SOCIETY SUFFERS FROM 'SENSORY ADDICTION'

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.

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, 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.