ADHD Medication and the Risk of Future Drug Abuse

A lot of parents are concerned that giving their children medication for ADHD will get their children used to the idea of taking drugs and will lead to future drug abuse. When you consider that ADHD teens are more likely to get involved with recreational drugs than their peers, this is a legitimate concern. Parents are worried that taking things like Ritalin, Concerta, or Adderall, on a regular basis, drugs which are similar to cocaine, will get their children to become habitual drug users, making them more eager to experiment with "fun" drugs.

In reality, researcher have examined this question and found a very strong relationship between ADHD medication use I childhood and the risk drug abuse in the teen years. However, the results are exactly the opposite of what is popularly believed. True, ADHD children do have a higher rate of drug abuse than their peers; however, treating the ADHD with stimulant medication reduces that risk, and reduces it dramatically.

The National Institute of Mental Health in conjunction with the Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health published a study in 1999 which shed some light on this topic. The researchers took a group of 212 ADHD children and followed their development for a number of years.

The boys were divided into three groups. 56 ADHD boys received ADHD drug treatment. 19 ADHD boys did not get any medication. A third group of 137 boys without ADHD acted as the control group for this study.

When the boys were about 15, the researchers assessed them for substance abuse involving marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, or stimulants.

The results of this study were profound. The normal group of children and the ADHD children who received medication treatment had almost the same rate of drug abuse, 18% and 25% respectively. However, of the ADHD children who did not receive medical treatment, 75% had significant involvement with at least one of these substances. That is a pretty huge difference.

What we see from this study is that if your child has ADHD and does not get treatment for it, he is three times as like to get involved with dangerous drugs when he is a teenager. This is something for parents to think about when they are weighing whether or not to start their ADHD child on Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, or the other ADHD medications.