did anyone else know they can get an amphetamine patch?

It's called Daytrana, a patch version of Ritalin aka methylphenidate. This is sortof crazy, but it does seem a natural extension from a nicotine patch to a meth one.

This smart patch is targeted at children, naturally, who don't like to eat pills*. You can read about Daytrana on Wikipedia. In great wiki-flack form, the entry closes by noting that "Daytrana continues this progression toward greater abuse resistance by providing a non-oral, non-granulated package that can be removed at will." Of course this is a huge advance. If you feel addiction creeping up on you, just pull the patch right off.

Daytrana - a "Methylphenidate Transdermal System" (MTS) - was first known as MethyPatch. I wonder why that didn't make it through PR? (mother to ADHD child: "Here Tommy, come and get a new MethyPatch for your arm to replace that old spent smart sticker.")

But I probably don't know how useful this product could be. Helpfully, Shire pharma provides parents' accounts of drug effectiveness. I like the one about Jimmy, with the funny anecdote about the time Jimmy stuck his smart sticker in the cat's ear "to make Fluffy a genius". Just kidding.** Although I'm pretty sure there have been cases where the child receiving treatment shared the patch with a friend.

Anyway, don't forget to sign up for your free 30-day Daytrana trial. Watch out for recalls, as in 2008 some lots were pulled from the market because it seems that the sticker backing was hard to pull off. No reported ODs, so no biggie.

Seriously, though, no one really knows the costs of medicating very young children with strong dopaminergic drugs. I would bet that their brains do not develop normally, although that may not be a bad thing. There's lots of research left to do here, and also on adult ADHD, which isn't even easily DSMIV-diagnosable (not to say that I endorse the DSMIV).

* I never liked taking pills as a kid, either. For a long time I used to mush any pills I needed to take into refried beans. How that made the them easier to ingest, I have no idea. I still have a vivid memory of these cheap canned beans with chalky pills. You can bet that my memoir will begin with me sitting in a old-folks home, eating my mush of beans and pills, and suddenly I'll be pulled back the world of my childhood...

** Don't sue me for libel! This example NOT taken from an actual personal account.