Please, mum, no more pills E-Book

Pia Brandt Danborg

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 84

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Benjamin starts to take Ritalin to treat ADHD symptoms at age four. We follow Benjamin for 15 years, as he experiences worsening of symptoms, psychoses, more medication to get better, forced treatment, until he finally meets a psychiatrist, that is able to help him withdraw from psychiatric drugs. The book was written in the hope of creating debate about the way we use psychiatric drugs. Do we consider potential harms thoroughly enough? What happens during polypharmacy? Is it even ethically sound to do forced treatment?

Leseprobe

A grateful thank you to professor Peter Gøtzsche

for giving me the opportunity to join his research

team.

Thank you very much to child psychiatrist

Lisbeth Kortegaard for checking facts and

proofreading the book.

Benjamin runs to the playground climber, the one that is in the shape of a spider. Benjamin loves this climber. Every time his mum asks where he wants to go, when they are about to go out, he suggests this climber.

He grabs the rope as high up as he can. He pulls and swings himself off the ground, fast. He grabs with his feet as well and continues to climb upwards. Shortly after he reaches the summit and looks out on the playground, like a pirate on his ship. He is far from the ground. He loves it, it is like he is on top of the whole world.

Benjamin's mum looks for Benjamin. There he is, already at the top of the frame, like a little monkey. She waves at him and he waves back.

Vicky, Benjamin's mum, feels the love for Benjamin in her heart, her sweet four-year old big little boy. She feels it in all of her body, like goose bumps and chills, like heartache but in a good way. Nothing must ever happen to him. Vicky promises to herself, that no matter what, she will take care of him, always. She will care for him just as well as two parents can do. Benjamin is the treasure in her life and she is the only parent, so she has to do as good a job as two parents can do.

Benjamin climbs down the climber. Then he traverses, as easy as a fly crossing the ceiling. He is upside down, head hanging down, so he can look around.

One moment later he is back on the other summit of the climber. He is fast. He calls out to Vicky.

"Come and play with me, mum. You can be the pirate and I will be Peter Pan. Come on, mum, come and play, please".

Vicky hesitates. She hates to climb the climber. It is always wet and dirty and the holes are too tiny for her to go through them.

"Not right now, honey, not right now. I can't climb through the small holes up there."

"Yes, you can, mum. Come oooooon. You can do it, I know, I have seen you do it before."

Vicky shakes her head.

Benjamin's eyes go dark. He misses playing with his mum. He misses the good time they have playing all his favourite games.

Benjamin instantly climbs down and jumps to the ground. He runs off to the other side of the hedge. He then runs over to the slide, where he crawls up and slides down on his belly. He then goes to sit under the slide and starts throwing pebbles around.

He waits for mum.

But she is not coming.

Did she not notice that he is gone? She is probably preoccupied with her phone. Benjamin can never borrow it from her, but mum can use it all the time without asking. Benjamin finds that very unfair.

Benjamin's mood is dropping. He becomes more and more sad.

Why is she not coming for him?

Finally, he can hear mum's steps from behind the hedge.

"Benjamin, where are you, honey? Honey..?"

Benjamin curls into a ball, like a cat hiding. He does not know why. He wants to be found by mum. It has just taken too long for her to notice, that he was not on the playground climber anymore, and to come looking for him.

Vicky looks out for Benjamin by the slide, above, on the slide, below... There he is. He has been digging and throwing pebbles under the slide, so that is has formed a ring of soil around him.

"Benjamin..."

Benjamin quickly gets to his feet and races past his mum.

When racing past his mum, he kicks at her leg, throws the pebbles up in the air and yells loudly in frustration. He runs towards the small center square with small, quiet cafes, where coffee-drinking couples are sitting leisurely and enjoying their lattes and cappucinos and chocolate cakes with whipped cream on the side. Vicky looks to see where her boy is going.

Oh no, what will the customers outside the cafes think?

Vicky walks steadily towards the cafe area. Benjamin has crawled up onto some big flower pots, he jumps down on the opposite side and is now hiding behind them. Some of the customers are looking at him and then they look to see where the parent of the child might be. They spot Vicky heading towards the cafe area, while they take little sips of their coffee.

Vicky writhes inside. Again, somebody will think about her, thoughts about her, about her being a lousy mother, that she is not able to handle her boy, that she is incapable of raising him properly by herself, that she does a horrible job compared to a normal family with two parents in it.

But honestly, that is exactly the truth, she cannot handle him. She finds it so hard to handle all the anger and frustrations that he expresses. But she just does not know what to do differently.

Vicky reaches the big flower pots and grabs behind the pots to get hold of Benjamin's arm. He shrieks and tries to wrestle himself free again.

Vicky raises her voice:

"BENJAMIN, come here now! You know that I don't want you to run off like that. There is something called agreements. If you want to go somewhere, we have to agree on it. You can't just run off, because then I will not be able to find you again. Now I have really lost my motivation for going back to the playground. We are going home now. Come on."

Benjamin is listening to his mum's words.

All he really wants is a hug and to be her beloved little boy, despite him not making an agreement before he ran off. That is hard to remember, to make agreements all the time, especially when he gets angry. He just wanted to play and climb the climber with her, or play hide and seek, or play catch. He just really wanted to play with his mum.

Benjamin has a stomachache. But he does not say anything.

Instead, he throws himself on the ground and screams to get his mum's attention again.

It works.

Benjamin is a bit more happy. Now mum grabs him and lifts him up. She is holding him tight, so he will not run off again. Benjamin calms down. It is so nice to be carried by mum, sitting close to her.

Benjamin has just arrived in kindergarten. They are getting together for their daily singing in the morning. Everyone has to participate by sitting in a circle on the floor.

Benjamin chooses to sit next to Axel. Benjamin glances at Axel. Benjamin thinks that Axel is a good friend and nice to play with. Axel is tying his shoe lace. He is very focused and does not notice Benjamin taking a seat next to him.

Benjamin stands up again and walks over to the window. He looks outside. What a nice skyline today. Light pink and light blue and nice white clouds. Benjamin completely forgets that the morning routine was about to start and that he was supposed to be sitting in the circle.

"Benjamin", one of the kindergarten teachers calls, "come and join us in the circle again."

But Benjamin is not listening. He is totally absorbed with the clouds. Today they look a lot like horses and a carrot and a spaceship and a cupcake. Perhaps the cloud looking like a cupcake is also a spaceship. Who then will be maneuvering the spaceship? Where might it be heading? Where does it come from? Who would choose to travel through space in a cupcake?

Benjamin daydreams. He enjoys it. It is good fun to imagine the spaceship taking off for a journey in space, visiting all the planets in our solar system. Or maybe outside the solar system. Wow, that is amazing, so far away it is kind of impossible to understand.

"BENJAMIN! Now you come on over here and sit down, right away", the kindergarten teacher commands, in a more harsh voice now, "we are about to start our joint singing now. We are just waiting for you now, everyone else is ready."

Benjamin really does not feel like sitting with the others in the circle, it felt so nice to stand looking out the window, but he goes to sit there anyway. He sits right next to Axel. Axel is still not looking at Benjamin, he is watching the kindergarten teacher. She is making gestures with her hands, accompanying the song she is singing.

Then something happens in Benjamin's mind. Sad, lonely, angry, does it have a name, and which one fits best? Benjamin does not know that, he can just feel it in his stomach, and externally it transforms into anger. Benjamin gets up and kicks Axel, who instantly starts crying. Benjamin kicked hard. Axel is still not looking at Benjamin because now he is hiding his face in his palms to make the others not see him crying and all the tears he is shedding.

Ouch.

Benjamin runs to the doorway for the wardrobe and tries to hide in Axel's wardrobe closet, behind the winter jumpsuit, but he can't. He is too big. He is too easy to see, too easy to find. Despite this, the kindergarten teacher begins her search by looking behind Benjamin's own winter jumpsuit.

The kindergarten teacher approaches him and tries to help Benjamin phrase what just happened.

"Benjamin... You know very well that it is not polite to kick others..?"

Benjamin is unable to explain his emotions, how he is feeling inside, the hurting in his stomach, as he feels like being turned down by Alex. Alex never looked at him or said hi. So Benjamin does not answer, he just looks down and watches the floor intensely.

The kindergarten teacher carries on.