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Annual 2006
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There is a saying that seems to have originated around the tables of Alcoholics Anonymous: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is an apt sentiment for the 19 million drug users, 16 million heavy drinkers and 70 million smokers in the United States (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration survey, updated 2005), many of whom started using drugs and alcohol or smoking for pleasure and soon found themselves hopelessly addicted, their lives out of control.
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In 1998, Eunice Lycke began taking yoga classes, and a couple of years later, she started teaching it. That’s not such a remarkable story, until you learn that Lycke is now 84 years old and is still teaching yoga.
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Everybody’s heard those dire warnings about using common, everyday products—cell phones cause brain tumors, getting your clothes dry cleaned is toxic to your health, fluoridated water will poison you. It’s enough to make you pack up the kids and hightail it to the outback, any outback, to live off the land. So what’s the scoop? Are these rumors based in science or are they simply part of a seemingly endless stream of “scare lore” that pervades our society? We decided to investigate. Here’s what we found.
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For the past three years, I’ve played stepmom to a young adult who at age 8 was diagnosed with ADD—shorthand for the condition known as Attention Deficit Disorder. I’ve seen firsthand how the ADD tag has crippled her self-confidence, causing her to doubt her ability to take a timed test, make a business call or drive a car (she’s 21, and still has no license). I’ve also seen her use it as a crutch when the going gets a little too rough. But just as frequently, I’ve seen her rise to the occasion in ways that contradict her diagnosis, causing me to wonder just how accurate that diagnosis is.
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If things don’t change, says 84-year-old Beth Dale, she’ll have to kiss Sun City goodbye and move to Sacramento—just to be near Michael McCloud, M.D., one of the area’s few geriatricians.
“It’s a desperate situation,” she says.
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There are lots of people whom—via a leap of faith—we decide to trust in life: our accountant, our attorney, our contractor, our spouse. And there can, of course, be disastrous consequences if any of these trusted people mislead us, give us bad advice, break a promise or turn out to be scoundrels.
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A nurse in the pediatrics ward of a local hospital is briskly checking a patient’s progress on a computer screen, consulting with fellow nurses about cases, and visiting with her patients, all while cradling a 4-week-old abused baby against her body with her left arm. She will carry the infant everywhere she goes today, because she knows from experience that affectionate human contact is vital to a newborn’s development.
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