This post is dedicated to Rusty Yates, husband of Andrea, and all of the family members of those who have taken Anti-Depressants and had horrific consequences.
God's grace was with our family while I was on the court ordered psychiatric drugs 17 years ago, and we did not have to deal with the extra balast of criminal behavior and it's consequences as the Yates family has. Since 1989 I have not takent one pill. And we have happily welcomed four additional children to our family. Tom Cruise is right, nutrition and natural healing, gentle exercise, and quiet living are what heals and prevents emotional distress....not chemicals.
The very thought of my sweetheart, lover, best friend and eternal companion Paul being blamed for any wacky, suicidal, homicidal, or just weird behavior while I was taking anti-depressants is absolutely horrid to even contemplate. He has been the very reason I was able to work through all of my issues and come through mental illness and make it safely to the other side into wellness.
Rusty Yates has been the whipping boy in the press and in people's minds for far too long. All of that rage thrust at the poor man should be squarely shoved right at the Big Pharma companies that have had quite a ride on the backs of innocent people for the past sixteen years.
In her latest letter Ann Blake Tracy said:
It is LONG past time for the world to learn what has happened in this tragic case!
Those who accompanied me to Houston were Amy Lubrecht from Ohio whose husband Michael drowned their one year old son while under the influence of Effexor, Jay Baadsgard, from Washington state, whose son Corey, while under the influence of Effexor, held his class at gunpoint for 45 minutes and five years later still has no memory of doing it, Antonio Ortiz, whose fiance shot and killed her twin boys while withdrawing from Zoloft and starting Paxil, John Marsh, from Texas, whose son Paul killed his best friend while under the influence of Paxil, and Jurgen Viktor, whose son Jared, after only six days on Paxil together with his girlfriend on Prozac stabbed an elderly friend 61 times. All of us were there to let Rusty and Andrea know that they are FAR FROM ALONE in their drug-induced nightmare. This is going on nationwide - worldwide and needs to end.
But before I go on I want to make it VERY clear that I am SICK AND TIRED of the press beating up on Rusty Yates!!!! Rusty is an incredible human being who has stuck by Andrea through all this in spite of losing all five of his children. Who can even begin to imagine the pain and suffering he has endured?! Andrea has not even had a chance to endure it because they have kept her so completely drugged up since that day.
But Rusty has had to face the reality every day without his entire family. They are all gone. Where is the compassion for this man that should be there? He could not have seen this coming. He was not a professional. In a similar case in Utah a father was arrested for the murder of his family after his wife stabbed and bludgeoned their three children and stabbed herself to death while withdrawing abruptly from two of these antidepressants mixed with a steroid. Of course the father was found not guilty and it was determined that the wife did this, but he spent four months in jail after losing his whole family. What horrific ordeals for these fathers!!!
The fact is that Andrea was the third nurse in a three month period to go to court for killing her children while on an antidepressant. The other two were married to doctors. One in Illinois on Zoloft killed two and one in California on Prozac killed her three sons and shot herself in a suicide attempt. Then in the middle of Andrea's first trial a female doctor in Illinois on Effexor stabbed her two sons, killing one and seriously wounding the other. Then in the middle of this second trial for Andrea a young mother in Ft Worth, TX on Zoloft drowned her one year old son. That is only to list a few.
Wyeth added the "homicidal thought" side effect to Effexor due to PRE-marketing data - in other words they knew that homicide was possible with their drug BEFORE they ever marketed it. That would involve premeditation on the part of that company, would it not? Why would they be granted any more slack than the rest of the population? If they knew that Andrea drowning all five of her children was possible with their drug, why did they not disclose that? AND if they knew that, WHY is Andrea the one who was on trial for murder? Just a few questions to hopefully make us ponder which direction we are going in this drug-induced insanity. [Keep in mind that this drug company is the same company who cursed the world with Fen-Phen and Redux - how many people did this company kill with those drugs?]
These horrific antidepressant-induced murders are happening all around us every day. This is why reading our local newspapers anymore is more like reading news from a war zone than what we used to know as the America we used to call home. What I have witnessed over the past 16 years is enough to blow anyone's mind. In fact I have had reporters at Court TV ask me to stop telling them about a case because they could no longer stand to listen to the graphic details (and that was only after sharing two which they had asked me about!). But after three Zoloft murder cases by young people back to back on Court TV the reporters are even asking out loud on the air, "What is this with kids and Zoloft?" These antidepressant-induced cases are very violent and very much out of character cases that leave everyone shaking their heads.
The truth is that these drugs are much too similar in action to LSD or PCP and the scientific research to show that is clear. Would anyone have been surprised at Andrea's actions to learn that someone had been secretly slipping her LSD or PCP every day? Of course not!
Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director, International Coalition For Drug Awareness
EFFEXOR/HOMICIDE ANDREA FOUND NOT GUILTY & OUR VISIT TO HOUSTON LAST WEEK
By now most of you have heard that Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity today. Last week you all heard that there were six of us from ICFDA who went to the courthouse in Houston for a press conference in support of Rusty and Andrea Yates and also to publicly ask that the warning of "homicidal thoughts" which was added to Effexor's label last November, to be added to the labels of ALL antidepressants.
Here is Dr. Tracy's testimony to the FDA explaining how the drugs cause people to become violent...
Dr. Ann Blake Tracy's September 13, 2004 to the FDA
I am Ann Blake Tracy, PhD, head of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness.
I am the author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare and have testified in court cases involving antidepressants for 12 1/2 years.
The last 15 years of my life have been devoted full time to researching and writing about SSRI antidepressants.
Research on serotonin has been clear from the very beginning that the most damaging thing that could be done to the serotonin system would be to impair one's ability to metabolize serotonin. Yet that is exactly how SSRI antidepressants exert their effects.
For decades research has shown that impairing serotonin metabolism will produce migraines, hot flashes, pains around the heart, difficulty breathing, a worsening of bronchial complaints, tension and anxiety which appear from out of nowhere, depression, suicide - especially very violent suicide, hostility, violent crime, arson, substance abuse, psychosis, mania, organic brain disease, autism, anorexia, reckless driving, Alzheimer's, impulsive behavior with no concern for punishment, and argumentative behavior.
How anyone ever thought it would be "theraputic" to chemically induce these reactions is beyond me. Yet, these reactions are exactly what we have witnessed in our society over the past decade and a half as a result of the widespread use of these drugs.
In fact we even have a whole new vocabulary as a result with terms such as "road rage," "suicide by cop," "murder/suicide," "going postal," "false memory syndrome," "school shooting," "bi-polar" - every third person you meet anymore - along with the skyrocketing rates of antidepressant-induced diabetes and hypoglycemia.
Can you remember two decades ago when depressed people used to slip away quietly to kill themselves rather than killing everyone around them and then themselves as they do while taking SSRI antidepressants?
A study out of the University of Southern California in 1996 looked at a group of mutant mice in an experiment that had gone terribly wrong. These genetically engineered mice were the most violent creatures they had ever witnessed. They were born lacking the MAO-A enzyme which metabolizes serotonin. As a result their brains were awash in serotonin. This excess serotonin is what the researchers determined was the cause for this extreme violence.
Antidepressants produce the same end result as they inhibit the metabolism of serotonin.
These are extremely dangerous drugs that should be banned as similar drugs have been banned in the past.
As a society we once thought LSD and PCP to be miracle medications with large margins of safety in humans. We have never seen drugs so similar to LSD and PCP as these SSRI antidepressants.
All of these drugs produce dreaming during periods of wakefulness. It is believed that the high serotonin levels over stimulate the brain stem leading to a lack of muscle paralysis during sleep thus allowing the patient to act out the dreams or nightmares they are having.
The world witnessed that clearly in the Zoloft-induced murder-suicide of comedian Phil Hartman and his wife, Brynn.
Connecticut witnessed the Prozac-induced case of Kelly Silk several years ago. This young mother attacked her family with a knife, then set the house on fire killing all but her 8 year old daughter who ran to the neighbors.
As she stood bleeding and screaming for help she explained, "Help! My mommy is having a nightmare!"
Out of the mouths of babes we will understand these nightmares for what they are. She understood that this was something her mother would do ONLY in a nightmare, never in reality.
This is known as a REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. In the past it was known mainly as a drug withdrawal state, but the largest sleep facility in the country has reported that 86% of the cases they are diagnosing are patients on antidepressants.
Because this was known in the past as a condition manifesting mainly in drug withdrawal you should see how dangerous the withdrawal state from these drugs will prove to be. That is why it is so critical to make sure patients are weaned EXTREMELY slowly so as to avoid ANY chance of going into a withdrawal state. _________________
Mark Taylor's September 13, 2004 to the FDA (first boy shot at Columbine High School)
I am Mark Allen Taylor and I am a victim of the SSRI antidepressant era. I took six to thirteen bullets in the heart area in the Columbine High School shooting when Eric Harris on Luvox opened fire that now infamous day.
They almost had to amputate my leg and my arm. My heart missed by only one millimeter. I had three surgeries. Five years later I am still recuperating. I went through all this to realize that SSRI antidepressants are dangerous for those who take them and for all those who associate with those who take them.
I hope that my testimony today shows you that you need to take action immediately before more innocent people like me, and you, do not get hurt or die horrible deaths as a result.
As Americans we should have the right to feel safe and if you were doing your job we would be safe. Why are we worrying about terrorists in other countries when the pharmaceutical companies have proven to be our biggest terrorists by releasing these drugs on an unsuspecting public?
How are we suppose to feel safe at school, at home, on the street, at church or anywhere else if we cannot trust the FDA to do what we are paying you to do? Where were you when I and all of my classmates got shot at Columbine?
You say that antidepressants are effective. So why did they not help Eric Harris before he shot me?
According to Eric they "helped" him to feel homicidal and suicidal after only six weeks on Zoloft. And then he said that dropping off Luvox cold turkey would help him "fuel the rage" he needed to shoot everyone. But he continued on Luvox and shot us all anyway.
So, why did these so called antidepressants not make him better? I will tell you why. It is because they do not work.
We should consider antidepressants to be accomplices to murder.
Articles that Dr. Tracy sent along to her email group on the Andrea Yates Trial:
Anti-depressant warning may help Yates
05:49 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 5, 2006 By JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA-TV
AP
Andrea Yates' treatment for post-partum depression played a big role in her first murder trial. Now the pills she was prescribed for depression may be the key in her second defense.
The FDA in November quietly ordered a safety labeling change for Effexor XR, a warning that in rare cases patients will experience "homicidal" thoughts.
Harris HEB psychiatrist Cathal Grant has been treating patients for depression for over 20 years.
He says many doctors probably don't know the warning has been added to Effexor. But this extreme side-effect doesn't surprise him either.
"Anyone who's suffered from severe depression will know that it can cause anger and irritability at times, and there are a certain percentage of those people who may be homicidal," said Dr. Grant.
Most anti-depressants do warn of side - effects including suicidal thoughts, hostility, aggressiveness, and manic reactions. Homicidal thoughts are not on any other anti-depressant labels, we could find.
Still, the vast majority of people take the medicine safely. Defense attorneys will no doubt argue Effexor's new labeling could prove Andrea Yates did not.
E-mail jst.james@wfaa.com.
Here is a picture of me taken after two years of "treatment" by the psychiatric profession. I was court ordered to eat the medicines for fourteen months - They gave me Lithium, Prozac, Stelazine, and Haldol in an overpowering cocktail of chemicals that deprived me of any emotion whatsoever and left me toxic and depressed state for many many months.