Hello all, Me and lots of my friends have been struggling badly lately.
One of my friends, call him Larry, recently broke up with his partner,
and has been struggling to function at work. Larry has a long history of
not applying himself to his work a...
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Hello all, Me and lots of my friends have been struggling badly lately.
One of my friends, call him Larry, recently broke up with his partner,
and has been struggling to function at work. Larry has a long history of
not applying himself to his work and studies. He's a very disdainful
person, and there always seems to be some reason why things are not
worthy of his efforts. Currently Larry is working as a teacher, and
completing a teaching degree. The other day Larry called me and said
that he had not done the prep he needed to do for his upcoming class.
This has been a common reason lately for him to call me. He then said
that one of our mutual freinds, call her Erica, had given him some of
her ADHD meds, which he said helped him focus. I found this very
distressing. While it's entirely possible Larry would benefit from an
ADHD diagnoses/medication, my understanding is that having patients
self-diagnose and share their medication with each other is generally a
very bad idea. I called Erica to express my concerns. I stayed very calm
but was very direct in my language, saying I didn't think it was right
to share her prescription meds with Larry. I said this was a red-line
for me, in that I didn't want to be friends with people who share out
their prescription meds in this way. Erica said this was a "weird" and
"threatening" thing to say, but later said she retracted the
"threatening" bit. Erica then said she had discussed her decision with
her doctor and psychiatrist, which I interpreted as her suggesting this
was normal and accepted behaviour, even as viewed by the medical
profession. This surprised me a lot. Are GPs/psychiatrists generally
tolerant/encouraging of patients sharing pycho-active meds with each
other? It seems very reckless to me. I am thus very skeptical of what
Erica told me. The context for me is that I have seen multiple family
members lives destroyed by slipping from innapropriate use of
prescription drugs (stimulants, painkillers, depressants) leading on to
hard drug abuse, so the idea of Larry casually taking someone else's
ADHD meds was "triggering" for me.
therapy dilemma
