Heal Me

Dear No One in Particular,

I like to think I'm a fairly skeptical person. It takes quite a bit of reasoning to get me to believe your argument. I'm also one of those people who believes that there are fake diseases. You know, "illnesses" created by pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs. Diseases that didn't exist 30-40 years ago, not because people were willfully ignorant, but because they simply didn't exist. Case in point: ADHD and its pharmaceutical saviour, Ritalin. I firmly believe that ADHD doesn't really exist, at least not in the strict sense of it being a valid illness. I think that ADHD = being a child. Who wasn't obnoxiously overactive as a kid? Remember your elementary schoolmates -- as they got older, they lost that ability to tackle everything at breakneck speed. It's called getting older. (No doubt, there are a million little pills to solve that "problem" as well.)

At any rate, there are some diseases that are actually 100% real that I can't get behind, simply because they don't sound genuine. Case in point: Uncombable Hair Syndrome. Apparently, sufferers have real-life Barbie hair. I wish I could sympathise, but as a curly-haired girl, I want to scoff and say "Get in line." Also: get a better name.

--amanda