Hello, old friend?

ADHD is getting ridiculous. I've been diagnosed by "peers" with it, and I'll admit at times I wonder if I do suffer from the "Disease", but after an admittedly small amount of research, I've come to the conclusion that being diseased is the latest in a trend of "Woe is me-America". It's always been around. You get attention and sympathy from being less fortunate than the norm. However, now it has evolved past the point of "Emo", where you are free to dispute someone's apathy towards life, and you are generally looked down upon by everyone but your friends who are in the same position as you; it is now at a multi-layered problem, the one I'm addressing being ADD/HD.
Being ADHD means you're different. You're not like the average person! You're person+! Congratulations! So, be sure to flaunt that fact to everyone you meet every time you have the slightest random outburst, and let people know how different you are. Also, you should probably mention quite often that you've forgotten to take your medication today. Seriously, 90% of the people I've met who claim ADD/HD seem to love mentioning at least once a day that they have forgotten to take their medication, and it's normally in some apologetic form after a joke falls flat; "Sorry I just (insert supposed random, but completely predictable action that wasn't funny here), but I haven't taken my Ritalin today." I haven't really decided if they like having a supposed disease or what, but it's most definintly a great excuse for their behavior, at least they seem to think so.
Here's where the "Admittedly small amount of research" comes in: Did you know that the industry producing Adderoll and Ritalin, the main ADD/HD meds used, has more than Quadrupled in the past five years? It went from a 700 Million to 3+ Billion dollar industry from 2000-2005. Most people think ADD/HD means your brain is doing something too fast, this is simply not the case, it is in fact the opposite. ADD/HD is a diease where the seratonin(sp.?) reuptake inhibitors don't release the chemicals at a proper speed, the become trapped in chambers of the brain. Think of it as a train in a subway tunnel. It's supposed to be going fast enough that you have time to experience one thought between each destination; instead it is going slow enough that instead of having that one thought, you have five and aren't even concious of what the first thought was. What ADD/HD meds do is speed up the process so that the seratonin is released normally and they have the one thought in place of the five. The problem comes in where ADD/HD -is- a disorder, but it does -not- affect as much of the population as is being prescribed mediciine. So, what happens when a non-ADD/HD patient is prescribed medicine? The suffer from ADD/HD symptoms because since the medicine speeds up the process that the reuptake inhibitors perform, the child successfully completes one though, and then moves on to the next 5 immdediatley. Since the process of the reuptake inhibitors is not easily observed, most doctors will settle for one of two things:
1. A hyper child screaming in their office
2. A parent demanding ADD/HD meds to fix their broken kid
And Voila! Ritalin.
Now, I have heard arguements that ADD/HD is a result of the disintigration of the family unit as a whole leading to more watching of television which in turn causes the disease ADD/HD. TV doesn't cause diseases (No, I don't care about any actual diseases TV may cause that are siezure related), bad parenting does. Sort of, you see I've come to the conclusion (This is completely disputable, please for God's sake don't comment saying I've claimed my words fact) that, yes, the "Family Unit" has become more of a "Family... some funny antithesis of "Unit"" and as a result, that means parents aren't taking as much time to pay attention to their offspring, which in turn leads to children without any focused goals. When I say "No focused goals." I mean, they are freaking children, we're talking 5-12 year olds that aren't being given any interests by their parents, so instead they seek their own interests. Do you know what kid's are interested in? Everything. Dinosaurs, being a doctor, Power Rangers, the change in the sofa, the dirty condom in their brother's bedroom floor, whatever it is, they soak it up, and it makes an impression on them. Kid's don't have much drive to do anything, however, and without any sort of pressure from an adult to stay on track with something, they quickly lose focus and move onto another interest. That's a normal part of being young, liking Superman one day, and your deceased Great Grandfather the WWII veteran the next. What's not normal is no values or interests from family members ever being impressed upon children. Traditonally, your dad is supposed to make you think the Redskins are the best football team, and because you seek his approval, you stay with that for so long that you're just as convinced as he is, thus creating an interest in football, making you the eventual capt. of the team. See how it works? The "problem, and I'll explain why that's in quotes, is that kids are having to develop interests on their own, and they simply can't pull it off a vast majority of the time. Personally, I like video games, and most things in the geek culture appeal to me. Outside that however I have no viable skills. I never watched sports, I have no idea how to hunt or fish, I can't sew or cook. I was never taught to, so I picked up the things that required no skill, and catered to imagination, something children have in abundance. You'll notice most geeks are rather immature, hence their offbeat, silly, humor; which they share in common with..? Children. See how it works?
Now, after much adieu, a point.(Most) Parents are far too busy trying to become happy with their lives, too much so that they can't waste time rearing offspring, and the only values we recieve are the ones we get for doing something wrong, not right, such as "You were smoking, that's bad." not "You told the truth about hitting my car, that shows character." As a result, kids lack direction in life, and they change interests at an exponential rate from being 8 and wanting to be a fireman, then doctor, then teacher; all the way to being 16 and you can't focus in school because you're thinking about everything else going on in your life, because you were never instilled with how important school was to a sufficient extent, and so you're thinking about how fun the party that night will be, or about that girl you can't stop thinking about, or any topic that you decided for yourself was more important than whatever you "should" be focusing on. I use should in quotes because it's up to you whether you should be focused on school or who you're getting drunk and screwing that night. Parents solution to this problem is Ritalin/Adderoll. My kid is hyper, my son is violent, my daughter talks too much too quickly; and since ADD/HD by definition to the layman is being hyper and annoying, obviously the kid has a disease. Children have always been annoying, always been hyper, always had no focus. It is not the job of medication to fix a parent's lack of effort in their relationship with their kids. The quadrupling of the Ritalin/Adderoll industries profit margin is a result of lazy parenting, not an epidemic of the "disease(s)" ADD/HD.