I am flourishing at university; getting my work in on time, getting good marks, I am student rep for my Hall of Residence, and I have a lot of friends. I have very little conflict in my life (and that is unusual for me, as I have gone through my life at loggerheads with people, mainly before the diagnosis of ADD and starting on Ritalin though). Both the health authority where my parents live and the one in the area where I did my A-Levels gave me support as an ADD sufferer, and prescribed the Ritalin. I presumed that when I came to university, that this health authority would be the same. Sadly, I was wrong.

I have been hit by a wall of various consultant psychiatrists, registrars and Senior House Officers, who are trying to take my Ritalin away as a political stunt. It's due to a case where a child ADD specialist was suspended after being accused of over-prescribing Ritalin. This specialist was not guilty, and has since been cleared of all charges and has moved to another health authority to practice again. When I first met my GP when I registered, having only been at university for one week and having had no contact with any other medical professionals in the area, I had only just sat down, when he told me I didn't have ADHD! How he was to come to that conclusion after only just meeting me and not even having seen my file, seeing as it was down at the other end of the country at the time, was a mystery to me. He even admitted he doesn't know much about ADD. All he 'knows', he said, is that it is a 'child's illness', that Ritalin is a 'child's drug', and that miraculously, you somehow cease to suffer from ADD when you reach your 18th birthday.

I am 19, going on 20. If I don't take Ritalin, my ADD symptoms return. After working so hard to get to university, I need to be able to concentrate on my work and interact in a socially acceptable manner, which would be virtually impossible for me to do without Ritalin. I have since seen a consultant, a registrar and four senior house officers. All of them have told me on entering their office that I do not have ADD, despite all the assessments I have had done during the four years that I have been on Ritalin, which prove that I do. I even spent seven weeks on a psychiatric ward when I was suffering from depression, and they monitored my Ritalin closely then. This was only last year. On the two occasions when the staff and myself forgot to give me my medication, they saw what I was like (exhibiting ADD symptoms basically), and that has all been documented and is present on my medical file!

But no, these specialists know better. The consultant who diagnosed me in the first place, following a three hour intensive interview which included practical tasks and endless questions about my life history for both myself and my parents, and who attends conferences worldwide virtually every week, was wrong, apparently, about my ADD diagnosis. But I am a textbook case. I have virtually all the symptoms, and I have them pretty severely. The evidence is even in my early school reports. Comments included 'She never sits still and is always fidgeting', 'She constantly gazes around the room and never seems to be able to pay attention to her work', 'She intrudes on the other pupils by barging in on their games and conversations', and 'She loses everything. Can no one teach her to be organised?'

My school career was horrible. Now that I have put all that behind me, the medical profession are trying to remove my Ritalin at a time when it is important to have it. I have been accused of being addicted to Ritalin, and they are referring me to the local drug addiction team. It sounds like a joke, but it is true! They are telling me they think I might have something physically wrong with me instead, but they won't tell me what! They have told me that I will never get married or get a serious boyfriend, because men won't want to know a girl who is on Ritalin or who has ADD. I was in floods of tears within moments of leaving the room when a doctor said that. But here comes the punch line of it all. It is my consultant who has decided to remove my Ritalin, and he is going to begin reducing it in January. But he has never even met me! I have met one of his colleagues for ten minutes, and two of the doctors under him for half an hour each. Has anybody else experienced anything like this?