"We tried Ritalin, Cylert, and Prozac. None of them worked. Ritalin made him very frantic and racing and kept him up until two in the morning on even the smallest dose. He became very weepy. With Prozac, he had absolutely no initiative. That's why we're bringing him now to you to try homeopathy." (Quotes from a mother whose child just began homeopathic treatment.)

"Clay, thirteen, has been on Ritalin for seven years. Because of hormonal changes during puberty, each dose only lasts three hours. What Ritalin does to Clay after he has been off the medication and goes back on is frightening-the tears, the anger. It's that chemical adjustment, like falling off a mountain. The rebound symptoms are worse than when he's off Ritalin entirely. When we tried to stop the medicine for a period of time, it took him four to six weeks to readjust. He had real problems with appetite from the Ritalin. If I wouldn't time the dose and a meal just right, he'd skip a whole meal. Now he just has less of an appetite because of the Ritalin but doesn't skip meals. Other rebound symptoms are headaches and stomach aches."

"Dexadrine also causes a rebound effect with Clay. It lasts only four to six weeks then, if we try to increase the dosage, he becomes terribly angry and unmotivated."

When we asked Clay how he felt about taking Ritalin, he replied, "I don't like it. I have to wait to eat. I need to leave class to take my medicine and it messes up my sports because sometimes I have too much energy and other times too little."

"Brad has trouble paying attention. Without Ritalin and before he was under homeopathic treatment, he became hyper Brad had a terrible time paying attention and filtering out the environment. He was constantly asking "What did they say?" He had no restraint. He would eat a whole pack of gum or a sack of candy in one day. He was either very sweet or very awful. There were days when he was easy to get along with and others when he became frustrated and angry, and you couldn't reason with him. He can just get higher and higher and higher."

"Ritalin worked really well sometimes; sometimes not. We wanted to try a more natural treatment so that Brad would have fewer ups and downs."

"Jeremy was the perfect child while he was on Ritalin. If you could package a little boy who was polite and sweet, that's how he would be. But he still had trouble concentrating in school. He wouldn't forget things and he got along great with other kids. It was a nightmare when he stopped taking it for a few days or it wore off. . . a rebound. After taking Ritalin for five years, Jeremy developed tics. Now, several years later, he still has them. The tics started like shivers. When the tics are bad, Jeremy is so embarrassed that he doesn't even want to go to school. We tried him on four different stimulant and antidepressant drugs but they didn't work for him. They wanted to try Prozac, but I said no. I didn't want a child of six on Prozac. I don't think I'd ever put him back on Ritalin."

"The same is true with my daughter Krissy. She developed five different side effects from Ritalin. She couldn't gain weight. She looked like a skeleton . . . like a stick figure or someone with anorexia. She was on Ritalin for three years and didn't gain weight until we took her off of it. She also chewed her nails to the quick. Nailbiting is a side effect of Ritalin in some children, you know. Krissy's anxiety level got really high from the drug, too. She would start worrying at eleven in the morning whether she would miss her school bus at three in the afternoon. She got so anxious that she laid out her toothbrush and clothes before going to bed. Sleep was another problem. While she was on Ritalin Krissy didn't want to go to sleep at night."