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

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Today we're joined by Dr. Roger McFillin, clinical psychologist and co-host of the "Radically Genuine" podcast, to discuss the truth behind ADHD diagnoses and Big Pharma's role in it all. We start out with a clarification on what clinical psychology is and is not and recap our previous conversation on depression and depression medications. We talk about the ADHD phenomenon happening in America, and Dr. McFillin claims that while some indeed may struggle with focus and concentration, ADHD is actually just a socially constructed disorder. We talk about how ADHD is significantly over-diagnosed and how the majority of parents never thought their child's behavior was problematic until they heard it from a teacher. But do teachers have a right to help diagnose our kids, and what exactly are the consequences of liberally diagnosing ADHD? One may be that ADHD medications like Adderall tend to be a gateway to reliance on further mental health drugs. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow! --- Timecodes: (01:17) Clarifications & feedback from episodes on depression (08:59) Response to people who claim medications saved their lives (17:40) The ADHD phenomenon (23:40) How they "test" for ADHD (28:30) What ADHD medications do --- Today's Sponsors: A'Del — go to adelnaturalcosmetics.com and enter promo code "ALLIE" for 25% off your first order! Carly Jean Los Angeles — use promo code 'ALLIEB' to save 25% off your first order at CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com! Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE”. Netsuite — gain visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and inventory so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. Go to NetSuite.com/ALLIE to get your one-of-a-kind flexible financing program. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 821 | Why Antidepressants Don’t Fix Depression | Guest: Dr. Roger McFillin https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-821-why-antidepressants-dont-fix-depression-guest/id1359249098?i=1000616890403 Ep 822 | The Big Money Behind Big Medicine | Guest: Dr. Roger McFillin https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-822-the-big-money-behind-big-medicine-guest-dr/id1359249098?i=1000617050991 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Dr. Roger McPhillan is a clinical psychologist. He's a consultant coach and speaker as well. We've had him on the show before to talk about depression medications and why they don't actually work. And today we are talking about another controversial topic, which is 8.000.

ADD and ADHD and how these diagnoses are not necessarily, according to Dr. McPhillan, based in real science. And therefore, the treatments that are often given for them are also not scientific. And in many cases, extremely unproductive, unhelpful, and even harmful. This is a two-part conversation. Today is part one, where we get into ADD, what it is, how it's diagnosed, and how it is often harmfully treated. And then you'll have to stay tuned for part two, for the rest of it, even more apparently very controversial things that we are going to discuss. This episode is brought

to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout. That's Good Ranchers.com. Code Allie. Dr. McPhillen, thanks so much for joining us again. I have to say, there was quite a reaction, a positive reaction overwhelmingly to the conversation that we had. But of course, plenty of pushback, which I'm sure that you're used to. When you say things like there's no such thing as a chemical imbalance, it's not just something that people disagree with. I realize it's almost a part of people's worldview.

They really want to cling to that for some reason when it comes to depression and anxiety. So before we get into what we're talking about today, is that something that you've experienced that it's really difficult for people to hear what you said, that the chemical imbalance theory is not something that's rooted in good science? Yes, well, first, thank you for having me back. I did read a lot of the comments from our last interview, and I found them fascinating and interesting. And some of that, I think, is really important me to address up front

because we're definitely going to walk down a similar path as last time where we're discussing this condition and how it really has become a person's own individual identity and from what they've learned in popular culture, it really does drive a lot of their behaviors and their reactions. So let me just first say a couple things. I think in American culture, we're in this unique period of time where it is a lot easier to criticize the person versus the actual argument.

So I do think I have to defend some of my credentials here as a clinical psychologist because there was a portion of people who responded to the last interview said that I did not have the credentials to be able to speak out on this. So first, I am a clinical psychologist and not a medical doctor, so they are accurate there. But what are clinical psychologists? We are researchers and clinicians. So I have a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. I've published research.

Where my strength is is being able to understand medical research and then being able to communicate that as best available evidence. So when you're an active clinician, you have to act and make decisions that are based on this evidence. And so I think by last time that I was here, I was communicating that science. scientific literature. And so it's also important for people to know my concerns or the things that I'm going to discuss today or discussed last time are certainly not limited to non-medical professionals. There are many medical professionals who are speaking out against this. In fact,

one of the blessings of being on your show is I've been able to connect to a lot of people, especially pediatricians in the medical system who are forced to intervene in ways that they don't feel are scientifically sound or follow guidelines that have problems, and we'll get into this today. So your question is a good one about personal identity, especially when we get into the conversations about ADHD. It is so prominent now in American culture that people take on these identities as if they define who they are. And so when you start to be critical of the science or you provide alternative views, it's different than other diagnoses. You would think that if somebody learned that they were safer or more effective ways to understand the treatment of

cancer, for example. They would be thrilled to be able to understand that and see what works. But when it comes to like your mental health, it gets confused where people feel like there is actually a personal attack and you're invalidating them. Right. Those were definitely some of the comments that I got. And something that I saw repeatedly, which I've heard. it before, so I'm not sure where it originated. But I've heard, I've heard doctors say this to people, not to me, but to people I know saying, you know, we have to take medication for all different kinds of illnesses, physical ailments, and the illness in our brain is no different, just like we have imbalances. If you have diabetes or if you have some other kind of chronic

disease, you may have to take medicine to manage, which maybe even that's debatable to some people, but their point is that there are physical ailments that you have to take medicine for, and we shouldn't treat a mental illness, they would say, any differently. And I think it's an attempt to say there should be no shame or no embarrassment around this. This is just what you have to do. But that didn't really engage with the arguments that you made about the fact that actually those medications are not doing what these people think that they are. or say that they are when it comes to, quote unquote, fixing depression and anxiety.

Yeah, let's first start with depression and anxiety are real conditions. They're painful and they can be really impairing. Comparing it to a medical condition is disingenuous. I can go to my primary care doctor if I have strep throat. You can detect that with a test, identifying that bacteria and then targeting it with a drug that kills that bacteria. When it comes to the complexity of the human experience and mental health, there are no tests. We are not doing brain scans. We are not doing blood tests. We are not identifying any form of biological abnormality. And my point in the last meeting with you was we were prescribing drugs that perturb normal functioning. So we are altering what is normal. There is no identifiable chemical deficiency in the brain that is being treated.

So anyone who is promoting that idea is promoting only marketing, advertising rhetoric. It's not science. And anyone who is a expert in this area is aware of the multitude of scientific studies over decades are going to agree with me on that one. And that's not unique to a psychologist's perspective or somebody who's not a medical degree. Experts in this area are very clear about that. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answer. wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Well, I hope that you got a lot of encouraging messages because you were able to see the comments, but you weren't able to see all of the direct messages that I received on Instagram from people affirming the message that you gave and also just getting a lot of comfort from what you said. So on the one end, yes, there are people who are going to be defensive and understandably so maybe if they've been told that or if they feel that. And maybe we'll talk about this, that the medicine has changed their life. It's saved their life. That's something that I heard from some of your detractors.

But really, the majority of feedback I got from people who really feel that they've suffered from bouts of intense depression more than just your standard sad mood or bouts of intense anxiety, whether it's postpartum or whatever season of their life or they have loved ones who did. They reiterated your message that, yes, when I went on these medications, sure, it made me numb so I wasn't feeling what I was before. But in some cases, it made me feel paranoid. I couldn't sleep at night. I became an insomniac.

I became almost psychotic. I became some people saying a different person. And then the most tragic tales, which we talked a little bit about last time, or the messages that I received of people who said, yeah, my dad, my husband, my uncle actually, you know, killed themselves, died by suicide after taking these medications. A lot of messages from wives of veterans or from kids of them. veterans who were put on these medications because of PTSD and they believe that these medications actually made their symptoms far worse. So much more than the criticism and the detractors,

I got a lot of gratitude. A lot of people saying, wow, I didn't know this. This changed my mind. Someone who initially actually, she responded very negatively to the post that I posted on Instagram, very angry about this. And then she came back and she said, you know what? I listen. and I just didn't know. I just didn't know. So I wanted to, I know you already get a lot of encouragement, but I just wanted to affirm you in that, that the vast majority of the messages and the feedback that I got were from people saying, oh my goodness, thank you so much for having him on. So you can respond to that, but maybe if you want to also respond to some of the criticism of people saying, how can you say this when these medications saved my life?

Yeah, I do speak out on behalf of those people. I've been in this field for 20 years. So I am observing it firsthand as a clinician. The harms are significant when I say that there is at least a double risk of suicide and self-harm compared to a placebo. Those are identifiable statistics. There is a large global community of harmed patients that I am speaking out on their behalf. We know that these symptoms of these drugs have been underestimated, the problems related, the drugs are underestimated. And that's part of being in the alopathic medical system here in the Western world that is really controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. As far as those who have identified that these drugs save their life, I'm skeptical. But I also want to speak to that. I actually was inspired to develop a YouTube video to respond to that.

there are reasons why people might attribute that drug to saving their life. And remember, I think it's important to understand that we are creators of our reality. So how we make sense of our world is powerful. Whether you say a drug saved your life, or you say Jesus saved your life, or love saved your life, or exercise saved your life, that becomes your reality. But as a scientist and who supports informed consent giving people accurate information, I think saying the drugs save lives, it's hyperbolic. And that's why we have randomized control clinical trials. Now, the things that we do know about the drugs is there is a high placebo response.

In pain and mental health, the placebo response can range from 40 to 60%. So we know that people are getting better just from the placebo itself. And one of the things I mentioned last time, and I think it's really, critically important is that we have not yet really tapped into the power of the mind body, and we don't utilize that in the way that we can in medical treatments. So there's also a psychoactive response on the body. There is a numbness. So there's a possibility that exists for a very small portion of people that if they're intense emotional pain, that feeling of detachment or numbness can feel like a relief. And we don't want to deny that. I think my point in the last

interview with you was that is not antidepressant. That's not going to lead to a recovery from an episode. It could potentially provide that relief, but most people are going to view that numbing and that detachment as aversive because you're also numbing other emotions. There's decreased empathy. There's decrease in libido, severe sexual functioning, unable to experience joy and happiness in the same way.

Right. And so in that sense, would you say, though, that someone whose emotions were so intensely dark that the numbing brought on by the SSRI is preferable? Like, is it possible that the SSRI like brought them back from the brink of suicide or acting out in a violent way because of their intense depression or whatever it is? or would you still say, we still need to look at other factors? I wouldn't credit the medication for that. I wouldn't credit the medication on that. So even when we look at the data, there might be a small percentage of people

who react more positively outside the placebo response. That's really debatable. But my concern is the long term. So if we don't have evidence that the drugs decrease suicide, And we have plenty of evidence that say they increase that risk. I don't want to in any way communicate that this drug can bring somebody back from the brink. There's other drugs that are available that can also create a sedative reaction temporarily. So to me, it's the concern with the widely prescribed drugs that we call antidepressants that are being used for depression or anxiety.

Ultimately, I do believe experiencing our emotions to serve us is necessary for emotion. regulation. So I don't want to turn a temporary or episodic condition into something long term. I want people to be able to understand that their emotions serve them and they're communicating important messages that there's something in their life that needs to be changed. Now, that might be something medical. That might be something physical as well. We can think about depressive symptoms or anxiety, almost like a fever. And same thing when we talk about focus or irritability or hyperactivity. it's a symptom. So similar to a fever, but we don't know what the underlying cause is.

It could be anything from a cold or it could be cancer. So it doesn't solve the problems. But I'm a reasonable person, and I know that people have a right to choose the drugs or medications that are available in our system. It's about providing them accurate information. So if somebody believes that that emotional numbing, even though there could be permanent side effects, is preferable to the life that they're living,

then they should have the freedom to take that drug. Okay, let's move into the conversation about ADD and ADHD because a lot of the messages that I received ask me, can you please have him on to talk about ADD, ADHD? I've got a ton of moms in my audience. And if they're like, my mom, they may have been told at some point in their child's adolescence that, hey, your child definitely has ADD. And because they can't sit still, they talk too much in class.

That was my issue growing up. I think every teacher from, I don't know, maybe kindergarten to fourth grade told my parents that I had ADD and they should look at putting me on ADD medication. But thankfully, thankfully, my parents knew that wasn't true because I actually had a really, really good attention span, good reading comprehension. I couldn't stop talking in class. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but that's just what it was. I just couldn't stop myself from talking to my neighbor.

and it probably was just more frustrating to my teachers than anything else. But whether it be that, whether it be anciness or they have a son who just is rambunctious wants to play around, a lot of parents are told, you know what, your kid really needs ADD to be able to focus to excel in school, even to fit in with friends. And when you hear that as a parent, it can be really hard to resist that because you're like, 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. and so they prescribed these medications.

And so I just want to hear your thoughts first about the phenomenon and then we can get into the medication that's actually being prescribed for it. So, Ali, I'm going to say things that are controversial today. I'm ready. I want your listening audience to hear me out. So listen to everything that I'm saying. Don't selectively choose things that I'm saying because I have gotten killed on social media for saying the things I'm going to say today.

First, there is no such thing as ADHD. First controversial statement. Now let me explain. That does not mean that someone might struggle with focus or concentration, and it doesn't mean that someone might deviate from the norm on hyperactivity. But ADHD is not a discrete medical illness. It's a social construction. It is a constellation of symptoms that we have used to try to describe certain behavior in certain

context, and my opinion is extremely problematic. So it's a social construction, meaning that ADHD first was identified in the DSM in 1980. And as you might expect, it is highly, highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. and the drugs to treat this are amphetamines for the most part. Psychoactive stimulants on the central nervous system, we can get into that. But my problem with the ADHD diagnosis is similar to what I was talking about with fever. You might have somebody in a classroom or specific context that deviates from the norm in terms of hyperactivity or being able to focus on certain tasks.

The questions that we have to ask ethically in society and parents have to ask, is this a disorder? So when we take naturally inclined people like yourself to be talkative, who have a difficult time focusing on what they would consider to be boring tasks, maybe they're more physically active, maybe their mind works in the same way, the creative, the daydreamer, the artist, the kid who needs to be outside, running and investigating, hunting or fishing or things of that nature. And we put them in a restricted environment like an American classroom. And think about the American classroom. Now, still, to this day, we're going to have bells like factory bells. We have lined up in a rose, a teacher in front. It's really kind of training obedience. And so the ethical question is, are people who do not fit into that restricted environment and their talents and their skills are outside of what is normative in that environment. Should we be identifying that as a disorder? And then what are the

implications for that down the line? So when it's a socially constructed disorder, many people are getting that label from school systems. And that's where teachers have been incredibly brazen in acting outside their own boundaries of competence and trying to find ways to drug obedience and compliance in the classroom. Now, that's a good point. I didn't think about that, that it's really not teacher's role to diagnose your kid or even suggest a diagnosis of your kid and suggest medication. Honestly, I hadn't thought about that because this is a story that I've heard so often.

That it comes from the teacher. It doesn't come from a doctor. I remember having to go to a doctor one time for, it was actually for migraines. And one of the things that they test, I was in middle school. They have you read a page and then you have to tell them what you just read. That's how they test your attention span is your mind working. And he was like, you know, it was good reading comprehension, whatever. I remembered everything.

And it was just affirmation, I think, for my parents that she doesn't have an attention problem. As you said, maybe she doesn't fit into standard schooling or whatever, which ended up being fine. I guess I learned how to not talk as much or whatever it was. So the doctor didn't have any concerns. It was the teachers. And I never thought about it like that, that in some cases, I don't want to say every teacher, but in some cases these teachers are trying to medicate students into compliance. Gosh, that's problematic for a lot of reasons.

It is. And let me go over, like, actually how these diagnoses are made. So it is a wide range of availability that we have in the healthcare system to try to determine if focus and attention is problematic. Now, this is, we would all agree, even if you want to bring on an expert who says, well, ADHD is real and these symptoms impair somebody, will all agree that it is significantly overdiagnosed and very easy to achieve the diagnosis. So there's some good research out there that suggests that a large percentage of parents never thought their kids' behavior to be problematic until they went into the school system and heard it from a teacher. Now you go into your pediatrician, and the way your pediatrician makes a diagnosis

is not through brain scans or advanced neuropsych testing that is looking at all the complex cognitive skills that are required to function well in American society. It tends to be a checklist, which I can be happy to read some of the items on the checklist today, because with any form of checklist, you know, that's used as a screener, which is now being used to diagnosis, you're going to over-diagnose a significant portion of the people, and ADHD is not a very reliable diagnosis. So you go to your pediatrician, the pediatrician assumes, well, if the teacher is observing them every single day and the parent is stressed out because of the academic problems, well, then I'm going to assign the label. And what is the intervention

for ADHD? It's primarily a psychostimulant drug, even though other interventions have been proven to be as or if not more effective. The 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 period of time. But the way you can get a diagnosis is simply just by identifying with it. Nowadays, with diagnostic expansion and trying to sell more stimulants, you can go on any website. You can take a quick checklist. They'll even score it for you. There's other companies that are popping up everywhere where you can take the checklist and get the drugs sent to your home, where you have a significant abuse problem of Adderall, which is an amphetamine used to treat ADHD.

And there's a lot of experimentation. There's things that I think parents just have to know when it comes to both the diagnosis. It's not very reliable. And two, the drugs that we use to treat them have really significant problems related to dependence, side effects. A number of the issues that I said with other psychiatric drugs are just as concerning with stimulant drugs. So, stimulant drugs are scheduled to narcotics.

And what that means, it's defined as having a high potential for abuse and physical and psychological dependence. So in the United States, the pediatricians aren't going to recommend kids drinking caffeine every day because of the concerns with caffeine for young developing brains. But they're going to prescribe a potent stimulant for kids as young as two or three years old. on a developing brain, so it's much more potent stimulant with much more wide range of adverse negative effects. So a lot of the recommendations don't make a lot of sense medically. And how we're told, or at least how I remember being told from friends who are on Adderall or even Ritalin, which I think was used for ADHD. I actually remember a girl that I grew up with that I went to school with. She, you know, was diagnosed with ADHD. She took Ritalin and she

developed all these kinds of like very debilitating. ticks because of that. And again, I don't remember anyone questioning like, hmm, maybe this is it. I don't know. Cost benefit analysis here doesn't seem to be working out. I knew so many of my friends on ADD medication. And they typically were diagnosed with that because they couldn't, they just couldn't keep up with schoolwork or whatever or they weren't making great grades. I went to a private Christian school. And so there were kind of high, you know, pretty high academic standards. And so it was just assumed if you weren't doing well, it's because you had some kind of like diagnosable illness. But how it was explained to me was that the stimulants for the normal brain, they would make you more

hyperactive. But for the already hyperactive brain, someone who is ADHD, it actually does the opposite. It actually calms them down. That's kind of how it was explained, kind of in the same way the SSRIs are explained to us from the pharmaceutical companies that the chemical imbalance thing, this just balances the chemicals in your brain so that you can feel happy again. So tell us why that explanation that the stimulants actually calm a hyperactive person down is not true. Yes, those are lies. So what these stimulants do is they increase the availability of dopamine and norepinephrine. So these are two neurotransmeters. So these are two neurotransmeters. that are implicated in focus, attention, elevated mood, motivation.

Taking Adderall is powerful. It's a performance-enhancing drug. It's why it's a banned substance for most of the professional sports leagues, because if you take it, you're going to have enhanced cognitive functioning for a period of time. The idea that there is differences in brain is just poor science that is communicated in ways that people don't understand. So I probably mentioned biological reductionism. This is what they do.

They reduce very complex interacting neurological systems. Like the brain is as complex of an organ as we can imagine. And that's taking away other things like personality, the soul, when we talk about the entire human experience. But let's just say we were going to reduce everything to the brain and everything is just our entire experience of being a human is just related to our brain functioning. Even then, the science isn't sound. So it's not like somebody who has attention problems experiences a decrease or not enough norapinephrine or dopamine. It's just any single person

who would take that drug is going to have enhanced cognitive focus for a period of time. It almost like quiets the noise. It brings somebody. their inner energy can be calm. It does affect the entire body. That's why these drugs are abused on college campuses. They'll take the drugs in order to study. And there is a euphoric response. It doesn't prove mood,

which is why you'll see psychiatrists providing these drugs for depression. So the drugs are powerful. And as I said last time, if we could just give them for a short period of time and it would have no adverse effect, well, then great. I think these drugs would be widely sought after as performance enhancers across the world. But the problem exists with any drug is tolerance.

So I was reading a study before I came on to your show that about 25% of people are going to have tolerance to the drug within days or first couple of weeks. And we don't even know the long-term implications of these drugs, but we do know this is what happens. The brain seeks homeostasis. So you need more and more of the drug in order to have the same desired response. what is problematic is this becomes a gateway diagnosis. ADHD is a gateway diagnosis into the mental health system because you're going to prescribe these drugs to young children developing brains. We don't know the long-term consequences.

We know they act on the reward system of a brain similar to other stimulants like cocaine. So they are highly addictive. And at some point, the brain is going to adapt to them. And so then you're going to add another drug or an increase. dose, which increases the likelihood of an adverse drug reaction. And now they get misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety because the withdrawal reactions to these drugs include both those symptoms, including drug-seeking behavior. So it's this paradoxical effect of the long-term use of these drugs has a negative effect. Now, I hear so many things coming out of the medical literature

and from medical professionals that just are simply not true. In fact, I love the Huberman lab. And I think he's got a great podcast and I listen to it frequently. But when he goes outside his area of expertise, he just repeats the drug narrative and overestimates benefits and underestimates the risks to the drug. And this drug culture is problematic. So there's two things that have been communicated in the literature about ADHD. And again, they're marketing propaganda. They're not science, that if you identified as ADHD and you're untreated, you increase the likelihood of later substance abuse. That is not true and it doesn't even make reasonable or logical sense. And that's the thing about, I hope your listeners, I think a lot of your listeners are very

reasonable and logical people who rely on common sense. So think about it. If you're at a young age and you're taught that you need a drug to change the way you feel or the way you behave. Do you think that is going to increase the likelihood you turn to a substance later on in life or decrease the likelihood? So it's certainly going to increase the likelihood of turning to drugs because you've almost been conditioned to view your life that way. The other thing that is certainly not true is that being on stimulant medication enhances learning long term.

I was just reading a recent meta-analysis that showed that those who are non-medicated and diagnosed with ADHD outperformed academically those who were on the drug. So that's two of the major selling points for why you need to put your kid on an amphetamine early in life is to enhance academic outcomes long term. Now, short term, you can create a study to do that, right? because I did mention that the drug, at least short term, is a very powerful enhancer of cognitive abilities. So it might be able to get kids for a period of time to complete work. But it doesn't increase intelligence, doesn't enhance learning. It's also very difficult to get accurate data from

those studies because you're comparing a person who's on the drug to essentially, you know, who would they be as far as academic growth if they were not on the drug? But it's very clear when I talk to other experts, and I've done podcast on this, that we don't have the evidence that they prevent later substance abuse. We don't have the evidence that they enhance learning and improve academic functioning long term. So why do we treat children and people diagnosed with ADD and ADHD with the medications that we do, knowing what we know about them and not knowing what we don't know about them? What's the history of this? And also, what do we do do with this information. Like how do we help kids and adults with attention issues, with behavior

issues, what are some practical solutions? That's what we're going to talk about in part two of this episode, which will come out tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. Thanks for listening and watching. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch the Steve Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.