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Society suffers from 'sensory
addiction'
The Winnipeg Free Press
Focus, Saturday, March 19, 2005, p. a19
DALLAS HANSEN
ANECDOTAL evidence suggests the use of hard stimulants has this decade
gone from rare to commonplace amongst Winnipeg's teenagers and young
adults. As one Kelvin High student related to me, on the condition of
anonymity, "At school, coke is easier to get than weed."
Thriftier thrill-seekers, however, are opting for the longer-lasting
effects of methamphetamine. These potent neurotoxins, unequivocally
stigmatized throughout the '90s, have emerged from the ghetto and into
middle-class life. While greater supply via organized crime expansion
has brought more widespread distribution, the real culprit is greater
demand. In our technology-saturated, hyperactive culture, stimulants
serve to bring excitement to the mundane.
Diagnosed
For young people diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD), this is nothing new. It's been decades since educators
and physicians discovered that a slight methylphenidate (Ritalin) buzz
keeps classroom-cooped kids quiet and still.
Indeed, in the last decade, Ritalin prescriptions in the United States
have risen 500 per cent, and, according to a Mayo Clinic report from
2003, up to 16 per cent of high school students are diagnosed with
ADHD. (Ritalin, incidentally, is a pharmacological sibling to
amphetamines that, like cocaine, raises dopamine levels in the brain.)
Amongst social butterflies and the nightclub-lounge scene, cocaine
prevails. As Scott, 26, a Corydon Avenue regular, describes it, "coke
is the new weed." But for socially unambitious, scholarly types -- prim
people who have never abused alcohol or street drugs -- Ritalin's
pharmacy label lends it a legitimacy that invites excess. Amid the
pressures of academic exams and deadlines, Ritalin -- sometimes crushed
and snorted -- is key to all-night study sessions.
Conservative Stephen Bertman, a classics professor at Lawrence
Technological University in Michigan, in his book Hyperculture: The
Human Cost of Speed (Praeger, 1998) fingers the accelerated pace of our
increasingly technological lifestyle as the culprit for postmodern
moral decay.
And on the left, psychopharmacologist Richard DeGrandpre in Ritalin
Nation: Rapid-fire Culture and the Transformation of Human
Consciousness (Norton, 1999) dismisses arguments of a biological origin
for ADHD.
In DeGrandpre's view, our society suffers from "sensory addiction":
multi-tasking computers, feature-filled mobile phones, dazzling video
game systems, endless TV channel lists, quick-cutting music videos and
other everyday technologies transform our consciousness toward greater
expectations of stimulation; thus the real world -- of classrooms and
libraries, kitchens and gardens -- seems decelerated and dull by
comparison.
DeGrandpre's belief in behavioural origins for ADHD symptoms leads him
to point at parenting and lifestyle as causes. Doctors in France or
Japan, he points out, seldom diagnose ADHD. Ritalin prescriptions are
unheard of. Where a single schoolteacher will lead a class of calm
Japanese children through a museum, three American teachers will
struggle in vain to control the same number of American students.
Narcissism and instant gratification are so deeply embedded in American
culture that impulsive, inattentive kids get put on hard drugs by
impulsive, inattentive parents and educators seeking a quick fix from
their impulsive, inattentive physicians. Sensory addiction is so
ubiquitous as to be invisible. What proportion of people have a habit,
through every waking hour, of blasting a TV? How many of us are uneasy
with silence? How often do we fidget with our mobile phones, even when
we're not making or taking a call? How likely is it that our children's
calmest moments are in front of a TV or computer screen?
Stimulants
Stimulants, whether from the pharmacy or the street, address symptoms,
not causes. While they might succeed for a moment in settling a
nuisance child, keeping one awake to study, or offering escape from
dullness, they only further feed a problem that in turn requires more
of the "solution." And long-term use of Ritalin, cocaine, and other
stimulants has been shown to cause brain decay and increase the
likelihood of later depression.
The only effective approach to sensory addiction -- whether from
Ritalin or cocaine, mobile phones or television -- is proper parenting
and the embrace of meaningful activities in the real world.
This may or may not include cooking and baking, gardening, carpentry,
painting, writing, swimming, playing a musical instrument, communing
with nature, meditating.
Activities such as yoga or martial arts evoke a disciplinary focus as
well as a reverence for the instructor that can only carry over into
the academic classroom. But stimulant drugs, whether from a pharmacy or
a street thug, are bad for growing brains.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Children; Diseases, therapy and prevention
Length: Medium, 590 words
© 2005 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
www.dallashansen.com |
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