Struggling -- with the Medication Issue

The subject of medication has always been a difficult issue . I am sure in my very early posts I have talked about how when you get pregnant the rhetoric begins from EVERYONE--  Don't drink; don't do drugs; don't use caffeine; don't look sideways at the sun! AND everyone is an expert about how you are creating th4e best environment for the baby you are carrying---

All of a sudden you have a difficult labor and delivery; the world turns upside down. You are knocked out and kept sedated only to find your child in a Neo natal ward with every type of wire, tube and monitor hooked up and the staff pumping your child full of drugs beyond belief. WTF?Everything you did for 9 months down the tubes.

So you spend the first couple of years deciphering what the baby needs and finally get back to a "clean" environment then along comes puberty AND school. {I know what does school have to do with it?}
The pressure of trying to give your child the perfect opportunity coupled with dealing with the people who are involved in supposedly educating you child becomes this vortex that sucks you in and you do not know what end is up and what choice you should make. The behaviors escalate, there are calls from the school, the child is miserable, the teacher is freaking out, puberty is knocking at the door,the other kids either ignore him or don't know how to interact with him and then enter the staff that tries to assess the situation all along posing as someone who cares and is trying to help; while they are just searching for the easiest way to either drug your child into submission or get rid of them all together-- preferably to another district. Its just a Big Black Hole. There is no right answer.

So somewhere in your muddled exhausted being you come to the conclusion that you have fought it long enough and you will try the medication.Seems like a bandage and seems like its a cop out but when you have fought and fought and the person who is suffering the most is your kid, you finally give in. The irony is that the meds seem to actually help--- The doctors tell you give them more and more and never offer any other alternative..For us, I kept a close watch on what seemed to work and refused to increase the dose even tho the doctors told me what I was giving him wasn't doing him any good. Well to this day somewhere around 12 years later I still stand by that decision. The smaller amount worked and I was not going to ramp up what did not need to be.

As the years pass you start to wonder if you made the right decisions and you always question yourself. Behaviors come and go, school is no longer so you really start to wonder if the meds should be continued--Then more and more information comes around about how these medications are so harmful-- the are addictive, they are causing boys to develop mammary glands, they are notorious for weight gain-- All you think is am I doing this to him because I am shoving this crap down his throat. Am I doing it for the right reasons ? Is it truly helping him? Is the benefit outweighing the side effects???No matter what the choice is you will never really know -- Sometimes you just have to do it and not look back. For that I have no regrets.

The struggling comes when I see him approaching adulthood and I ponder his ability to live without the medication. He no longer has to please anyone and He no longer has to "conform" to certain peoples rules in order to attend school or be in a classroom--So why not seize this opportunity?
I want him to be medication free if it is possible but I will add this caveat I still maintain that quality off life is still more important than quantity of life--

As I have said previously there is no right answer.No one can judge you, shame you or make the decision for you. The only person who deserves any consideration is your child. Read him/her like a book, observe and journal behaviors and the correlation with medication, food and other environmental affects  You will soon know whether the decision you make is right .Then DO NOT allow anyone to tell you you are wrong.Always GO With Your Gut.

I am struggling with these choices right now but it is only myself questioning me!