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February 17, 2009
Phelps Follow Up
In addition to wondering if Michael Phelps had ever been diagnosed with ADD, the other question that popped into my mind after seeing his famous bong hit was his relationship with his biological father. President’s Day was spent seeing patients in a place lacking internet access, thus I had to wait for Google to confirm my suspicions it had been dysfunctional in ways I’d first suspected in 2002 and started writing about in late 2004.The key insight that chronic pot use was the most outstanding and easily determined characteristic of everyone seeking our “recommendation” to use it had already occurred to both Doctor Claudia Jensen and myself when we met at the same Oakland buyers’ club in April of 2002. Unfortunately, as I later reported, that association would be sadly and unexpectedly brief; however she also continued to document what we’d both learned was clinical evidence those on opposite sides of the issue didn’t want to hear; each for their own reasons.
The bad news is that much valuable time has been wasted because those with the resources to learn the truth have remained so adamantly in support of ignorance.
The good news is that the cat is so far out of the bag that the destructive futility of American drug policy should eventually prove as difficult to hide as it was for chattel slavery, the signature error of our young republic. But it now also seems that such behavior is a deeply imbedded component of humanity’s evolutionary legacy, thus its eventual correction is no more certain than it is for multiple other existential vulnerabilities attributable to our unrestrained cleverness.
More practically and closer to the subject, ADD & ADHD now appear to be variants of the same entity; certainly not a “disease,” but a form of pediatric anxiety often manifested in early childhood and frequently persistent throughout life. The common denominator seems to be the trauma of a child’s perception of rejection by the family sometime between sentience and the onset of puberty. The ease with which inhaled cannabis can control those distressing symptoms in adolescence (and beyond) has been a major reason for the obvious failure of our smug, moralistic— yet supremely stupid— drug policy.
You can put that in your bong and smoke it.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at February 17, 2009 04:31 PM