I thought this person should be fired from the county clinic, but most counties don’t let me do that sort of thing.  The state of California has a nice service, where I ask to see who else is prescribing this person the same abusable drugs that I am.  I try to work with people who abuse drugs, I really do.  In one sense, it is the purest of pharmacologies, in that things I usually think are parts of a physician-patient encounter, like conversation and logic, play little or no role. House said that patients lie.  House is a Vicodin (opiate) addict.  Some of my more intelligent substance abusers are House fans. The same way that “Cops” was the most watched TV show in prison, when I was a jailhouse doc.

This person, was getting weaned off amphetamines.  After a lot of  years, I am not very sure I believe in ADHD, or “Attention deficit disorder.”  We all have problems of differential maturity.  These are just people who learn to concentrate later.  They may have other skills like class clowning that are way ahead.  My book learning was ahead of my social skills for a lot of my life. Besides, most anybody brightens up when you give them amphetamines.  Not that the effect lasts very long, mind you.  Even kids who take Ritalin in a quest to do better on the Scholastic Aptitude Test seem to revert pretty quickly to their previous state of dullness. Read more on Getting Amphetamines In Other Places…