Well, personally, I don't really think this is off-topic:

http://www.apbonline.com/911/1999/04/28/sh_psychdrugs0428_01.html

BTW- Kip Kinkel - the shooter in Springfield, Oregon was ALSO on a psychiatric drug - Prozac.

Curiouser and curiouser. Betcha mainstream news doesn't mention this very often - if at all.

Jolly isn't on drugs.

-- Jollyprz (jolly@prez.com), April 28, 1999

Answers

Dear Jolly, Only this week,we were having a discussion about what could happen if all the drug addicts are suddenly deprived of their fixes..which in the UK are mainly imports.Their consequent behaviour doesn't bear thinking about!

I am only on two drugs ..both legal-caffeine & nicotine but nobody will want to be be near me if I have to go cold turkey!

I expect there will be a run on magic mushrooms.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), April 28, 1999.

JOLLY:

A distressing thing I've noticed about more than a few of my friends in my generation (born before WWII) is that they are highly intelligent, sophisticated, educated, generally well-informed, and warm and friendly -- AND ARE ON PROZAC. Interestingly y2k prospects don't seem to bother them too much, even when they acknowledge the potential for trouble.

I no longer recommend Orwell's '1984' as good reading -- why bother?-- the evidence seems all around us.

God bless,

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), April 28, 1999.

Jolly,

Thanks for that post. I had been thinking about this today as well. I have a friend who tells me he is "bipolar/manic/depressive". And when he starts to change up his meds he gets antisocial and very depressed, has major moods swings and even gets into fights.

I wonder if the problem lies with the disorder that required the meds in this shooter in Colo. or whether the meds had side effects. I would be interested in knowing why he was prescribed the drugs.

-- LindaO (goodpost@hotmail.com), April 28, 1999.

Bill -

Yeah. Sounds a lot like "soma", doesn't it? *sigh*

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), April 28, 1999.

Well, I did about 1/2 hour on net after infoseek search on "Prozac suicid homicid"

What I got scared the hell out of me. The following quote was lifted from www.geocities.com/HotSprings/3568/

"As our latest panacea, Prozac and its analogues [such as paxil, zoloft, luvox, effexor, serzone, anafranil & the diet pills - fenfluramine, fen-phen & redux] are being prescribed for everything from headaches and flu to acne and home sickness. Yet, according to FDA spokespersons, there have been more adverse reaction reports on Prozac than any other medical product. As of October, 1993, a total of 28,623 complaints of adverse side effects had been filed with the FDA, including 1,885 suicide attempts and 1,349 deaths. The FDA's general rule of thumb for estimating the true figures is that these reports represent only one to ten percent of the actual figures. This would indicate the staggering amount of 286,230 - 2,862,300 actual adverse reactions, 18,850 - 188,500 actual suicide attempts and 13,490 - 134,900 actual deaths attributed to Prozac by the end of 1993."

Another interesting thing, is that MOST of the so-called psychiatric drugs are very similar in their side effects.

The shooter in Oregon was on PROZAC!

The other thing is that when going on or OFF the drugs, the most side effects are noticed. So if you quit taking your medication - especially cold turkey, you are much more likely to have a side effect - including homicidal & suicidal thoughts.

Here are some more interesting sites. They all belong to an organization dedicated to getting rid of all psychiatric drugs. So their view may be biased.

cchr.org/art/eng/page20.htm

cchr.org/racism/wtdtyapd.htm

cchr.org/art/eng/page48.htm

Jolly is getting mad.

-- Jollyprez (jolly@prez.com), April 28, 1999.

Doc Bill,

It's just as bad in the younger generation. It's like a crutch; like overdependence on a laxative, before long you need it just to function. Having a whole society on this stuff and then pulling the rug out from under them is going to be - interesting. Add the constipation factor from all the laxative-dependent people, and we'll have a complete breakdown of civility...

Dano

-- Dano (bookem@blacksand.srf), April 28, 1999.

Doc Bill, don't give up rekk'ing 1984 to people ! Greatest work of the 20th century ! Yes it is happening all around us, but there's STILL an interesting question brought up by a poster earlier on this ng: will it be the 'Jackboot' model of 1984 or the 'Soma' model of Brave New World ? It's a dead heat, stay tuned...

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), April 28, 1999.

Blue - don't forget THX-1138. Particularly appropo to this thread.

Jolly

-- Jollyprez (jolly@prez.com), April 28, 1999.

This makes me REALLY wonder about the parents.

"Gee, our kid is seeing a psychiatrist, he's on psychoactive drugs, he's always playing with guns and dynamite, he worships Hitler, he's threatened to blow up people at school -- nah, just going through a phase is all."

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 28, 1999.

I can't remember if it was Gun Week, CCRTKBA, or "other" but about 5 years ago somebody researched if these "crazed" people shooting up MacDonalds, various post offices, etc. were on drugs. If memory serves me a MAJORITY were on Prozac or equivalents. Another friendly thought is all those kids on Ritalin. I wonder what their withdrawl symptoms are?

P.S. Don't dismiss nicotine and caffeine as lightweights, my wife used to drink a LOT of very strong coffee. When she quit it was like she had a really bad flu.

While you are reading 1984 and Brave New World, don't forget to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Yes, some of the soliloquies are long winded, but the book is definately worth the slow spots.

Question? :) Is John Galt a 386? :)

Bill, If they are on Prozac does ANYTHING bother them? P.P.S. Thanks for all the C.S. info over the years.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), April 28, 1999.

"If they are on Prozac does ANYTHING bother them?" Good question, Ken.

I have repeatedly raised the subject of Y2k with a friend, who happens to be on Prozac. Her response, "I don't want to hear about it, because I might freak out."

"Everything is a drug to me, except reality, which is unendurable." -Cyril Connolly

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 28, 1999.

'Another friendly thought is all those kids on Ritalin. I wonder what their withdrawl symptoms are?'

More to the point, how many are on this drug who shouldn't be (should anyone?) who are experiencing increased aggression --- or the opposite, apathy. It's a sorry solution which targets the children as the problem to what can usually be traced to other sources within the family, diet, or school. My grandson is now being homeschooled because the pressure was on to medicate his 'uncooperative' little self. My husband is a psychotherapist who has dealt with hyperactive children and children with learning disabilities for twenty years. He hit the roof at the suggestion that our grandson had either problem. He has been to several seminars that are aimed at fighting the tide of the system to label, diagnose, and medicate our children. In his experience, unless the root cause of the child's problem is addressed, no amount of medication is going to alleviate the symptoms...short of a dosage that creates a near comatose level of functioning. And you're quite right that most psychotropics are a merry-go-round balancing act to maintain any degree of functionality, with most clients being mis-diagnosed, mis-medicated, and generally managed to the benefit of a system that just doesn't give a damn beyond it's bottom dollar line. Just as angry as Jolly!

-- Shelia (Shelia@a.com), April 28, 1999.

Do the children get started on Ritalin and progress to Prozac as they get older?

It seems like I read that teachers can now say that they feel a child needs Ritalin and the doctor will prescribe based on the teachers opinion.

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), April 28, 1999.

Jolly,

Are you aware that Prozac is an antidepressant, and thus is prescribed for millions of people who have clinical depression, sometimes severe?

>As of October, 1993, including 1,885 suicide attempts and 1,349 deaths.

Without antidepressant medication and counseling, severe clinical depression has a fatality rate of up to 40%, I've read. Suicide attempts are a primary _symptom_ of untreated severe clinical depression. Prozac significantly reduces the fatality rate among those with severe clinical depression. That it is not 100% effective is not a valid argument against its use.

Please don't confuse medical side effects with disease symptoms. Prozac and other antidepressants have _prevented_ tens or hundreds of thousands of suicides.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), April 28, 1999.

I usually avoid OT threads, but ... Dr. David Keirsey has some pertinent comments about Ritalin and "attention deficit disorder" at www.keirsey.com, particularly: Essays on Aspects of Temperament
The Great ADD Hoax
NARCOTHERAPY FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER

As for homeschooling, it can be excellent, not primarily to avoid violence in the schools, although that is a good idea; not primarily to avoid drugs of various kinds in the schools, although that, too, is a good idea; but primarily vastly to increase the probability that the children will get a good education, acquire good study habits, and learn to stand on the shoulders of giants, instead of "learning" the mental trash that passes for contemporary education. Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), April 28, 1999.

Let my try those links again: Essays on Aspects of Temperament
NARCOTHERAPY FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), April 28, 1999.

One more time...

A.D.D. Hoax

Narcotherapy for Deficit Disorder

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), April 28, 1999.

No Spam

Thanks for the voice of reason. I am always amazed at the instant "doctors" who have not a clue as to the validity of certain medications. It is this type of mindset that causes many to go untreated. From personal experience, I can assure you that this is lethal.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), April 28, 1999.

"As of October, 1993, a total of 28,623 complaints of adverse side effects had been filed with the FDA, including 1,885 suicide attempts and 1,349 deaths. The FDA's general rule of thumb for estimating the true figures is that these reports represent only one to ten percent of the actual figures. This would indicate the staggering amount of 286,230 - 2,862,300 actual adverse reactions, 18,850 - 188,500 actual suicide attempts and 13,490 - 134,900 actual deaths attributed to Prozac by the end of 1993."

Well gee, since Prozac is an antidepressant do you think that may have somethin to do with the above? When someone is depressed they frequently try to commit suicide, meds or not. By the way that number of suicides is way high. Every suicide is a coroners case, and would get reported.

An ER doc.

-- kozak (kozak@formerusaf.guv), April 29, 1999.

Mike & Kozak,

Would you agree that we live in a society that believes we can just throw medicine at a problem? How do you think we got into the current debacle with antibiotics?

I'm not a board certified medical doctor. But I read the literature, JAMA, drug inserts, and so on.

It's well established that psychotropic drugs by their very nature disrupt the neuro-phsyiology of the recipient. Beginning and ending medication with one of these drugs is the time when most side-effects occur. These side-effects include all kinds of "anti-social" behavior.

I do not know the methodology from which these statistics are derived. I mentioned that some of the sites I gave may be biased in their views. I put them up for informational purposes.

As a doctor, sir, you should be more careful scoffing at non-doctors. Unless you wish to act like a veterinarian, your patients usually know more about their conditions than you.

The medical profession is one of the most arrogant, and close minded professions in this country. I have several class mates and (now former) friends who are medical doctors. I have been in contact frequently with the medical profession all my life due to a congenital chronic condition. I recently moved to a rural area, and I had to explain my condition and anatomy to the ENT doctor "treating" me. I actually had to tell him what prescription I should have.

There is ample evidence that psychotropic drugs, including Prozac, are over prescribed. Just like anti-biotics.

And just like anti-biotics, the cause and effect of overprescription is still be sorted out.

Jolly is an EMT, too.

-- Jollyprez (jolly@prez.com), April 29, 1999.

Well, alzheimers took my Dad, and his A. took my mom, and then paxil gave her back. Some of the folks using them truly DO need them. Mom was a true basket case with all of the usual clin. Depression s&s and she finally asked her doc how he treats Clin Dep. and his first question was "Do you want to hurt yourself?" After establishing that the problem was more one of many many too many tears and episodes of tears and general malaise, he started her on the paxil. when I went back for my Dad's funeral, mom was back to her old (20 yrs ago) self. She is now off the drugs and has quit smoking, which was a victory for both her and my sister-in-law, who wrote her MSN thesis on helping people quit.

Chuck, EMT for 20 years, EMT-P for 8

-- chuck, a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), April 29, 1999.

I don't think anyone was implying that appropriate use of the appropriate medication used for the appropriate time periods and in the appropriate dosages cannot ever be helpful. I do think most are familiar with the tendency for doctors to overmedicate and often in inappropriate situations. And yes, I have a cousin who without his meds is not OK...so I've seen both sides of the picture. I also have a friend whose doctor put her on several meds, the last of which was Prosac...when the only thing wrong with her was severe physical exhaustion from overwork ... as a result she was in a disabled condition and unable to work for over a year...instead of what a good rest of a few weeks or even a month might have accomplished. She finally took her life back and got off the meds (sloooowly)and was clear headed and able to return to work within a month. Obviously, this won't work for everyone. But I'd be willing to bet a can of chili that five years from now the reports on the efficacy and damage of Prosac will dramatically change as it is beginning to with Ritilan. Turning our children into addicts is not the solution for their behavioral problems.

-- Shelia (Shelia@a.com), April 29, 1999.

One of the pages at cchr.org prominently states "American rock legend Del Shannon 'died violently after taking Prozac for only 15 days.' and seems to blame Prozac for his death.

But Prozac is not quick-acting; it takes several weeks or months to build up an effective level in the body. So it looks like when you combine Prozac's known metabolic properties with the circumstances of Del Shannon's death, Prozac is pretty well ruled out as a cause of his death.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), April 29, 1999.

I'm a'walkin' in the rain

tears are fallin' and I feel a pain

wishin' you were there with me

to end this misery

And I wonder...

D.S.

-- humptydumpty (no.6@thevillage.com), April 29, 1999.

And on the topic of pRozac and rItalin's dangers, this guy is the man..

Breggin

We could be accused of being OT here, but millions of people going cold turkey from psych drugs sometime early next year due to y2k might be a thing to avoid.

-- humptydumpty (no.6@thevillage.com), April 29, 1999.

Working in the sleep lab, we get lots of people on various drugs. Prozac and other drugs like it affect brain wave patterns for weeks and sometimes months or years after they are discontinued. This is not neccessarily a bad thing. The desired effect of the drug is to change brain chemistry. However, in the CPS (like the US physicians handbook), a comment about Prozac is that suicides *increase* when patients first start to take the med. The theory is that there are people who are so depressed that they don't have the ability to even try suicide and that as they become less depressed, they have the energy/mental ability to put into action what they've been dreaming about doing. It makes sense to me. The same arguement could easily hold for those who have dreamed about revenge, to explain the violence toward others. None of this means that Prozac is not a good drug, just that it must be used with caution and that severely depressed people who go on it must be monitored carefully.

All that said, would I take (or have my child take) Prozac? Only after trying other alternatives - councelling jumps to mind!

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), April 29, 1999.

Oh, BTW, since it likely won't make news in the US, you might be interested to know that there was another school shooting in a small town in Alberta, Canada. The wonders of press and copy cat crimes :_(

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), April 29, 1999.

i think most *mental* problems are physical problems, actually. lots are nutritionally based. then there are the others. ken, the guy who shot up the mcdonalds was a welder. in jail, he was part of a group that had their hair tested for toxic amounts of metals. it turned out that he was loaded with toxic levels of manganese, from his job. severe manganese poisoning will make anyone violent.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), April 29, 1999.

In practice antidepressants really do help some people. In my acquaintance, the people that do best seem to use them as a kick-start to address the underlying problems, then get off. Some can't get off them even when they want to.

There is so much that isn't known. I do think these drugs are much more of a crapshoot than medicine is willing to admit. (cf. Breggin)

The jury is so out on whether depression is really "just a biochemical imbalance," the popular theory these days. Our bodies are so biochemically imbalanced anyway (from fake foods, heavy metals, pesticides, xeno-estrogens, fluoride, mineral depletion of soils, the list goes on), not to mention minds assaulted by media programming, who can realistically say? Besides, the idea fits too well with "it's not my fault and I'm not responsible." Everyone who's been through it knows that recovering from depression is synonymous with re-assuming responsibility for oneself, in whatever way this accomplished. Could be the idea of "biochemical imbalance" is a drug in itself, powerful, but preventing further digging for causes, inner and outer. (Just a pet theory of mine)

BTW, cchr.org IS rabidly anti-drug, but substitutes its own drug (Scientology)

Nutrition is powerful -the following have been shown to dramatically affect mental health:

increase omega-3 fatty acids;
increase protein, take with digestive enzymes and HCl (increases production and utilization of neurotransmitters);
use mega-B vitamin complex (esp. vitamin B6);
increase B12 until rbc levels are well above lab range;
much more - too individual to list

YMMV

OK, so I'm off topic... BTW Tricia, that story did make the L.A. Times.

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 29, 1999.