Willie Mason taking ADHD drugs

[sydunisportsmed]

Should Willie Mason be allowed to take a banned stimulant to control his unsocial behaviour? Certainly it looks as though he has obtained medical opinion to support the diagnosis and use for the drug for the condition. However, he will gain a performance advantage from taking a stimulant to play rugby league.

See attached story from the Daily Tele:

Willie Mason on drugs for ADHD
August 31, 2004

BULLDOGS star Willie Mason has started taking drugs for ADHD, it was revealed in court yesterday.

The rugby league player began using Ritalin last week to counter the effects of his attention deficit disorder - and his lawyers used the condition as a defence for his latest brush with the law.

Mason appeared before Sydney's Burwood Local Court charged with driving with an expired licence.

Police said they pulled him over on Parramatta Rd, Burwood, on March 14.

During court proceedings, his legal team revealed Mason started taking Ritalin three days before his team's clash with Newcastle on Friday.

He applied to the Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee (ASDMAC) three months ago to be able to take the drug, normally banned for professional sportsmen.

His ADHD became public during May's Origin camp scandal when a bonding/drinking session got out of control.

His barrister Peter Dailly asked the court for a six-month adjournment to give the medication time to "kick in" to help Mason get his driver's licence.

In June, Mason asked ASDMAC to approve his use of methylphenidate (Ritalin) to help save his football career and control his social behaviour.

Ritalin is classed as a stimulant and banned by the Australian Sports Drug Agency.

In a psychiatric assessment tendered to the court, it was revealed Mason's life was affected by ADHD symptoms - hyperactivity, impulsive behaviour and lack of concentration.

"Mr Mason's difficulties with concentration, disorganisation and impulsivity have on numerous occasion resulted in being late to training, missing commitments to sponsors and causing lapses in concentration during football matches," psychiatrist Tony Mastroianni said.

Mason admitted to binge-drinking while "socialising with his football mates" but said he had abstained recently due to an agreement with his club.

It was revealed Mason had failed "numerous attempts" at the learner's knowledge test.

"He reported on each occasion he performed well in the first three-quarters of the test, then found it difficult to concentrate," Dr Mastroianni wrote.

Police said Mason told them he didn't hold a licence. They said it had expired in 2001.

Magistrate Jane Mottley said Mason could avoid conviction if he acquired his licence before he returned to court in February.

The Daily Telegraph

[injuryupdate]

Interesting thread on the Roosters' Wall about this:

http://www.sydneyroosters.com.au/fans/thewall/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10957

[Bill S. Preston-Esquire]

I don't think the Mason issue is that significant. In 10-20 years there's going to be a heep of young guys coming through on ritalin, more likely from the Eastern Suburbs demographics. It seems ritalin is becoming socially acceptable.

Also, I heard the reason McDougal was allowed to take steroids was due to a debilitating conidtion called "hyperspadiasm", but obviously this couldn't come out in the media. Any inside word?

[Danny]

I can't wait to see what he comes up with next time he gets into trouble......of course the only option would be to double his medication.......and probably best if he takes his dose just before a game to ensure no anti-social behaviour.

[sydunisportsmed]

The cynicism with respect to MacDougall arose because he had a previous drug suspension for a stimulant and anabolic steroids when he was granted his approval. Apparently he was getting treated for low pituatary function and didn't initially ask for permission to be treated with an anabolic steroid. However, the condition was a very serious one and if the diagnosis was accepted then testosterone replacement is appropriate. Some hardliners would say that if you have this condition you should give up professional sport so exemption should never be granted for anabolic steroid use. Very tough debate on the ethics of this one.

In the Mason case, the diagnosis seems sensible and he and his club have fully followed all appropriate procedure. However, the issue is whether a performance enhancing drug should be allowed in a professional athlete for what is a social and/or psychological condition.

Agree that there will be more juniors coming through the ranks with this diagnosis and this treatment (Ritalin). My personal preference would be that the players get told to choose between Ritalin and playing professional sport.

If the Mason precedent leads to a number of professional football players (and/or other athletes) taking Ritalin, then studies are needed to show what level of performance advantage (if any) is given with this drug.

[injuryupdate]

The Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee (ASDMAC) have apparently allowed Bulldogs star forward Willie Mason to start taking the banned stimulant drug Ritalin for the condition Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Normally these decisions are not routinely publicised but the successful application was revealed in the reporting of a recent court case by journalists from the Daily Telegraph. There are not stringent guidelines published by ASDMAC about the criteria for diagnosis of conditions and which conditions will be considered for therapeutic exemptions. It seems however that the use of a stimulant, which is a potentially performance enhancing drug and for which athletes have been given lengthy suspensions for taking in the past, would require a medical condition that the Committee took very seriously in order to grant an exemption. Given that ADD is more of a social problem rather than a life or health threatening medical condition, the decision can be viewed as a lenient one, which focuses the debate about how much leeway these exemptions should give. It would be interesting to see what similar conditions would be approved by ASDMAC or how many exemptions they would be prepared to write for ADD before reconsidering their criteria. NRL players collectively have a notoriously short attention span, and perhaps Mason will be followed by others, who have a history of misdemeanours, for similar applications. What would ASDMAC make of a case of an athlete who wanted to take a stimulant to lose weight and had a letter from two psychiatrists stating that this was needed on medical grounds because of an obsessive overeating disorder? Could the athlete be allowed to take a stimulant to suppress hunger and would this be fair on other competitors? These drugs in sport issues will always be prominent as there are so many uses for drugs in everyday life, yet sporting bodies are always required to try to set a level playing field.

[injuryupdate]

This one will get debated more and more about whether it was a fair call to let Willie Mason take banned stiumulants, but there is no argument that since he started on Ritalin he has exploded as a player.

He ran for over 200m in the Grand Final, which is an amazing amount for a non-full back who didn't make a line break, and he was awarded the Clive Churchill medal for best player on the field, after also winning man of the match for best player on the field in the Preliminary Final.

Ritalin has helped him massively, as the results are there to see.

The big question is, has it helped him realise his fair potential by "curing" him of ADHD which was holding him back, or has it given him an unfair advantage over other players by allowing him to be the only one on the park taking a performance enhancing drug?

[hhh]

Is a side effect of ritalin cramping?

[injuryupdate]

From last Saturday's Telegraph (David Penberthy):

Wired for unsound - generation X-treme

March 5, 2005

IN YEARS to come, history may record that in February 2005 Sydney was rocked by its first Ritalin Riot.

For the first time, this new generation of recklessly medicated, over-diagnosed youths, handed a clinical excuse for their anti-social behaviour by lazy parents and doctors addicted to free drug company holidays, rise up in violent public display of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The events of the past week in Macquarie Fields have provided an exhibition of what happens in a community in which nobody is responsible for anything.

In which the decision – a decision not taken by the other 99 per cent of decent and dignified public housing tenants – to throw bricks at The Pigs is the result of bed-wetting, bad architecture, fast food, Xbox, the abolition in 1996 of federal funding to state housing, the absence of good male role models and a preponderance of bad ones.

All of which manifests itself in a diagnosis – probably reached in a 10-minute consultation – of ADHD.

Jesse Kelly has ADHD. Jesse Kelly is the youth – adult, actually, he's 20 – who drove the stolen car which transported Dylan Rayward and Matthew Robertson to their deaths last Friday.

While it is understandable his family will seek to explain and defend his conduct, it is dishonest for the rest of us to regard their words as anything other than a lame excuse for shameful antisocial conduct.

"Jesse had problems at school and ended up going to a school for troubled children," his grandfather Peter Perkins told The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday.

"But many of his problems came from a diagnosis of ADHD when he was 13. His childhood wasn't always loving. He has lived with us from time to time and we have tried very hard to keep him on the straight and narrow."

Mr Perkins sounds like a genuine and caring man, his defence of his grandson clearly motivated by love.

Jesse's grandmother, Barbara, was so distraught during the interview that she kept bursting into tears.

But what a sad indictment it is on society – and on Jesse's parents – that this young man has for seven years been reassured, with a prescription to prove it, that he has medical justification for being a thief and a dill.

I would have thought that the regular theft of cars – not to mention the application required to riot for 72 hours – suggests that there are some things these kids are quite good at concentrating on.

Judging from the number of meat-headed parents who bafflingly volunteer to appear on current affair shows with their "out of control" kids, Jesse Kelly was but one of the many young players at Macquarie Fields whose actions can be sheeted home to inattention and hyperactivity.

A more scientific indicator is the rate of prescriptions being doled out to keep young people such as Jesse Kelly.

In a fine article on ADHD in The Weekend Australian this January, reporter Clara Pirani quoted federal figures showing that prescriptions for dexamphetamine – the most popular ADHD medication – skyrocketed from 46,000 in 1994 to 246,000 in 2004.

She also cited an article in The British Medical Journal by UK-based psychiatrist Sama Timimi, who warned that "more childhood behaviours previously considered normal are now seen as problematic and problematic behaviours are more likely to be medicalised".

Maybe it's Oprah's fault. Society has got to a point where conditions such as sleep apnoea, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and ADHD work on two levels.

They are genuine, they are diagnosable and they inflict a terrible toll on sufferers. And they are also used by the indolent, the slothful, the vain and the violent as an excuse for poor choices and poor conduct.

This is not an attack on Jesse Kelly or his mates, because they are only acting off a script which adult society wrote for them.

When Willie Mason reveals, after a big night on the red cordial, that he's got ADHD, the public is entitled, after such a record of consistently bad behaviour, to be cynical.

And when so many parents put real energy into teaching their kids to take responsibility for their own actions, to share, think about others, say please and thank you, you can't help but think that some parents play the ADHD card as a foil for their own slackness.

Think back to your own childhood. For the better part of a year, I would refuse to leave the house unless I had a 2litre ice cream container on my head, which I'd hit with a stick, just one example of obsessive behaviour which included shouting, refusing to go to bed, running away from the dinner table.

According to the symptoms listed on the US Institute of Medical Health website, I had ADHD, and possibly still do, and my daughter (given the alleged 25 per cent occurrence of ADHD in the children of ADHD parents, versus 5 per cent in the rest of children) appears to be headed down the same ratbag path.

We could give her a column. The prevailing wisdom is that we should give her some pills. They can't be hard to get, most doctors don't want to argue with parents and a quick consultation is a good consultation.

Give kids a handful of pills and give them a handful of excuses for a life in which opportunities are passed by – because society teaches them from an early age that they've got a justification for missing them.

penberthyd@dailytelegraph.com.au

[Nicholas]

Should Willie Mason be allowed to take a banned stimulant to control his unsocial behaviour?

I don't think he should. I'm suprised he didn't get a 2-year ban.

[roostersfan]

Agree with you Nicholas

[troyda1990]

He should be allowed to take anything to control his behavior.