The "Zoloft" Defense
First we had the “twinky” defense, and now I guess we have the “Zoloft” defense. Dan White, a former supervisor of the City of San Francisco, was convicted of killing in cold blood Mayor George Moscone and fellow supervisor Harvey Milk back on November 27, 1978. Harvey was gay. During the trial, Dan White’s attorney argued that Dan was not of his right mind because prior to committing these murders, his entire diet consisted of junk food, specifically, Twinkies.
This became known as the “Twinky Defense” and over time, there have been others, such as the “homosexual panic defense” that argues that a homosexual (usually a man) was murdered because he made “unwanted sexual advances” towards another man. This is still being used today. The man who committed the murder was driven, because of this homosexual panic, to commit the murder because he was so terrified of homosexuals and the sexual advance, that he had no other recourse than to violently murder the homosexual. I good example of this was the result of what happened on the Jenny Jones Show.
But now we are in the midst of yet another kind of case where the defense attorney is arguing that his client murdered his grandparents because he was on the prescription antidepressant Zoloft. This is not the first time this antidepressant has been blamed for this. I seem to recall other cases (although I am unable to cite them) where similar things have happened with this drug. Years ago, Zoloft was prescribed to me during a time I was going through deep depression. The drug made me extremely irritable and it seemed that every little thing annoyed me. I did research at the time and found that on two occasions, others had committed murder because of the use of this drug. I remember Kent and I talking about it at the time. A short time later, I refused to continue taking the drug. For me, I thought it was unsafe. I knew I would not harm another human being while in my right mind, but we all have to understand that these drugs are geared to effect exactly that, the mind. And, they are powerful.
Another issue that brought me little comfort during my time of being treated for depression, was the fact that my psychiatrist would always start his explanations of how the drug worked with “... we THINK it works by...”. In other words, the medical community really does not understand the human brain well enough to know exactly how these drugs work.
Given that, and the fact that we as a society are medicating ourselves more than any time in history, doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Given my past experience with Zoloft on a personal level, I can understand how it would change someone to such a degree to drive them to do some act that was not in their nature to do while in their normal state of mind.
I’m not say this to defend this young man, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison. But I don’t think we can so easily explain this away, if we really want to be fair.
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A 15-year-old boy who claimed the antidepressant Zoloft drove him to kill his grandparents was found guilty Tuesday of murder.
Christopher Pittman hung his head as the verdict was read after about six hours of deliberations. He was sentenced about an hour later to the minimum of 30 years in prison with no chance of parole. [...]
But prosecutors called the Zoloft defense a smoke screen, saying the then-12-year-old Pittman knew exactly what he was doing three years ago when he shot his grandparents, torched their house and then drove off in their car. (source)
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Bill,
This blog entry is now over a month old and very few if any will probably get to read it.
However, in the past week, we had another case of school shooting. This time in Minnesota.
Here's an article about this case that shows once again that ALL of these killings are done by kids on psych meds. The drug this time is again Prozac.
Dan
Buck,
Neither Bill nor I said that these drugs are of no use whatsoever. The fact that both of you stood up to your doctors show quite a bit about your characters as well emphasises the point that the medical community (psychatrists and non-psychiatrists) are playing russian roulette with people's mental state.
This takes us back to the original topic of this post, and that is why I do believe it is highly conceivable that some people do things, even murder, directly as a result of taking such drugs.
Also, the first thing that the drug companies need to do before feeding you their drugs is to make you believe you have an illness or a "chemical imbalance". I don't know you Buck, but I'm willing to bet that if you managed to get yourself to the point that you only take Prozac at stressful moments, than you could eventually shed the label of BPD and replace your Prozac with homeopathic remedies. You might even discover that what you have is no less normal than "disorders" such as teen-angst.
Dan
Buck,
I couldn't agree with you more. I actually have nothing against Prozac or any of the other drugs, themselves. My ONLY issue with them is the discomforting feeling of not really knowing 1) how they work (psychiatrists don't know), and 2) if they don't know how they work, how are they going to know the LONG TERM PERMANENT effects of using these drugs. Again, they don't know because the drugs that they are prescribing left and right haven't been around long enough.
The real issue or problem is not so much the drugs themselves, but HOW they are prescribed. You have psychotropic drugs being prescribed left and right by General Practitioners, NOT Psychiatrists. And those GP's are basically saying, "Don't feel well... down in the dumps?? Here, take this." Hell, my GP didn't even ask me what other medications I might be taking and what effect it may have in combination with those medications. This is not just my GP. This is generally practiced today in this country. And they wonder why malpractice suits are going through the roof.
While everyone is dumping on Prozac. Let me say for the record that were it not for that drug I probably would not be around today. As a person with BPD it helped me tremendously to stabilize my moods and fight the delusional aspects of acute episodes of that disorder. The older I get the less I need it (common for BPD folks) and now I usually only will go on it during times of extreme stress at work or home to head off BPD symptoms.
So, I think it's irresponsible to say that anti-depressants, etc. have no value. Prozac is probably among the best for BPD patients because it works on both the mood disorder as well as the obsessive issues involved in the disorder.
The problems occur when good drugs are handed out like candy to anyone who feels slightly depressed or emotional. Teen angst is teen angst and has always been such. It doesn't need drugs - it needs a good kick in the pants sometimes. As well, the definition of depression needs to be reassessed in my opinion. We consider anything that lasts two weeks or more a "major depression" worth medicating. That's a little extreme and I wonder how much of that has come about from the marketing arm of drug companies looking to sell more product and doctors willing to prescribe for anything and everything. Not to mention a public who thinks the answer to everyday concerns lies at the bottom of a pill bottle.
Psychotropic drugs should be used for major illnesses that affect life quality and function. Not because someone is having a bad couple weeks at work or school.
Sometimes I think it's not the drug that needs to be "on trial" but the person prescribing it. It seems that so many psychiatrists toss off a prescription without evaluating its effects over time. I can still remember my first terrible experience with a psychiatrist who prescribed Xanax to me for everything. The bad part was that I have a very strange reaction to that drug. I get paranoid, agitated, and even delusional. When I complained about the symptoms he had me double the dose. It finally got the point where I was almost incapable of functioning in any capacity. I called him one day and told him I had just flushed the pills down the toilet. He told me I would regret it because "even if it is the drug you'll have to come off it slowly over a period of weeks or months." I said it was BS I couldn't feel any worse. Long story, short. I didn't feel worse within a week of going cold turkey off the prescription I was fine and all the freaky symptoms were gone.
So, while the drug may have caused my symptoms it was the malpractice of the physician who allowed it to get out of hand.
Dan,
I couldn't agree more. I hate to go to doctors because I feel they are basically the prostitutes of the drug industry. I remember when AZT came out. It was the only drug thought to fight AIDS effectively. Well, it didn't. It made people sick as hell and they still progressed to full-blown AIDS over a longer period of time. All the while, many suffered from gut wrenching nausea. It was hard to watch. The release of AZT to the population took a long time. Not because of safety issues, but because of all the patents the drug industry wanted to put on the drug. They were only interested in profits. At that time, the cost per month for a person to be on AZT, a drug that didn't really work, was $10,000! Why? Because there was nothing to compete against it and because, the drug companies could!
The same thing with me and depression. At one point, they had me taking Prozac, Dissipramine, and Lithium, all at the same time, and in high doses. I remember taking a day trip to Vermont with Kent and my brother. I had the shakes so bad from the Lithium that I looked like I had Parkinson's Disease (no, I'm not exaggerating - Kent will vouch for it). I would always be tired. To this day, all I can tell you about the trip is that I went. But no details.
That is not the way to live life. After that, I realized that I was not controlling my life. Some substances were, and I was allowing the doctors to do this to me. Against their advice, I very slowly decreased all the dosages (something they said was "dangerous"). I knew from the research that I did that there was some truth to what they said. I would not have been able to just stop abruptly. But, one by one, I did stop. The depression started coming back. But, I recognized it and through meditation, diet, and exercise, I have to this day been able to control it.
And I will tell you this. The depression is no where near as bad as what those medications did to me. Today, I feel better and I love my life. I sometimes worry about the long term effects of them, but I'm looking forward into the future and not just taking each day, one at a time.
Bill,
Foods are indeed drugs, but for a much lesser extent. True drugs on the other hand are not foods, but types of poison.
I would not last two weeks on a twinkie diet. I would probably not last two days without protein. Coffee and sugary products make me very hyper. But such reactions to foods (or lack of some foods) does not give a person a sense of a sharpened mind that then allows them to pre-meditate a murder.
I find the drug industry a cold-hearted business that is solely interested in profit, not in helping people. They will cheat and lie to get their drugs approved. That is true for Celebrex, Vioxx and cigarettes - all drugs motivated by profit.
I have no doubt in my mind that have I grown up in this country I would have been a Ridalin child. Later on in life when I was experiencing panic attacks, I would have been medicated again. I pride myself in making some life changes which include food, excercise, yoga and most importently a guy that loves me and is always by my side.
Going through this myself as well as with close friends, I know that 9 out 10 times, these drugs are unneccessary and actually harmful as they supress the warning signals the brain puts out and the neccessary life-changes do not always follow.
Dan
I know... I was on Prozac (among other things) for a long time and I also know that I'm not unusual. Most of my gay friends have been on antidepressants at some point. Society points to our lifestyle as the blame here. I would submit that it is the other way around. It is what society does to us because of our lifestyle that is the cause for many of us trying to escape, if you will, what we are going through.
By the way, I agree with you about the "homosexual panic" defense. That is purely an excuse. I didn't mean to imply or link that to the use of drugs. They are different issues. I only mentioned it to point out that besides drug use, there are other "excuses" that a defense team will use to get their client off the hook.
But, let's look at what a "drug" is, in it's purest sense. A drug changes the behavior, or the chemistry, of the mind. One could, and has, argued that sugar is a drug. I agree with this. All you have to do is look at the affect that sugar has on children ten minutes after eating say... a twinky. They are all over the place. I am in no way defending people like Dan White who ate twinkies for two weeks solid prior to killing those two men. But, one has to wonder... to a mind such as Dan White's who was obviously on the brink of going over the edge, was the use of junk food the last straw for his body/mind? We honestly don't know. It might have been a contributing factor, but I would never support trying to get him off solely on that defense.
We separate some substances into neat little groups and call them "drugs". Why do we not call caffeine a drug? It is. Innocuous substances such as sugar or caffeine are so common that most wouldn't consider them drugs. What about road rage? Could some attorney make a claim that his client was stressed out on caffeine because he was trying to stay awake? Some one cuts him off and it's enough to push him over the edge.
I didn't realize that in all the instances of children who had been involved in school killings had been on medications. That's a frightening thought.
Bill,
Your comparison is not appropriate. Zoloft and other such drugs are specifically designed to manipulate a person's mind, while the twinkie defense and gay-panic are just excuses.
I'm not saying that this case does not involve a smart lawyer doing his best to serve his client regardless of the true reality, but I ABSOLUTELY know that reaction/behaviour to taking such medication is not always predictable. That is why some people get their psych-meds changed every once in a while; That is why a sudden cessation of psych-meds affects people differntly. This is not yet an exact science.
Notice that all these kids that have killed in schools (not only Columbine), have all been on psych-meds. The drug industry argue that these kids did what they did because they were troubled already, but in my opinion these kids were simply drugged to suppress their symptoms (ie. depression, bad behaviour) while ignoring the need to address the environmental factors that were present.
This is particularly true of gay children and adults who are medicated even more than the rest of society, and I'm willing to bet that over 50% of gay and lesbians are or have been on drugs such as Prozac atleast for some period of their lives.
Dan