The blogger — and yes conspiracy theorist — over at hangthebanksers.com is having a major “I told you so” moment. “The establishment tried to bury [the fact that Holmes was heavily medicated for mental illness] for as long as possible, but as the LA Times now reports, ‘District Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. reversed previous rulings on public access and made public the arrest affidavit and 12 search warrants.’ Those search warrants reveal James Holmes was taking a chemical cocktail of psychiatric drugs, including Sertraline, a generic version of Zoloft (antidepressant) and Clonazepam, a benzodiazepine drug known to have ‘hypnotic properties.'” Whether Holmes was on his meds or off his meds when he launched his murderous mayhem, HTB is spot-on when he writes “Two mind-altering prescription psychiatric drugs, alcohol and a gun… the media blames the gun.” I wonder what Adam Lanza was taking.
Who would sell this guy a gun? He could pass every background check they could ever dream up, and I wouldn’t. You can just look at him and tell he ain’t right.
I’d sell him a Jennings J-22.
OH NO!! That was my first gun!!! I ended up throwing it in the trash, and hoping a lowlife gang-banger would find it…
Yes, three fries short of a happy meal doesn’t quite sum it up. Randy
Nobody sold this idiot a gun!!! He stole them from his mother after he killed her. The guns were legally bought by her. READ the facts before you speak.
No.. that was Lanza.. This dude actually bought his guns legally.. please stop spreading this false ‘truth’.. People are picking up on it as gospel.
This way there be dragons: http://guardamerican.com/index.php/blog/47-safety/308-on-sanity-the-second-amendment-and-the-civil-society
Pharmaceutical definition of “hypnotic” means sleep-inducing, FYI.
Seriously? Heavily medicated? Those are two very, very common medications for both anxiety and depression. This is not a story. Him not being reported for having violent and psychotic impulses. That was a story.
The fact that they are commonly prescribed does not diminish their SIGNIFICANT side effects.
And not everyone who takes them for anxiety or depression is going to turn into a mass murderer either. These drugs do not cause otherwise sane people to commit crimes. It can be much worse mentally for the inividuals involved if they DON’T take them.
Murderous intent is not a side effect of psychoactive drugs. Side effects of stopping Zoloft has more to do with feeling depressed or low energy while Klonopin has to do with withdrawal symptoms of irritability, nervousness, etc.
This guy was psychotic to begin with, so him making the choice to stop his medication was a part of his mental issue. He clearly needed more meds to treat his psychosis
“Psychotic”. Thanks for the diagnosis, Doc. Have you considered a career in Psychiatry or Forensic Pharmacology?
Both drugs have black box warnings about suicidality.
Of course, that doesn’t mean every patient on these meds will have that reaction.
When possible negative outcomes of medical procedures are discussed, we can say, “We have a 95% success rate. That means 5% fail. If you’re in that 5%, it means 100% failure for you.”
My dad had a reaction to a med that occurs in only 0.5% of patients on it. It was 100% for him.
My issue was with the assertion that he was heavily medicated, which suggests that he was on something more akin to anti-psychotics. These meds are common and safe for MOST of the people who use them. Admittedly, the black box warning is there and is primarily intended for individuals in his age group.
Some of you guys need a snap to reality. 11% of Americans are on anti-depressants, with Zoloft being one of the more common SSRI’s.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/10/20/141544135/look-around-1-in-10-americans-take-antidepressants
Klonopin is simply a sleeping pill, also very popular.
Reported to who? the magnificent guberment? Sorry, I trust the people, Randy
Main stream media is the propaganda wing of the government. The government is all about power and control. Control of the masses.
Guns in the hands of the masses is a direct roadblock for what the government is ultimately all about. So they will do whatever they can to suppress anything that addresses the root of the problem of mass murders, i.e., it being a human/social problem, not inanimate object problem.
In other breaking news, water is wet, fire is hot, Pope suspected of Catholicism.
+1
Also, I never knew Dugs from Star Wars could get medical degrees on Earth. Rock on. (Title)
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
As they say, correlation does not mean causation.
Does anyone think that maybe, just maybe, he was taking these drugs because he already had something wrong and THAT condition was what contributed? Like trying to shore up a building that ends up collapsing and blaming the attempted fix for the failure, when the underlying problem existed all along.
And, multiple anecdotes do not make data.
That doesn’t stop the gun-grabbers from using correlation of a very few incidents and extrapolating it to infringe upon the rights of a massive number of law-abiding citizens.
Correlation does not inherently imply causation. But correlation is needed for linear causation. I read nothing exclusionary in the post.
But ian! Don’t you know that the government approves meds?! This HAS to be some kind of plot to make people go insane and commit mass shootings so that the feds can ban guns!
Massive correlation here:
http://www.ssristories.com
Published side effects of one of the drugs he was on:
****
Psychiatric
Behavioral problems have been reported in as many as 30% of treated patients.
Psychiatric side effects have been reported and include behavioral disinhibition (particularly sexual disinhibition), depression, and rarely, psychosis and mania.
Other
Other side effects have included withdrawal symptoms (similar to those which may occur after withdrawal of barbiturates and alcohol) which have been reported after abrupt cessation of clonazepam. Specifically, seizures, agitation, restlessness, anxiety, delirium, psychosis, dysphoria, insomnia, tremor, abdominal cramps, vomiting, rash, and sweating have been reported to have occurred, especially after long-term therapy.
****
Not saying it was the drugs, but certainly this needs to be investigated.
They didn’t create “black box warnings” for drugs for no reason (most likely legal).
A REAL investigation – free from the influence of the Pharmaceutical Syndicate – is all we’re asking for.
Look, folks, we’re not going to stop prescribing SSRIs to sick people, nor should we. They help lots of folk through tough times.
So what do we do? Is there no solution to the problem of mass public shootings?
There is. It’s called abolishing gun free zones and national concealed carry. The only policy that has a chance of stopping (and I’m not saying will stop, I’m saying might stop) or lessening the horror of these kind of atrocities is if as many law-abiding folk as possible carry weapons EVERYWHERE (except on airplanes, maybe…) and are willing to engage a spree shooter.
Pass that bill, Senators!
Not: “….Psychiatric Dugs” But: “…..Psychiatric dRugs” there’s irony in the miss-spelling. I’m totally busting your chops, this is the best website on the net, don’t change a thing, except your spell check.
Thanks for spreading the truth, Robert.
The problem with those drugs isn’t that they made him crazy, but that they don’t actually treat the psychosis he had to begin with.
He should have been on antipsychotic drugs, not the kind of stuff your grandmother would take for anxiety.
Why are we blaming the drugs? Isn’t that the same thing as the wingnuts blaming the guns?
Blame Holmes.
These classes of pharmaceutical drugs cause changes in personality and behavior; I think we can agree guns do not.
A gun can turn Caspar Milquetoast into something resembling a man. That’s a pretty big personality change if you ask me.
Uh, Robert? Paging Robert Farago. I don’t believe that people get hooked on “Psychiatric Dugs“, but things might be different in Colorado since I left in the 80’s…
RF, you’re giving free promotion to a “Jewish cabal secretly rules the world” site with the naming and linking in your first sentence.
Do you mean that a Jewish cabal doesn’t secretly rule the world? Well then, dammit. I want my B’nai B’rith donations refunded immediately.
I worked for almost 10 years from 1998 to 2008 in mental health care, with developmentally disabled, mentally retarded adults who often had a wide variety of mental and physical disabilities. I’m well familiar with both medications, and many other psychotropic drugs as well. This revelation is interesting but in and of itself not news.
Here’s the deal: Mental illness and gun violence is not, I repeat NOT, the issue many on both sides, but worst of all the media, makes it out to be. We all know that mass murders are statistically vanishingly rare, always have been, and always will be. The vast, vast majority of people with mental illness, even a serious one, are nonviolent and no more of a threat to themselves or society than you or I am. Nonetheless, there ARE a very few people that are indeed a threat, to themselves and others. But none of us can accurately predict future violent behavior. The gun haters want to use it as an excuse, but their real motive has nothing to do with mental health and everything to do with control of other people they perceive to be their enemies, be it real or imagined. I will say that we need to improve mental health care. Deinstitutionalization started in the late 60’s and was pretty much complete by the very early 1970’s due in part to the widespread use of SSRI’s, antidepressants and various psychotropic meds. And for the vast, vast majority of people that has been a very good thing. I’ve visited the old state hospital in Nevada (MO) before, and found it to be a truly depressing and scary place. I worked for years with an individual (since passed on) who came from that hellhole, and one of the saddest things I ever heard was his stories about his abuse there at the hands of others. Was he a danger to himself and others? Yes, he could be. Should he have been re-institutionalized? Hard to say. If it meant going back to Nevada, then I would have to say no. But if he could have received more intensive mental health care at the local psych ward as opposed to merely being evaluated and released, then YES. Therein lies one BIG problem with mental health care in just about every single state. There’s simply not enough resources available to deal with those people who are SOMETIMES a danger to themselves and others. I know this well because SEVERAL times I had to take an individual to the local psych ward due to their behaviors and only sometimes would they be admitted and evaluated, simply because there were no available beds. Now it’s a bit more complicated than just that, but I think we can agree on my previous observation that both spree killings and mentally ill people are a very, very tiny portion of the population; to the point that any risk is simply a matter of statistics and no more.
Moreover, we can all agree that privacy is an extremely important issue here. While a lot of us, myself included, would contend that liberalism can be a mental disease in and of itself, it’s also true that the vast majority of the time its completely harmless. So no, I don’t favor any more gun control laws of any kind, including anything to do with mental health, because they should be TWO SEPARATE ISSUES. In fact, only one issue, really and that’s mental health care itself. The left cannot be allowed to use it as a political football, which they sorely want because it grants them power to subjugate their perceived enemies, be it gun owners or what have you.
And finally, the most important lesson is the one that we already know – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do NOT confer any measure of safety for the public, nor was it ever intended to. Someone here said that the occasional tragedy is the price we pay for our liberty and freedom, and in the case of the Second Amendment, a real and tangible check and balance against a government run amok, which is becoming more and more a reality than ever before. Sadly, it’s starting to look like a whole lot of people are going to get hurt or killed before that lesson sinks in. And most of the fault for that lies with the media, in my opinion. But that’s another topic for another post.
HangTheBankers and everyone who rails against SSRIs ought to STFU and go to med school and then do a residency in Neurology or Psychiatry.
“Whether Holmes was on his meds or off his meds ” is irrelevant.
Take it from this brain doc: he should have been on antipsychotics – not SSRIs and benzos. Those may be used as ancillary meds and that may be the case here, but I would not be surprised if either of the following is the case:
1. Holmes – like many psychotic or schizophrenic patients refused to take an antipsychotic and thus they were not in his apartment at the time of the search,
or
2. The LAT (feh! tfu!) and HTB, having an ignorant axe to grind, are omitting those drugs.
In either case, please remember that these idiots at LAT and HTB actually don’t understand anything about psychopharmacology and any pontification about sertaline or clonazepam *causing* this or that is equivalent to saying “the gun went off and killed her”…..
The guy was seeing a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists prescribe psychiatric medication. Why is this news again?
I believe the drugs he needed most were two 180,000 mg combination Pb and Cu pills delivered center mass at approximately 1000 FPS.
+1
Yep, what this guy needed was a little “lead poisoning”. Other antidotes would be succinylcholine, vecuronium, or propofol (this was Michael Jackson’s fav)…just to name a few.
This guy was clearly psychotic and needed to be on *major* anti-psychotics. Act out in the ED, and you get a nice big dose of Zyprexa or Haldol.
Is it just me or is the information around what types of weapons were use being guessed at and reguessed and reported incorrectly several times yet we hear NOTHING about the meds these wackos were on… They seem not to care about the meds they were on…yet what brand of AR-15 is a big deal??? WHAT? This makes no sense….unless there is someone controlling the information to suit their agenda…
If those, very mild, drugs scare you, you should see my list of scrips. And yet, to meet me I’m a regular guy with his shit together. I’m really excited about this focus on psychiatric medication, though. In addition to the overwhelming social stigma due to being medicated for a _medical_ condition, a little second-class citizenship and fear of me, the perfectly normal boogeyman, will be just fantastic.