Ritalin: The scandal of kiddy coke

When he was in the throes of his worst tantrums, Daniel Fletcher would rip wallpaper off the walls at home and hit and kick anyone who came near him.

Once, he put his pet mouse in the microwave. On another occasion he jumped out of a moving car.

He was first diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at the age of two, and just three years later the little boy was prescribed the amphetamine-like drug Ritalin.

The effect, says his mother Hayley, was a loss of appetite but no difference in his behaviour.

"So the doctor kept upping the doses until he was on six times the normal dose, yet he was still hyperactive."

Eight months ago, Daniel, now 14, was put on Risperdal - an antipsychotic drug usually given to schizophrenics.

"It was as if my son had been replaced by a doped-up zombie,' says Hayley, 35, who took him off it a month later.

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Are antidepressants taking the edge off love?

Sure, we know about the sexual side effects of SSRIs. But researchers now wonder if that's the only aspect of romance the drugs can influence.

LOVE'S first rush is a private madness between two people, all-consuming and, if mutually felt, endlessly wonderful.

Couples think about the other obsessively -- on a roller coaster of euphoria when together, longing when apart.

"It's temporary insanity," says Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University.

Now, from her studies of the brains of lovers in the throes of the initial tumble, Fisher has developed a controversial theory. She and her collaborator, psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson of the University of Virginia, believe that Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to blunt the intense cutting edge of new love.

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