We knew at an early age that our son had all the classic signs of ADHD. His inability to focus on anything other than the first thing that entered his mind removed all doubt that our son needed help.
Both my husband and I were public school teachers. I actually taught university level courses in brain-based learning. Still neither of us had any idea what was about to hit us. On an early morning family hike, our son (at that time 7 years old) had to be the first to climb to the top of Phoenix, Arizona’s Squaw Peak. Once we finally caught up to him, we noticed that he appeared somewhat outside himself. When asked if he was doing OK, he said, I’m fine.
One year later, we learned that he wasn’t fine. Our son had been prescribed ADHD medication two years earlier, which made him hallucinate. It wasn’t until his older brother told us that his brother mentioned to him that he had been hearing dark scary voices inside his head for a long time, and wondered whether or not that was normal.
When we asked our son about these voices, he started to cry intensely. Finally, we were able to pull from him that these dark voices were always telling him that he is no good. Matter of fact, that day on top of Squaw Peak, this voice told him that he should jump off the cliff, because he didn’t deserve to live and that he would be better off dead.
Unfortunately, this is NOT uncommon for individuals to experience, who are prescribed certain ADHD medications. Internal voices, bad voices, are actually a well-known side effect. In most cases, this goes undetected by parents, teachers, and even doctors. Why, because they may not know and typically they don’t ask. In some isolated instances, children of our son’s age, who were prescribed particular types of ADHD medication, couldn’t turn off the voices, and met the tragic end that these bad voices so often instruct.
Naturally, we immediately took our son off of that particular medication and moved him to another brand and dose. To this day, he no longer hears those bad voices.
Because of this, and for MANY other reasons, we decided we had to do something.
- Ann Pieper, ADHD Coach