abused as a
child rather than because he has ADHD.

Praising children for proper behavior instead of just punishing bad behavior
is good and what schools are moving towards (search for PBIS) but it’s not the
same as teaching coping skills to people with reduced executive functioning.
Having ADHD isn’t the same as having emotional troubles to work through.

------
kwhitefoot
What struck me about the article was the throwaway line:

    
    
        listened to your brief and vague report that he seemed   
        to have trouble sitting still in kindergarten,
    

Where I live, where my three boys went to kindergarten (barnehage her in
Norway), pre-school is all about physical activity and socialisation. It's not
like school, there are no lessons to sit still for; instead there are things
to do, painting, cooking, laying tables, climbing frames, mud to be crawled in
and puddles to splash. The children are of course expected to not be
disruptive and the staff will work with the children to ensure that they
behave well.

The end result seems to be, on the whole, self-confident, well behaved
children who can be taken anywhere with little or no risk that they will be
disruptive.

As far as I know the kinds of diagnoses that seem common in the US are rare
here.

------
bmj
If you find this article interesting or compelling, please check out _Boys
Adrift_ [0]. You may not necessarily agree with all of Sax's conclusions, but
if you have boys of your own, it should be required reading.

[0] [http://www.boysadrift.com/](http://www.boysadrift.com/)

------
EamonnMR
When we're giving something to one in fourteen people, it seems crazy that the
healthcare system should be wasting money determining who should and who
should not be allowed to have these drugs.

------
freekh
I've always wondered if it is related to discipline not bring enforced as
harshly. I'm NOT saying it was good to do that, just wondering if that is a
cause...

~~~
goldenkey
Its a mixture of slow/stupid kids (low IQ) and rebellious, impulsive kids.
Personality and performance undesirables. Back in the older days, there were
more manual labor and mechanized jobs that anyone could learn to do if they
just followed instructions. These days, every parent wants their kid to goto
an ivy league, and get a "smart job." So they put their kids on performance
enhancing drugs. Stimulants like amphetamines alter the brains reward system -
dopaminergic synapses. So the asshole kid becomes a little bit nicer because
the potential energy to do harder and undesirable tasks is now decreased both
mentally and physically. Thresholds changed. Speed of mental quickness and
physical dexterity also improved..so the slow kid is now near average level
intelligence because he is overclocked on stimulants. Better hope the parents
give their kids a good liquid cooling system and feed them more, need a bigger
PSU when your system is clocked so hot.

------
originalsimba
Too late!

------
matthewn
From 2014, though the AMP version linked to does not reflect this.
[https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of-
the...](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of-the-american-
boy-0414/)

~~~
dang
We changed the URL from [https://www.esquire.com/news-
politics/amp32858/drugging-of-t...](https://www.esquire.com/news-
politics/amp32858/drugging-of-the-american-
boy-0414/?__twitter_impression=true).

