Moms Are Gobbling Pills Like Halloween Candy To Be Better Parents
The Centers For Disease Control states that deaths from prescription drugs has quadrupled since 1999 and you know who is getting blamed for this? Moms! According to various news reports, us moms are popping pills like candy in order to be better parents and cope with the stresses of parenthood. And carpools. And our spouses/partners. And the fact Mad Men still isn’t back on yet. And the pressure to be MILFs when some of us just want to be frumpy moms. And our kids who just received the reissued Furbys that won’t stop yammering in their creepy Furby language (“Furbish”, cough) for five damn minutes. Being a mom is hard. But are we all really becoming a bunch of pill heads in order to deal?
From KVUE:
Heather Moore juggles a lot: A three-year-old, a one-year-old, a full-time job, and a husband who’s away in the Army.
Right after her first baby, she noticed she just couldn’t keep up.
”I felt like the worst mother ever,” Moore said. “I would get up, go somewhere, and I’d be like, ‘Crap… I forgot a bottle.’ ‘I forgot the diaper bag.’ I was like, ‘What is wrong with me? Do other mothers do this?”
Moore, like most moms, wants to give her children the best. For that she needed a change.
She wanted medication. She went to a doctor hoping to receive a prescription for Adderall.
”I told him I had heard about Adderall… can I try it? It was that easy,” she said.
Maybe I’m naive and sheltered and too busy self-medicating with cupcakes and Goldfish crackers, but is this really a thing? I know moms who take certain prescription drugs but only because they actually need them, not because they use it to be able to sit through parent/teacher conferences. Are all of you moms abusing Adderall and no one told me this is how I become a better, more efficient parent? Why am I always the last to know these things?
Prescription drug abuse is a huge problem in this country, I’m not disputing that. But part of this feels like just another sensationalist news story concocted to make moms who do actually have ADHD or narcolepsy and use Adderall to help with their symptoms second-guess their doctor’s recommendations for treatment and their own reliance on their prescriptions in treating their disease. It feels like the entire moms abusing adderall panic crops up in the news every few months. I’m sure there are some moms abusing adderall and using the drug to either help them “do it all” and lose weight, but I don’t think it’s as big of a problem as the world wants us to believe it is.
Unless, of course, this is actually a thing and you guys are all stealing your kid’s drugs and lying to your doctors to get a prescription. In which case, can someone tell me what’s so great about it and why I should start taking it too? Despite the new rash of news stories suggesting that the reason so many people are dying and entering treatment due to prescription drugs due to moms abusing Adderall I think the majority of moms don’t actively drug seek unless it is absolutely something they need or their doctor perscribes for them. Next thing you know, the news will find something else to blame moms for.
(photo: Jayfish/shutterstock)
