Lets do the equation: it’s $23.99 for a month of pills that are ten milligrams.  That’s one thousand milligrams in one gram.  That’s one thousand divided by ten milligrams that’s one hundred bottles.  Times the price of one bottle, that’s $23.99, that’s roughly two thousand four hundred dollars ($2,400.00) for every gram of Ritalin in the country.  Now one kilo is one thousand grams (1,000g).  Times that by two thousand four hundred, times one thousand, that’s two million, four hundred thousand dollars per kilo of Ritalin ($2,400,000.00).  Times the seventeen thousand six hundred and eighteen (17,618) kilos that were brought in and sold in the pharmaceutical business year of 2001.  That means they’ve got a forty two billion, two hundred eighty three million, two hundred thousand dollar industry ($42,283,200,000.00).  It’s brilliant; tell kids they’re inferior and have them buy back their efficiency.  The U.S. by the way consumes ninety percent of it. 

And wouldn’t I know.  I’ve been on the stuff, in one form or another, since before I was ten, my brother as well.  Parents swear by it and kids just seem to live with it.  And then when they get older and a bit smarter, not just live with it, capitalize on it, sell it.  To those who are not a part of the one out of four males and one out of six females who are diagnosed, as they feel the need to use anything available to keep up with academia.  In the land of A.D.D (and A.D.H.D. for that matter) the man with Ritalin is king.  Let me assure you, that it is not lack of focus, but lack of interest.  Because I have had plenty of time to test my theory.  Being on or off the drug doesn’t affect my writing what so ever.  It seems that I need it for the other subjects that I “need” to take as a part of my higher education: the math and the sciences that I have struggled with throughout my academic career.  Here just take this pill and you’ll be fine! Salvation is near.  And it runs in my family.  My grandfather was so “attention deficit hyperactive” growing up that on more than one occasion, his grandfather tied him to a tree. 

He grew up, no medication his entire life, and became a brilliant doctor, and the leading researcher on the birth control formula (which led to the first birth control pill) at Johnson and Johnson (you’re welcome ladies).  I then watch my young cousin Derek, and I’m worried that he will be like me, diagnosed with this “disorder”.  Because he could care less about the page math problems he was assigned, and instead is focused on the collages he makes out of old pictures he finds around the house, or his ever-increasing talent on the piano.  I see him as one of the next geniuses of the world, because he has all the potential to thrive.  He is happy running around the yard, and yet others see that and diagnose it, while I only see him further exploring and reveling in the freedom that he possesses in his own feet.  If minds were not allowed to wonder then we would never have had the people that we idolize today.  No Einstein’s, Dali’s, Picasso’s, no MLK, JFK, no Stephan King, Douglas Adams, Jean Toomer, Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg.  And certainly no one like my grandfather, or my cousin.  And you wouldn’t have the words that I’m writing now.  Because in my cousin’s artistic moments, he is Dali, Picasso, and Monet.