#ThanksAmerica #ADHD #absentminded #flunkedoutofschool #TCM #viciouscycle #toxicdrugs #herbalsupplements #herbalmedicine #ThanksUSA #grandchildren #teachers #BigPharma
In my newest books, scattered in appropriate places, I have already thanked my family, my friends from childhood to college, and at work, without whom I would not have become what I am today. Now I want to specifically thank my adopted country, the USA, for welcoming me 57 years ago. I was born into an erudite family on both my paternal and maternal sides. As far as I can remember, as a child up to perhaps 8 or 9 years old, I was absentminded and daydreaming a lot. I flunked out of elementary school and then later in my sophomore year of high school. My anchor at home was my maternal grandmother, my amah (nanny), and my older sister who was my protector against bullies when I was younger. My father was not around during most of those years and my mother was mostly our disciplinarian. I feel very blessed and lucky I were not born now or a generation or two earlier. Under the premise for children to have better attention to learn, they are given drugs to take so that they could pay attention. With my condition (ADHD?), in any other family, I would probably have been given drugs to take to make me focus and easier for the teachers, and of course heavily promoted by Big Pharma & associates to line their own pockets. I would have been deep in the vicious cycle forever. Please help me break it so that our grandchildren and theirs would not inherit it!
The following is the last paragraph of “Chapter 1. Growing Up in Asia” of “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” published last year in August.
Looking back at my childhood-to-college years in Asia, I feel very lucky under those circumstances. I somehow ended up finishing high school and college and was going to start a new life in America. First, being admitted to the graduate school of the University of Michigan was not easy with academic records of barely a B-average like mine. And then, being offered a teaching assistantship sight unseen was to me like a miracle. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, but I do now. Without the financial support of Uncle Siu and Auntie Pauline, I would not have gone to college, period, let alone finished it with a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. And without the teaching assistantship from Michigan, I would not have become a pharmacognosist, specializing in herbal medicine, writing to you today, trying to tell you and the world about what is wrong with our drugs and ‘herbal’ supplements. They can be made much better if we start doing something about them, especially by resetting our priorities towards the less fortunate by forgoing at least part of the excessive profits.