Posted on 02/17/2018 7:38:03 AM PST by Avalon Memories
Here we go again. A horrific mass shooting occurs. Everyone is in shock and grief. Democrats blame guns and Republicans. Pundits urge the public, “If you see something, say something.” And everyone asks, “Why?”
As information about the perpetrator emerges, a relative confides to a newspaper that the “troubled youth” who committed the mass murder was on psychiatric medications – you know, those powerful, little understood, mind-altering drugs with fearsome side effects including “suicidal ideation” and even “homicidal ideation.”
Yet the predictable response from the press is always the same – not only a total lack of curiosity, but disdain for any who ask the question, as though connecting psychiatric meds to mass shootings is pursuing a “conspiracy theory.”
Here’s a good way to tell whether or not something is a conspiracy theory: If it’s true, it’s not a conspiracy theory.
In the case of Nikolas Cruz, his [aunt]…told the Miami Herald that she believed Cruz was on medication to deal with his emotional fragility.
[SNIP]
Fact: A disturbing number of perpetrators of school shootings and similar mass murders in our modern era were either on – or just recently coming off of – psychiatric medications.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox – like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and many others, a…widely prescribed type of antidepressant drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs…Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals concedes that during short-term controlled clinical trials, 4 percent of children and youth taking Luvox – that’s one in 25 – developed mania, a dangerous and violence-prone mental derangement characterized by extreme excitement and delusion.Patrick Purdy went on a schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, California, in 1989, which became the catalyst for the original legislative frenzy to ban “semiautomatic assault weapons” in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.
Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Oregon, and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.
In 1988, 31-year-old Laurie Dann went on a shooting rampage in a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, killing one child and wounding six. She had been taking the antidepressant Anafranil as well as Lithium, long used to treat mania.
In Paducah, Kentucky, in late 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, son of a prominent attorney, traveled to Heath High School and started shooting students in a prayer meeting taking place in the school’s lobby, killing three and leaving another paralyzed. Carneal reportedly was on Ritalin.
In 2005, 16-year-old Jeff Weise, living on Minnesota’s Red Lake Indian Reservation, shot and killed nine people and wounded five others before killing himself. Weise had been taking Prozac.
In another famous case, 47-year-old Joseph T. Wesbecker, just a month after he began taking Prozac in 1989, shot 20 workers at Standard Gravure Corp. in Louisville, Kentucky, killing nine. Prozac-maker Eli Lilly later settled a lawsuit brought by survivors.
Kurt Danysh, 18, shot his own father to death in 1996, a little more than two weeks after starting on Prozac. Danysh’s description of own his mental-emotional state at the time of the murder is chilling: “I didn’t realize I did it until after it was done,” Danysh said. “This might sound weird, but it felt like I had no control of what I was doing, like I was left there just holding a gun.”
One more case is instructive, that of 12-year-old Christopher Pittman, who struggled in court to explain why he murdered his grandparents, who had provided the only love and stability he’d ever known in his turbulent life. “When I was lying in my bed that night,” he testified, “I couldn’t sleep because my voice in my head kept echoing through my mind telling me to kill them.” Christopher had been angry with his grandfather, who had disciplined him earlier that day for hurting another student during a fight on the school bus. So later that night, he shot both of his grandparents in the head with a .410 shotgun as they slept and then burned down their South Carolina home, where he had lived with them. “I got up, got the gun, and I went upstairs and I pulled the trigger,” he recalled. “Through the whole thing, it was like watching your favorite TV show. You know what is going to happen, but you can’t do anything to stop it.” Pittman’s lawyers would later argue that the boy had been a victim of “involuntary intoxication,” since his doctors had him taking the antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft just prior to the murders.
Paxil’s known “adverse drug reactions” – according to the drug’s FDA-approved label – include “mania,” “insomnia,” “anxiety,” “agitation,” “confusion,” “amnesia,” “depression,” “paranoid reaction,” “psychosis,” “hostility,” “delirium,” “hallucinations,” “abnormal thinking,” “depersonalization” and “lack of emotion,” among others. The preceding examples are only a few of the best-known offenders who had been taking prescribed psychiatric drugs before committing their violent crimes – there are many others.
So we give psychotropic drugs to mentally unstable people, then blame the drugs when people act mentally unstable?
I knew a school teacher who was on Paxil and swore by it as a means of dealing with disruptive teenagers in his high school teaching job. Retired now.
Actually we blame guns and law abiding citizens when the mentally unstable are put on psychotropic drugs, become even more unstable and lash out.
The point is that those drugs pretending to make things better, actually makes things worse.
Just wow. Thanks for posting.
I’ve always been anti-drug. I’m doubling down on that.
sorta remindful of MK-Ultra, huh?
the program said to be put to sleep years ago...but who knows...seen articles lately questioning that!!!
Hmmm....????
;)
GunnyG@PlanetWTF?
***************
I think we can say that some people have chemical imbalances and that medications can help some of these people. Schizophrenics are a pretty good example. It is possible that some people with Major Depression can also be helped this way.
But I also think it is safe to say that these medications are over-prescribed and given to some people who are not helped by them and may in fact be hurt by them.
A lot of “mental illness” is just people who think wrong. “I am a victim”, “I deserve more”, “I deserve to be rich and famous, just because”.
There are many unhappy people in society and some of them seem determined to constantly be unhappy. They seem to work hard on that goal. Some form of effective counseling might benefit these people. But, instead, we medicate just about anyone and everyone, with powerful chemicals with known side effects.
Sometimes it goes badly.
“response from the press is always the same – not only a total lack of curiosity, but disdain for any who ask the question, as though connecting psychiatric meds to mass shootings is pursuing a “conspiracy theory.” “
No one is left to point out that the same ‘media’ companies have significant ad revenues from big pharma and are thus paid to point the finger elsewhere.
Yes, we do. Even worse, we give psychotropic drugs to children / adolescents whose brains are still developing. It’s difficult enough to determine the “proper” drug and dosage for a fully developed adult, so how much more difficult must it be to prescribe drugs to a child? And when you consider that it is all to common for doctors and parents to turn to prescribing drugs to children for every and any imaginable reason, it’s not surprising to me how screwed up kids are today.
scopolomine?
Well I have first hand experience of the exact opposite. My mother was suicidal and attempted to kill herself by slashing her wrists.
She was put on Lithium and was a new woman. Twenty years later she remarried and her new husband thought being on 'those drugs' was a bad idea. She stopped her Lithium and after two months when it was fully out of her system, she was suicidal again and hospitalized. She went back on her Lithium and was fine again for another 7 years until she died of pancreatic cancer.
And the problem is not only those currently or recently on psycothropic drugs.
Those who, even years ago, were on those drugs in school to deal with impulsive and/or violence behavior were never weaned from that behavior in the traditional way: a diet of discipline and punishment until self-control is mastered.
Later, when they are past the formative years, without ever learning self-control, it’s too late and nothing but jail or execution can control them.
So nothing in the article proves he was on psychotropic drugs and we still don’t know if he was or wasn’t on them.
I hate when people post worthless clickbait.
?
No thakya!
I prefer DIPA myself.
:)
GunnyG@PlanetWTF?
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Does Xanax have the same side effects?
What happens if someone stops taking it when they (subjectively) feel better?
What happens if someone then starts taking it when they (subjectively) feel worse?
1. The link between use of such drugs and mass murder can't be denied at this point. There have been too many such cases, to the point where the FDA requires manufacturers of this class of drugs to put what are called "black box" warnings on the labels.
2. Now a person with your point of view might ask the old "chicken or egg" question. Did the mental illness come first or did the drug cause the mental illness. I don't think that's the right question to ask. One key question is why are so many young children (especially boys) given these powerful drugs? Another is what can we as a society do better in our handling of people with mental illness. Surely we can do better than what we have been doing for several decades, during which time we have:
allowed the mentally ill to roam homeless on our streets;allowed the massive increase in the use of such drugs;
seen a huge increase in mass murder.
“The point is that those drugs pretending to make things better, actually makes things worse.”
You are onto it. This is what I believe everyone is missing! These drugs mask a deeper issue in many cases and in the long run makes the problem worse and or critical. The drug industry is a symptom masker in so many cases. Makes it easier to ignore the actual underlying issues.
The posted article does make this point.
Mom fired the doctor. The girl is on NO MEDS and is doing fine. These doctors had made her drug dependent...experimenting with different drugs and doses.
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