The Batman Murderer: What Psych Drug Was He On?
James Holmes was just another gun-wielding, brain-altered mass murderer who shot into a crowd after making impressively elaborate plans to do so, just like the 1999 Columbine shooters 13 miles as the crow flies from Aurora. And one of the first words out of the mouths of the media and ruling elites who ascended the pulpit are the obfuscating words “senseless violence”; meaning, just don’t speculate about the motives of the shooter; “don’t ask any unwanted questions;” “Trust us, we’re the experts.”
Unfortunately, these experts are also likely to be beholden to the powers-that-be that aren’t interested in curing the malady that is the epidemic of gun violence. The powers-that-be want to be sure that they will be held blameless when the final official report is released. Don’t expect to be told everything that you need to know to make sense of mass shootings any time soon.
If there is evidence that will help to make sense out of something that will give us a fighting chance to prevent mass shootings in the future, expect that we won’t be told about it until some courageous investigative journalist does the hard sleuthing work and then is allowed to report his findings. We will certainly be as confused about this one as most of us were about Columbine.
If the real connections explaining the Aurora shootings are suppressed, as expected, the approaching police state agenda of the 1% will be enabled. Prepare for metal detectors and private security firms frisking us as we stand in line to see the next violence-inducing shoot-em-up movie that will give ideas to some copy-cat wannabe avenger about competing for the Guiness Book of World Records for non-combat zone mass murders.
I have been listening and watching the repetitive and sensationalistic news coverage of the Aurora shootings for many hours over the first few days since the deed was officially labeled “senseless”. Senseless violence is the mantra, just like the media and ruling elites repeated the lie that three World Trade Center towers, on 9/11/01, (only two having been hit by planes) were exploded, demolished and pulverized, not burned, into fine dust and each then fell into their own footprints at free fall speed, which only could happen if all the floors below the top floors had been disappeared by explosives ahead of time. Anybody who watched the event intuitively knew that these towers came down by controlled demolition but the constant propaganda campaign that followed convinced millions of us to not believe our own eyes but rather believe the probably false, heavily propagandized, Bush White House conspiracy theory.
One has to wonder who are the “sacred cow” industries that have contributed to America’s recurrent mass shootings. Many of them surely consider themselves too big to fail and therefore too big to expose, question, criticize, or implicate as unintentional accomplices. Any one of us can think of any number of potential culprits. My list includes this TOP 10 LIST plus 3:
1) the violent entertainment industry;
2) the violent, and addictive videogame industry;
3) violent professional contact sports, where bodily injury is applauded;
4) the food industry that is doing so much to malnourish vulnerable brains and bodies;
5) the gun lobby;
6) the ease in getting lethal military style weapons (the Aurora killer reportedly got some of his guns at Gander Mountain);
7) our militarized culture and the media that glorifies the “legal” mass murder by “licensed to kill” soldiers at war and then condemns them when they come home psychologically and spiritually tormented and commit “illegal” murders or suicides as civilians;
8) Congresspersons, Presidents, state governors and Supreme Court judges who apathetically vote against or sit on existing rational harm-reduction legislation that could do so much to prevent these mass homicides;
9) Christian church leaders who fail to teach to their potential mass murderers in their Sunday School and confirmation classes about the nonviolent Golden Rule ethics of Jesus, whom they profess to follow; and..
10) etc, etc. There are many potential culprits beyond those that could legally be blamed as being accessories to the crime of shooters like James Holmes.
But in the minds of many, the big culprits, and the ones that the corporate media and their paymasters are scared to death about being exposed, are
1) BigPharma (multinational pharmaceutical companies);
2) the drug advertising industry that so diabolically shapes public attitudes and behaviors; and
3) BigMedicine and us obedient and often enslaved physicians that are in its thrall who have, by and large, not opened our eyes to the data from the medical, forensic and pharmaceutical research community of altruistic researchers that are not beholden to pharmaceutical corporations. Much of this data shows unequivocally that most, if not all, of the five classes of potentially addictive psychiatric drugs are capable of causing drug-induced violence, drug-induced psychoses, drug-induced homicides, drug-induced mania, drug-induced suicidality, drug-induced dementia, drug-induced sleep disorders/sleep deprivation and drug-induced irrational criminal behaviors, especially in unsuspecting adolescents.
By ignoring the peer-reviewed complementary-alternative medical literature and only paying attention to what is in the pharmaceutical industry-controlled mainstream medical journals, we physicians and our employees regularly - and often quite cavalierly - prescribe potentially lethal, though entirely legal, brain and mind-altering synthetic chemicals that those wealthy and influential sponsors lie to us about when their sales staff claims that the drugs are safe, curative and non-addicting.
Therefore, considering that there is a massive amount of documented evidence (see below) of a strong connection between American school shootings and the use of (or withdrawal from) mind-altering, brain-numbing, remorselessness-inducing psych drugs, a fair question should be: “Was the Batman Shooter taking or withdrawing from any one of the hundreds of psychiatric drugs so readily prescribed these days?” Keep in mind that the James Holmes had considerable experience in graduate-level experimental neuroscience. That should logically make every criminal investigator “focus like a laser” into the possibility of mind-altering drugs influencing the shooter’s beliefs, behaviors and thinking processes.
But no, we have heard nary a word about the potential of legal psych drug use or drug withdrawal in the case of the Batman Shooter. Every thinking person should smell a rat – a cover-up in the making.
Amazingly, one of the survivors of the Columbine school shooter Eric Harris (who was taking the Prozac-like drug Luvox that was prescribed by his tragically unaware psychiatrist, Dr. K. Albert), contributed to the myth-making of these “mass shooting crimes of the month” when he advised the most recent batch of Colorado shooting victims to not “waste time trying to figure out what motivated the shooter or shooters. It’s a waste of time, and it gives them exactly what they want (sic).” And then later in the interview he complained, “I don’t think I’ll ever understand.” Duh.
Psychologically and spiritually, any psychologist or spiritual advisor worth his or her salt when dealing with the consequences of psychological trauma will tell you that that advice is profoundly anti-therapeutic and will certainly lead to delayed healing – probably permanently - of the trauma. One wonders what brain-altering, dependency-inducing psych drug that that victim has been taking for the last 13 years. Perhaps he has already tried to taper off the drug but then found out that he can’t tolerate the disabling withdrawal symptoms, and therefore he has concluded that he truly needs the potentially neurotoxic drug.
But he is just repeating what the “authorities” always seem to tell us as they hide essential but “sensitive” information that might be uncomfortable for Holmes’ doctors or clinics or family members or gun and ammunition suppliers or drug company or legislators or tormentors. Perhaps the authorities are trying to protect the various industries that rightfully need to be exposed for their part in the massacres, however indirect or controversial.
James Holmes’ actions would probably not be considered “senseless” if we knew the truth about everything that led up to the Batman shooting. The above-mentioned Columbine victim that is promoting blind ignorance has learned to echo what is already being promoted: keep everybody unaware of what the potential motives are; remain silent about certain painful truths; don’t expose any of the powers-that-be for their part in the long lead-up to the shootings. Attitudes such as these will ensure that there will be many repeats in the future.
Not too long ago I mentioned in this column the remarkable database of serious SSRI (“selective” serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the so-called “second generation ‘antidepressants’”) adverse reactions that have been documented in the public domain. That website can be accessed at www.ssristories.com. When researching that important website, keep in mind that the vast majority of media reports on seemingly irrational criminal events usually don’t ask the question in the title above - unless the drugs are illicit. So the thousands of examples documented and reported represent just the tip of what surely is an enormous iceberg.), since even the FDA estimates that up to 99% of adverse events from any given drug is never reported to that agency.
SSRI Stories is a collection of 4,800+ news stories (mainly criminal in nature) that have appeared in the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) or that were part of FDA public testimony in either 1991, 2004 or 2006, in which psych drugs are mentioned.
The Physicians' Desk Reference lists the following common adverse reactions (side effects) to SSRI antidepressants (among a host of other physical and neuropsychiatric effects). None of these adverse reactions is listed as Rare.
- Manic Reaction (Mania, e.g., Kleptomania, Pyromania, Dipsomania, Nymphomania)
- Hypomania (e.g., poor judgment, over spending, impulsivity, etc.)
- Abnormal Thinking
- Hallucinations
- Personality Disorder
- Amnesia
- Agitation
- Psychosis
- Abnormal Dreams
- Emotional Lability
- Alcohol Abuse and/or Craving
- Hostility
- Paranoid Reactions
- Confusion
- Delusions
- Sleep Disorders
- Akathisia (Severe Inner Restlessness)
- Withdrawal Syndrome
- Impulsivity
The website emphasizes: ”Adverse reactions are most likely to occur when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose or when switching from one SSRI to another. Adverse reactions are often diagnosed as bipolar disorder when the symptoms may be entirely iatrogenic (treatment induced). Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can cause severe neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, often over a period of a year or more, under the supervision of a qualified and experienced specialist, if available. Withdrawal is sometimes more severe than the original symptoms or problems.”
SSRI “adverse reactions” are actually expected, understandable and therefore should not be surprising to physicians. They are not actually “side effects”
So with the list of common adverse effects of these drugs, I present below a “short list” of drug–associated violence over the past decade or two that was perpetrated by mostly young people who were involved in newsworthy shootings and whose psych drugs were identified, published or otherwise somehow reported to the public. Tragically, in the vast majority of psychiatric drug-related suicides, homicides or other types of irrational violence (what the media calls “senseless”) prescription drugs are generally not reported in the corporate-controlled and subsidized media, where pharmaceutical companies advertise heavily, certainly exerting influences on how much investigative journalism is allowed. Again, he who calls the piper calls the tune.
The SSRI Stories website has, among its nearly 5000 entries, a list of 66 school shootings that are overwhelmingly and disproportionately American. The school shooter’s list is often accompanied by suicidality caused by either taking or withdrawing from the drugs. There has been an explosion of such incidents since Prozac was introduced onto an unsuspecting market in 1989. Most of the developed world’s drug regulatory agencies, including the FDA, have not tested these psychotropic drugs for safety or efficacy in humans under the age of 18 (either short term or long term) and therefore have not approved their use for that group (with rare exceptions). Therefore we physicians, when we prescribe these untested drugs to that underage group (that has immature brain development) are doing so “off label” and thus we are exposing ourselves to medico-legal risks.
Here is the sobering list.
Eric Harris age 17 (Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 in Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and injured 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.
Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.
Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.
Thirteen year-old Chris Fetters killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.
Twelve year-old Christopher Pittman murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.
Thirteen year-old Mathew Miller hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.
Fifteen year-old Jarred Viktor stabbed his grandmother 61 times after 5 days on Paxil.
Fifteen year-old Kip Kinkel (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.
Luke Woodham age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.
A Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.
Michael Carneal (Ritalin) a 14-year-old opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..
Young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.
Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.
TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.
Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.
James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.
Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania
Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) - school shooting in El Cajon, California
Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.
Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.
Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.
Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.
Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.
Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself soon after his prescription of Lexapro had been doubled.
Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.
Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.
Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said ".... the d*** doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)
Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself)
Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.
Matthew Miller was 13 saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty and school. The psychiatrist recommended Zoloft for him. Seven days after beginning the Zioloft samples, his mother found him dead… hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.
Kurt Danysh, age 18 and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.
Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.
A ten year-old boy from Houston shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.
15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”
22-year-old culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School - then he committed suicide.
14-year-old Asa Coon of Cleveland, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.
16 year-old Jon Romano, taking medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician who has painfully witnessed (in his practice of holistic mental health care) the soul- and psychic devastation of war, domestic violence, punitive parenting, malnutrition, homelessness, poverty and the serious potential dangers of the chronic and widespread use of psychotropic drugs. In his essays he tries to warn his readers about some of the physical, neurological, psychological and spiritual consequences of all forms of violence and neglect.