Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 857 ｜ Is ADHD Real？｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin (Part One)

00:00:00.000 Dr. Roger McFillan is a clinical psychologist. He's a consultant, coach, and speaker as well.

00:00:06.260 We've had him on the show before to talk about depression medications and why they don't actually

00:00:11.840 work. And today we are talking about another controversial topic, which is ADD and ADHD

00:00:20.420 and how these diagnoses are not necessarily, according to Dr. McFillan, based in real science

00:00:28.640 and therefore the treatments that are often given for them are also not scientific and in many cases

00:00:35.240 extremely unproductive, unhelpful, and even harmful. This is a two-part conversation. Today is part one

00:00:44.380 where we get into ADD, what it is, how it's diagnosed, and how it is often harmfully treated.

00:00:50.700 And then you'll have to stay tuned for part two for the rest of it, even more apparently very

00:00:55.740 controversial things that we are going to discuss. This episode is brought to you by our friends at

00:01:01.840 Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com. Code Allie.

00:01:16.540 Dr. McFillan, thanks so much for joining us again. I have to say there was quite a reaction,

00:01:22.960 a positive reaction overwhelmingly to the conversation that we had, but of course,

00:01:28.280 plenty of pushback, which I'm sure that you're used to when you say things like there's no such

00:01:33.760 thing as a chemical imbalance. It's not just something that people disagree with. I realize

00:01:38.700 it's almost a part of people's worldview. They really want to cling to that for some reason when

00:01:44.200 it comes to depression and anxiety. So before we get into what we're talking about today,

00:01:48.460 is that something that you've experienced that it's really difficult for people to

00:01:52.640 hear what you said, that the chemical imbalance theory is not something that's rooted in good

00:01:57.780 science? Yes. Well, first, thank you for having me back. I did read a lot of the comments from our

00:02:04.460 last interview, and I found them fascinating and interesting. And some of that I think is really

00:02:09.200 important to address up front, because we're definitely going to walk down a similar path as

00:02:13.780 last time, where we're discussing this condition and how it really has become a person's own

00:02:22.000 individual identity. And from what they've learned in popular culture, it really does drive a lot of

00:02:27.400 their behaviors and their reactions. So let me just first say a couple of things. I think in American

00:02:32.960 culture, we're in this unique period of time where it is a lot easier to criticize the person versus

00:02:40.940 the actual argument. So I do think I have to defend some of my credentials here as a clinical

00:02:47.060 psychologist, because there was a portion of people who responded to the last interview said

00:02:50.760 that I did not have the credentials to be able to speak out on this. So first,

00:02:54.560 I am a clinical psychologist and not a medical doctor. So they are accurate there. But what are

00:02:59.180 clinical psychologists? We are researchers and clinicians. So I have a doctoral degree in clinical

00:03:03.640 psychology. I've published research. Where my strength is, is being able to understand medical research and

00:03:09.920 then being able to communicate that as best available evidence. So when you're an active clinician, you

00:03:15.180 have to act and make decisions that are based on this evidence. And so I think by last time that I was

00:03:21.260 here, I was communicating that scientific literature. And so it's also important for people to know my

00:03:27.260 concerns or the things that I'm going to discuss today or discussed last time are certainly not

00:03:32.040 limited to non-medical professionals. There are many medical professionals who are speaking out

00:03:36.960 against this. In fact, one of the blessings of being on your show is I've been able to connect

00:03:41.200 to a lot of people, especially pediatricians in the medical system who are forced to intervene in

00:03:47.960 ways that they don't feel are scientifically sound or follow guidelines that have problems. And we'll get

00:03:54.360 into this today. So your question is a good one about like personal identity, especially when we get into

00:03:59.980 the conversations about ADHD. It is so prominent now in American culture that people take on these

00:04:07.140 identities as if they define who they are. And so when you start to be critical of the science or you

00:04:13.980 provide alternative views, it's different than other diagnoses. You would think that if somebody learned

00:04:19.380 that there were safer or more effective ways to understand the treatment of cancer, for example, they would be

00:04:26.420 thrilled to be able to understand that and see what works. But when it comes to like your mental health,

00:04:32.240 it gets confused where people feel like there is actually a personal attack and you're invalidating

00:04:37.080 them. Right. That's those are definitely some of the comments that I got and something that I

00:04:45.100 that I saw repeatedly, which I've heard before, so I'm not sure where it originated, but I've heard I've

00:04:51.520 heard doctors say this to people, not to me, but to people I know saying, you know, we have to take

00:04:57.020 medication for all different kinds of illnesses, physical ailments. And the illness in our brain is

00:05:03.940 no different, just like we have imbalances. If you have diabetes or if you have some other kind of

00:05:09.020 chronic disease, you may have to take medicine to manage, which maybe even that's debatable to some

00:05:14.200 people. But their point is that there are physical ailments that you have to take medicine for,

00:05:20.780 and we shouldn't treat a mental illness, they would say any differently. And I think it's an 0.99

00:05:27.480 attempt to say there should be no shame or no embarrassment around this. This is just what you

00:05:32.940 have to do. But that didn't really engage with the arguments that you made about the fact that

00:05:39.620 actually those medications are not doing what these people think that they are or say that they are

00:05:45.720 when it comes to, quote unquote, fixing depression and anxiety.

00:05:51.980 Yeah, let's first start with depression and anxiety are real conditions. They're painful,

00:05:58.000 and they can be really impairing. Comparing it to a medical condition is disingenuous. I can go to my

00:06:05.160 primary care doctor if I have strep throat, you can detect that with a test, identifying that bacteria,

00:06:12.160 and then targeting it with a drug that kills that bacteria. When it comes to the complexity of the

00:06:18.680 human experience and mental health, there are no tests. We are not doing brain scans. We are not

00:06:24.500 doing blood tests. We are not identifying any form of biological abnormality. And my point in the last

00:06:32.840 meeting with you was we were prescribing drugs that perturb normal functioning. So we are altering what

00:06:40.580 is normal. There is no identifiable chemical deficiency in the brain that is being treated.

00:06:48.280 So anyone who is promoting that idea is promoting only marketing, advertising rhetoric. It's not science.

00:06:58.180 And anyone who is an expert in this area is aware of the multitude of scientific studies over decades

00:07:06.020 are going to agree with me on that one. And that's not that's not unique to a psychologist perspective

00:07:11.380 or somebody who's not a medical degree. Experts in this area are very clear about that.

00:07:15.540 Well, I hope that you got a lot of encouraging messages because you were able to see the comments,

00:07:33.080 but you weren't able to see all of the direct messages that I received on Instagram from people

00:07:38.500 affirming the message that you gave and also just getting a lot of comfort from what you said.

00:07:43.660 So on the one end, yes, there are people who are going to be defensive and understandably so maybe

00:07:49.880 if they've been told that or if they feel that and maybe we'll talk about this, that the medicine has

00:07:56.000 changed their life. It's saved their life. That's something that I heard from some of your

00:08:00.820 detractors. But really, the majority of feedback I got from people who really feel that they've suffered

00:08:07.600 from bouts of intense depression more than just your standard sad mood or bouts of intense anxiety,

00:08:15.120 whether it's postpartum or whatever season of their life, or they have loved ones who did.

00:08:20.720 They reiterated your message that, yes, when I went on these medications, sure, it made me numb,

00:08:26.820 so I wasn't feeling what I was before. But in some cases, it made me feel paranoid. I couldn't sleep at

00:08:33.200 night. I became an insomniac. I became almost psychotic. I became some people saying a different

00:08:40.720 person. And then the most tragic tales, which we talked a little bit about last time,

00:08:46.160 are the messages that I received of people who said, yeah, my dad, my husband, my uncle actually,

00:08:54.980 you know, killed themselves, died by suicide after taking these medications. A lot of messages from

00:09:01.840 wives of veterans, or from kids of veterans who were put on these medications because of PTSD.

00:09:09.060 And they believe that these medications actually made their symptoms far worse. So much more than

00:09:15.060 the criticism and the detractors, I got a lot of gratitude. A lot of people saying, wow, I didn't

00:09:21.740 know this, this changed my mind. Someone who initially actually, she responded very negatively to the post

00:09:28.660 that I posted on Instagram, very angry about this. And then she came back and she said, you know what,

00:09:34.460 I listened. And I just didn't know, I just didn't know. So I wanted to, I know you already get a lot

00:09:42.000 of encouragement, but I just wanted to affirm you in that, that the vast majority of the messages and

00:09:46.720 the feedback that I got were from people saying, oh my goodness, thank you so much for having him on.

00:09:52.420 Um, so you can respond to that, but maybe if you want to also respond to some of the criticism of

00:09:58.160 people saying, how can you say this when these medications saved my life? Yeah, I do speak out

00:10:04.480 on behalf of those people. I've been in this field for 20 years. So I am observing it firsthand as a

00:10:11.040 clinician. The harms are significant. When I say that there is at least a double risk of suicide and

00:10:18.300 self-harm compared to a placebo, those are identifiable statistics. There is a large global

00:10:27.260 community of harmed patients that I am speaking out on their behalf. We know that these symptoms of

00:10:34.040 these drugs have been underestimated. The problems related to drugs are underestimated. And that's part

00:10:39.100 of being in the allopathic medical system here in the Western world that is really controlled by the

00:10:43.920 pharmaceutical industry. As far as those who have identified that these drugs save their life,

00:10:51.660 I'm skeptical, but I also want to speak to that. I actually was inspired to develop a YouTube video

00:10:57.740 to respond to that. There are reasons why people might attribute that drug to saving their life. And

00:11:04.880 remember, I think it's important to understand that we are creators of our reality. So how we make sense

00:11:11.060 of our world is powerful. Whether you say a drug saved your life, or you say Jesus saved your life,

00:11:17.300 or love saved your life, or exercise saved your life, that becomes your reality. But as a scientist

00:11:23.560 and who supports informed consent, giving people accurate information, I think saying the drugs save

00:11:32.220 lives, it's hyperbolic. And that's why we have randomized control clinical trials. Now, the things that we do

00:11:38.300 know about the drugs is there is a high placebo response. In pain and mental health, the placebo

00:11:44.480 response can range from 40 to 60%. So we know that people are getting better just from the placebo

00:11:50.660 itself. And one of the things I mentioned last time, and I think it's really critically important,

00:11:54.540 is that we have not yet really tapped into the power of the mind-body. And we don't utilize that in

00:12:00.460 the way that we can in medical treatments. So there's also a psychoactive response on the body.

00:12:05.520 There's a numbness. So there's a possibility that exists for a very small portion of people

00:12:10.280 that if they're intense emotional pain, that feeling of detachment or numbness can feel like

00:12:15.520 a relief. And we don't want to deny that. I think my point in the last interview with you was that is

00:12:21.680 not anti-depressant. That's not going to lead to a recovery from an episode. It could potentially

00:12:27.460 provide that relief. But most people are going to view that numbing and that detachment as aversive,

00:12:34.540 because you're also numbing other emotions. There's decreased empathy. There's decrease in

00:12:40.600 libido, severe sexual functioning, unable to experience joy and happiness in the same way.

00:12:47.220 Right. And so in that sense, would you say, though, that someone whose emotions were so intensely dark,

00:12:57.460 that the numbing brought on by the SSRI is preferable? Like, is it possible that the SSRI

00:13:06.960 like brought them back from the brink of suicide or acting out in a violent way because of their

00:13:12.880 intense depression or whatever it is? Or would you still say, uh, we still need to look at other

00:13:19.500 factors? I wouldn't credit the medication for that.

00:13:22.580 I wouldn't credit the medication on that. So even when we look at the data, there might be a small

00:13:30.840 percentage of people who react more positively outside the placebo response. That's really

00:13:37.300 debatable. But, um, my concern is the longterm. So if we don't have evidence that the drugs decrease

00:13:43.820 suicide and we haven't, we have plenty of evidence that say they increase that risk. I don't want to in

00:13:48.840 any way communicate that this drug can bring somebody back from the brink. There's other drugs

00:13:54.160 that are available that can also create a sedative reaction temporarily. So it, to me, it's the concern

00:14:02.140 with the widely prescribed drugs that we call antidepressants that are being used for depression

00:14:07.540 or anxiety. Ultimately, I do believe experiencing our emotions to serve us is necessary for emotion

00:14:14.380 regulation. So I don't want to turn a temporary or episodic condition into something longterm. I want

00:14:21.540 people to be able to understand that their emotions serve them and they're communicating important

00:14:27.700 messages that there's something in their life that needs to be changed. Now that might be something

00:14:31.200 medical. That might be something physical as well. We can think about depressive symptoms or anxiety,

00:14:37.500 almost like a fever and sit same thing. When we talk about focus or irritability or hyperactivity,

00:14:44.460 it's, it's a symptom. So similar to a fever, but we don't know what the underlying cause is. It could

00:14:49.280 be anything from a, a cold or it could be cancer. So it doesn't solve the problems, but I'm a reasonable

00:14:55.640 person. And I know that people have a right to choose the drugs or medic, uh, medications that are

00:15:01.100 available in our system. It's about providing them accurate information. So if somebody believes that

00:15:06.720 that emotional numbing, even though there could be permanent side effects is preferable to the life

00:15:12.460 that they're, they're living, then they should have the freedom to take that drug.

00:15:28.320 Okay. Let's move into the conversation about ADD and ADHD, because a lot of the messages that I

00:15:34.260 received asked me, can you please have him on to talk about ADD, ADHD? I've got a ton of moms in my 1.00

00:15:39.760 audience. And if they're like my mom, uh, they may have been told at some point in their child's

00:15:46.380 adolescence that, Hey, your child definitely has ADD. And because they can't sit still,

00:15:53.060 they talk too much in class. That was my issue growing up. I think every teacher from, I don't know,

00:15:58.640 maybe kindergarten, uh, to fourth grade, uh, told my parents that I had ADD and they should look on,

00:16:05.500 look at putting me on ADD medication. But thankfully, thankfully my parents knew that

00:16:10.520 wasn't true because I actually had a really, really good attention span, good reading comprehension.

00:16:14.780 I couldn't stop talking in class. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but that's just what it was.

00:16:19.040 I just couldn't stop myself from talking to my neighbor. And it probably was just more frustrating

00:16:24.160 to my teachers than anything else. But whether it be that, whether it be, uh, antsiness or they have

00:16:30.960 a son who just is rambunctious, wants to play around. A lot of parents are told, you know what,

00:16:36.520 your kid really needs ADD to be able to focus, to excel in school, even to fit in with friends.

00:16:42.220 And when you hear that as a parent, it can be really hard to resist that because you're like,

00:16:47.020 well, I don't, I don't want my kid to not do well. I don't want to set my kid up for failure.

00:16:50.760 And so they prescribe these medications. Um, and so I just want to, I want to hear your thoughts

00:16:55.700 first about the phenomenon, and then we can get into the medication that's actually being prescribed

00:17:00.380 for it. So Allie, I'm going to say things that are controversial today. I'm ready. I want your,

00:17:07.620 I want your listening audience to hear me out. So listen to everything that I'm saying. Don't

00:17:13.700 selectively choose things that I'm saying because I have gotten killed on social media for saying the

00:17:18.740 things I'm going to say today. First, there is no such thing as ADHD. First controversial statement.

00:17:27.140 Now let me explain. Okay. That does not mean that someone might struggle with focus or concentration,

00:17:34.140 and it doesn't mean that someone might deviate from the norm on hyperactivity. But ADHD is not a

00:17:41.560 discrete medical illness. It's a social construction. It is a constellation of symptoms

00:17:47.400 that we have used to try to describe certain behavior in certain contexts. And my opinion

00:17:53.860 is extremely problematic. So it's a social construction, meaning that ADHD first was identified

00:18:00.680 in the DSM in 1980. And as you might expect, it is highly, highly influenced by the pharmaceutical

00:18:08.860 companies. And the drugs to treat this are amphetamines for the most part, psychoactive

00:18:17.260 stimulants on the central nervous system. We can get into that. But my problem with the ADHD diagnosis

00:18:23.860 is similar to what I was talking about with fever. You might have somebody in a classroom or a specific

00:18:31.420 context that deviates from the norm in terms of hyperactivity or being able to focus on certain tasks.

00:18:38.540 The questions that we have to ask ethically in society and parents have to ask, is this a

00:18:45.860 disorder? So when we take naturally inclined people like yourself to be talkative, who have a difficult

00:18:54.100 time focusing on what they would consider to be boring tasks, maybe they're more physically active,

00:19:00.960 maybe their mind works in the same way. The creative, the daydreamer, the artist, the kid who needs to be

00:19:07.940 outside running and investigating, hunting or fishing or things of that nature. And we put them in a

00:19:14.860 restricted environment like an American classroom. And think about the American classroom. Now still to 0.51

00:19:21.000 this day, we're going to have bells like factory bells. We have lined up in a rows, a teacher in front.

00:19:27.480 It's really kind of training obedience. And so the ethical question is, are people who do not fit

00:19:32.680 into that restricted environment and their talents and their skills are outside of what is normative

00:19:40.900 in that environment? Should we be identifying that as a disorder? And then what are the implications for

00:19:48.260 that down the line? So when it's a socially constructed disorder, many people are getting

00:19:55.280 that label from school systems. And that's where teachers have been incredibly brazen in acting outside

00:20:03.500 their own boundaries of competence and trying to find ways to drug obedience and compliance in the

00:20:10.340 classroom.

00:20:10.760 Hmm. Now that's a good point. I didn't think about that, that it's really not teachers role

00:20:17.600 to diagnose your kid or even suggest a diagnosis of your kid and suggest medication. Honestly,

00:20:24.300 I hadn't thought about that because this is a story that I've heard so often that it comes from the

00:20:29.340 teacher. It doesn't come from a doctor. I remember having to go to a doctor one time for, it was actually

00:20:34.760 for migraines. And one of the things that they test, I was in middle school. They have you read a

00:20:40.640 page and then you have to tell them what you just read. That's how they test your attention span. Is

00:20:46.620 your mind working? And he was like, you know, it was good reading comprehension, whatever. I remembered

00:20:52.460 everything. And it was just affirmation, I think, for my parents that she doesn't have an attention

00:20:57.380 problem. As you said, maybe she doesn't fit into standard schooling or whatever, which ended up being 1.00

00:21:04.300 fine. I guess I learned how to not talk as much or whatever it was. But it, so the

00:21:10.560 doctor didn't have any concerns. It was the teachers. And I never thought about it like that,

00:21:15.220 that in some cases, I don't want to say every teacher, but in some cases, these teachers are

00:21:20.420 trying to medicate students into compliance. Gosh, that's problematic for a lot of reasons.

00:21:27.860 It is. And let me go over like actually how these diagnoses are made. So it is a wide range of

00:21:33.520 availability that we have in the healthcare system to try to determine if focus and attention is

00:21:39.160 problematic. Now this is, we would all agree, even if you want to bring on an expert who says,

00:21:44.980 well, ADHD is real and these symptoms impair somebody. We'll all agree that it is significantly

00:21:51.920 overdiagnosed and very easy to achieve the diagnosis. So there's some good research out there

00:21:58.100 that suggests that a large percentage of parents never thought their kid's behavior to be problematic

00:22:03.900 until they went into the school system and heard it from a teacher. Now you go into your pediatrician

00:22:09.660 and the way your pediatrician makes a diagnosis is not through brain scans or advanced neuropsych

00:22:17.660 testing that is looking at all the complex cognitive skills that are required to function well in

00:22:24.780 American society. It tends to be a checklist, which I can be happy to read some of the items on the

00:22:31.200 checklist today because with any form of checklist, you know, that's used as a screener, which is now

00:22:37.180 being used to diagnosis. You're going to overdiagnose a significant portion of the people and ADHD is

00:22:43.640 not a very reliable diagnosis. So you go to your pediatrician, the pediatrician assumes, well, if the

00:22:49.300 teacher is observing them every single day and the parent is stressed out because of the academic

00:22:54.440 problems, well, then I'm going to assign the label. And what is the intervention for ADHD? It's primarily a

00:23:04.560 psychostimulant drug, even though other interventions have been proven to be as or if not more effective. The

00:23:11.160 easy thing to do is to try to take the drug and we can get into the drug because it's very, very effective for a

00:23:17.940 period of time. But the way you can get a diagnosis is simply just by identifying with it. Nowadays with

00:23:24.300 diagnostic expansion and trying to sell more stimulants, you can go on any website, you can take

00:23:30.080 a quick checklist, they'll even score it for you. There's other companies that are popping up everywhere

00:23:36.720 where you can take the checklist and get the drug sent to your home, where you have a significant abuse

00:23:44.180 problem of Adderall, which is an amphetamine used to treat ADHD. And there's a lot of experimentation.

00:23:52.240 There's things that I think parents just have to know when it comes to both the diagnosis, it's not

00:23:56.100 very reliable. And two, the drugs that we use to treat them have really significant problems related

00:24:02.600 to dependence, side effects. A number of the issues that I said with other psychiatric drugs

00:24:08.720 are just as concerning with stimulant drugs. So stimulant drugs are scheduled to narcotics.

00:24:16.780 And what that means, it's defined as having a high potential for abuse and physical and psychological

00:24:22.260 dependence. So in the United States, the pediatricians aren't going to recommend kids

00:24:27.020 drinking caffeine every day because of the concerns with caffeine for young developing brains.

00:24:33.240 But they're going to prescribe a potent stimulant for kids as young as two or three years old

00:24:42.800 on a developing brain. So it's much more potent stimulant with much more wide range of adverse

00:24:48.340 negative effects. So a lot of the recommendations don't make a lot of sense medically.

00:25:03.240 And how we're told, or at least how I remember being told from friends who are on Adderall or even

00:25:11.800 Ritalin, which I think was used for ADHD. I actually remember a girl that I grew up with that I went to

00:25:18.220 school with. She, you know, was diagnosed with ADHD. She took Ritalin and she developed all these kinds of

00:25:23.100 like very debilitating tics because of that. And again, I don't remember anyone questioning like, 0.64

00:25:29.020 maybe this isn't, I don't know, cost benefit analysis here doesn't seem to be working out.

00:25:33.940 I knew so many of my friends on ADD medication. And they typically were diagnosed with that because

00:25:40.660 they couldn't, they just couldn't keep up with schoolwork or whatever, or they weren't making

00:25:46.700 great grades. I went to a private Christian school. And so there were kind of hot, you know, 0.99

00:25:51.480 pretty high academic standards. And so it was just assumed if you weren't doing well, it's because you had

00:25:56.520 some kind of like diagnosable illness. But how it was explained to me was that

00:26:03.000 these stimulants for the normal brain, they would make you more hyperactive. But for the already

00:26:10.600 hyperactive brain, someone who has ADHD, it actually does the opposite. It actually calms them down.

00:26:16.520 That's kind of how it was explained, kind of in the same way that SSRIs are explained to us from the

00:26:21.420 pharmaceutical companies that the chemical imbalance thing, this just balances the chemicals in your

00:26:26.460 brain so that you can feel happy again. So tell us why that explanation that the stimulants actually

00:26:33.000 calm a hyperactive person down is not true.

00:26:37.140 Yes, those are lies. So what these stimulants do is they increase the availability of dopamine

00:26:43.980 and norepinephrine. So these are two neurotransmitters that are implicated in focus,

00:26:51.740 attention, elevated mood, motivation. Taking Adderall is powerful. It's a performance enhancing

00:27:00.740 drug. It's why it's a banned substance for most of the professional sports leagues. Because if you take

00:27:06.320 it, you're going to have enhanced cognitive functioning for a period of time. The idea that

00:27:11.240 there is differences in brain is just poor science that is communicated in ways that people don't

00:27:17.960 understand. So I probably mentioned biological reductionism. This is what they do. They reduce

00:27:23.280 very complex interacting neurological systems. Like the brain is as complex of an organ as we can

00:27:34.180 imagine. And that's taking away other things like personality, the soul, when we talk about the entire

00:27:40.820 human experience. But let's just say we were going to reduce everything to the brain and everything is

00:27:47.120 just our entire experience of being a human is just related to our brain functioning.

00:27:52.840 Even then, the science isn't sound. So it's not like somebody who has attention problems

00:27:58.400 experiences a decrease or not enough norepinephrine or dopamine. It's just any single person who would

00:28:07.960 take that drug is going to have enhanced cognitive focus for a period of time. It almost like quiets the

00:28:15.460 noise. It brings somebody. Their inner energy can be calmed. It does affect the entire body. That's why

00:28:21.840 these drugs are abused on college campuses. They'll take the drugs in order to study. And there is a

00:28:28.780 euphoric response. It doesn't prove mood, which is why you'll see psychiatrists providing these drugs

00:28:34.160 for depression. So the drugs are powerful. And as I said last time, if we could just give them for a

00:28:42.260 short period of time and it would have no adverse effect, well then, great. I think these drugs would

00:28:47.140 be widely sought after as performance enhancers across the world. But the problem exists with any

00:28:53.060 drug is tolerance. So I was reading a study before I came on to your show that about 25% of people are

00:28:59.120 going to have tolerance to the drug within days or first couple of weeks. And we don't even know the

00:29:05.020 long-term implications of these drugs, but we do know this is what happens. The brain seeks homeostasis.

00:29:10.900 So you need more and more of the drug in order to have the same desired response.

00:29:17.620 What is problematic is this becomes a gateway diagnosis. ADHD is a gateway diagnosis into the

00:29:23.700 mental health system because you're going to prescribe these drugs to young children developing

00:29:27.940 brains. We don't know the long-term consequences. We know they act on the reward system of the brain

00:29:32.860 similar to other stimulants like cocaine. So they are highly addictive. And at some point,

00:29:38.560 the brain is going to adapt to them. And so then you're going to add another drug or an increased

00:29:46.000 dose, which increases the likelihood of an adverse drug reaction. And now they get misdiagnosed as

00:29:51.440 depression or anxiety because the withdrawal reactions to these drugs include both those symptoms,

00:29:57.520 including drug-seeking behavior. So it's this paradoxical effect of the long-term use of these drugs

00:30:02.480 drugs has a negative effect. Now I hear so many things coming out of the medical literature and

00:30:10.000 from medical professionals that just are simply not true. In fact, I love the Huberman lab and I think

00:30:15.040 he's got a great podcast and I listen to it frequently, but when he goes outside his area of expertise,

00:30:20.880 he just repeats the drug narrative and overestimates benefits and underestimates the risks to the drug.

00:30:30.560 And this drug culture is problematic. So there's two things that have been communicated in the

00:30:36.240 literature about ADHD. And again, they're marketing propaganda. They're not science. That if you

00:30:41.820 identify it as ADHD and you're untreated, you increase the likelihood of later substance abuse.

00:30:47.180 That is not true. And it doesn't even make reasonable or logical sense. And that's the

00:30:53.420 thing about, I hope your listeners, I think a lot of your listeners are very reasonable and logical

00:30:59.260 people who rely on common sense. So think about it. If you're at a young age and you're taught that

00:31:06.620 you need a drug to change the way you feel or the way you behave, do you think that is going to

00:31:11.820 increase the likelihood you turn to a substance later on in life or decrease the likelihood?

00:31:15.660 So it's certainly going to increase the likelihood of turning to drugs because you've almost been

00:31:20.940 conditioned to view your life that way. The other thing that is certainly not true is that being on

00:31:28.120 stimulant medication enhances learning long-term. I was just reading a recent meta-analysis that showed

00:31:34.740 that those who are non-medicated and diagnosed with ADHD outperformed academically those who are on the

00:31:43.660 drug. So that's two of the major selling points for why you need to put your kid on an amphetamine

00:31:51.480 early in life is to enhance academic outcomes long-term. Now, short-term, you can create a study

00:31:57.960 to do that, right? Because I did mention that the drug, at least short-term, is a very powerful

00:32:03.440 enhancer of cognitive abilities. So it might be able to get kids for a period of time to complete work,

00:32:11.600 but it doesn't increase intelligence, doesn't enhance learning. It's also very difficult to

00:32:15.880 get accurate data from those studies because you're comparing a person who's on the drug to

00:32:21.740 essentially, you know, who would they be as far as academic growth if they were not on the drug?

00:32:28.120 But it's very clear when I talk to other experts, and I've done podcasts on this,

00:32:32.440 that we don't have the evidence that they prevent later substance abuse. We don't have the evidence

00:32:37.100 that they enhance learning and improve academic functioning long-term.

00:32:53.940 So why do we treat children and people diagnosed with ADD and ADHD with the medications that we do,

00:33:02.160 knowing what we know about them and not knowing what we don't know about them? What's the history of this?

00:33:09.600 And also, what do we do with this information? Like, how do we help kids and adults with attention issues,

00:33:17.560 with behavior issues? What are some practical solutions? That's what we're going to talk about

00:33:22.420 in part two of this episode, which will come out tomorrow. So stay tuned for that.

00:33:26.540 Thanks for listening and watching.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 16, 2023

Ep 857 ｜ Is ADHD Real？｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin (Part One)

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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 16, 2023

Ep 857 ｜ Is ADHD Real？ ｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin (Part One)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 857 ｜ Is ADHD Real？｜ Guest： Dr. Roger McFillin (Part One)