I retired early last year after 30yrs of Social Services Child Care in the UK. During that time I made many of my feelings clear on the use of Ritalin to "control" behaviour.
ALL children are affected in some way by the foods they eat as Mary Garvey lightly touched on in an earlier post.
The staff I worked with, who believed in my "theories", monitored the foods that different children, who had been diagnosed as ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), were ingesting. Reactions to certain types of food are easily recognisable by behaviours exhibited.
If your child is exhibiting beahviours which make him/her appear to be under the influence of something then please monitor them. Keep a record of all meals eaten and particularly all sweets and carbonated drinks. Many of the reactions manifest themselves within half an hour of ingesting the particular type of food so it is not difficult, by a process of elimination to establish what affects your child.
There have been a very minimal amout of children who cannot be brought down to earth by diet and have ended up on Ritalin but please give this a try. It is a tedious task to record all foods eaten and varying reactions, which is time consuming and boring but...you want your child back to normal without the use of drugs...Go for it! Best wishes.