Medical Marijuana : A safer alternative for treating ADD in children

I believe it's wrong to legalize marijuana and especially giving it to children no matter what the method is.  Marijuana is highly addictive as I was a user for 20 years.  I was also prescribed Ritialin as a kid and I would agree that drugging a child is the worse thing that anyone could do. There are alternative treatments that do not require drugging your child to treat ADHD.  Fortunately for me I was able break the addiction of marijuana and ritialin and live a productive life. 

good....

yo fourbyfour blazer you are such a fucked idiot.  are u seriously saying u were a marijuana addict for twenty years. ure so fucked i cant even think of what to call u.

faggot

Hello everyone i have been doing alot of research on this subject...  I personally have never been diagnosed with ADD but in looking at all the symptoms I am convinced I have it....  Anyway I was introduced to MJ when I was very young, at the time it was just another way to party but I did use it everyday....  I stopped using daily when I turned 18 but not completely...  Every chance I got I made sure I got a hit or two...  which wasnt that often...  Then about a little over a year ago I started using again every day....  No I never got stoned I would just have a hit or two and I always did it by myself....  Noone else around me knew that I was smoking.....I really dont understand why everytime I had MJ I was more focused, I got more accomplished in a shorter period of time, I was calm, I always had good conversation, my creative thinking was awesome...  (Writing songs, playing guitar etc... )  I could go on and on about how wonderful things are when I have MJ....  But the reason I am here posting a comment now is because I have stopped using again and  I am constantly searching to fill that emptyness...  I am taking vitamins, amino acids, other herbs, trying to eat better and exercise....  And Im still searching....  Anyway I just wanted to share my story...  Oh and another thing I wanted to add, regardless of the altenatives to treat ADD/ADHD the doctors are still prescribing amphetamines and parents are still giving it to there kids...  The way I see it MJ is a God given herb and I would rather give that to my kids, in a form other than smoking, than to give them all of the man made sythetic drugs that have far more side effects....

I have been self-medicating for around forty years.  When I run out I don't feel odd or "jones" for it, I simply do not feel stoned.  I return to my natural state of being that has been the same since the earliest of my memories.  That is, anxious, stressed, an over pleaser compensating for whatever it is that I do that seems to annoy everyone around me and, unable to focus because my brain is like a pinball machine with multiple thoughts careening wildly. 

I can count on one hand the number of days in my fifty two years that I have had a feeling of natural relaxation and stillness in my mind without the aid of medication.  Although I began consuming pot as a recreational activity in my teens and, by the way, did not find it a gateway to harder drugs like ritalin/cocaine (and neither did my cohorts who had virtually all stopped using pot by their mid-thirties), I eventually noticed a correlation with smaller dosages, a couple of puffs and, my attention span improving. 

It was such a significant improvement that I began "dosing" when attention needed to be assured such as,  when I wrote exams at university and later, when I had to produce time sensitive projects professionally, and even when debating complex issues I was able to accord my opponents arguments a more thoughtful and mindful consideration. 

Academics were a breeze for me as I found learning interesting.  ADD  folk can hyperfocus on things that are of interest to them, but could be disadvantaged in testing situations because the anxiety would set off the multitude of thoughts that would cause distraction. 

People think that we smoke to get high but that is not what happens when it is used as medication in the long term.  If I want to enjoy pot recreationaly I need to interrupt my dosing for several days to get the effect of feeling high.   This raises another observation that ,as with ritalin, it is a holiday medication.  That is, interrupting dosing results in no harmful effects.  I don't mind my symptoms when I don't require that kind of focus.

Finally I would like to say that, as well as being outraged that  some  dimwits  would deny the medical benefits of THC to individuals suffering the often debilitating effects of ADD, as well as, other well documented health issues that have been well established to benefit from this medication,  because it derives from marijuana and unlike conventional treatments, has no toxic side effects  but, it is just peachy keen to treat an obscene number of children with Ritalin which is derived from cocaine.  I may have ADD but I still know seriously flawed logic when I see it.