Looking back at Columbine and other school shootings around the nation, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy for government control of guns, the Net, and the content of video games and movies. The envisioned controls are, however, not only stupid and counterproductive, but they also don't address the more basic question: Why has there been a spate of killings in U.S. schools over the past few years?
Without doubt, part of the answer lies in the sorry condition of government education, generally. But I suspect it's more than bad schools. And has next to nothing to do with guns, the Net, or video games.
There's plenty of reason to believe drugs are to blame. But not relatively benign illegal substances like marijuana. I'm talking about the extremely popular, and potentially very dangerous, class of psychiatric drugs called SSRIs, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.
Pusher parents
SSRIs work by regulating the speed with which the neurotransmitter serotonin, which conducts messages between neurons, is used by the brain. Serotonin helps people to keep calm and act less impulsively; one reason men are more prone to impulsive violence than women is that the male brain has fewer serotonin receptors. People who are deficient in serotonin are more prone to depression, fits of violence, and suicide. In essence, SSRIs (of which Prozac is the best known brand) make you feel good by causing the brain to use up its supplies of serotonin more quickly; unfortunately, however, it doesn't help the brain create more. So when serotonin supplies become critically depleted, the SSRI user can snap unpredictably.
Interestingly, just before the massacre, Eric Harris was turned down for the Marine Corps because he was on an SSRI, the powerful antidepressant, Luvox (fluvoxamine). Alas, Eric was denied the possibility of venting his anger in a "controlled" setting, such as the Balkans or some other godforsaken quagmire, and resorted to working out his problems at school.
Less than one week after his rejection by the Marines, following manic, sleepless nights of pipe-bomb preparation, Eric and buddy Dylan Klebold launched their homemade version of a NATO assault, murdering 12 classmates and one teacher before killing themselves. Since then, an undeservedly small amount of attention has been given to the package insert warnings on fluvoxamine, including:
- "All effective antidepressants [including the SSRI, fluvoxamine] can transform depression into mania in predisposed individuals."
- "The usual presentation of this switch is the sudden appearance of insomnia."
- "All antidepressants should be used with caution because of the possibility of suicidal ideation."
Studies have also found that fluvoxamine can increase the effect of caffeine, so much so that caffeine intoxication may result; Harris was a coffee drinker. Furthermore, mixing fluvoxamine with alcohol can cause extreme agitation; Harris was known to enjoy Jack Daniels whiskey.
Psychiatric-drug expert Dr. Peter Breggin states, "According to the manufacturer, Solvay, 4% of children and youth taking Luvox developed mania during short-term controlled clinical trials. Mania is a psychosis which can produce bizarre, grandiose, highly elaborated destructive plans. ..."
Luvox withdrawal?
Plausibly, the dual-edged Luvox may have held Eric at bay for a while. But then, it may have unleashed him when he blamed it for his rejection from the Marines, then swore it off. Some of his friends told The New York Times they believed he might have tried to go off the anti-psychotic drug after that Marine rejection. Short half-life SSRIs, such as fluvoxamine, produce difficult and intense withdrawal symptoms. If fluvoxamine is suddenly stopped, symptoms quickly intensify and the patient experiences a relapse.
What did the autopsy find? After repeated denials that any drug residues were found in Eric Harris's body, ABC's Colorado affiliate KCNC reported on May 4, 1999, "[T]he coroner has released further toxicology reports on Eric Harris, one of the two dead suspects. Specialized testing shows levels of Luvox in Harris' blood in a therapeutic range." According to another report Harris had a lower mid-level therapeutic amount of Luvox in his blood. Did they think to measure his serotonin metabolites? In the spirit of Dealy Plaza, the autopsy report was sealed to the public.
Luvox is approved by the FDA (I like to think those initials stand for Federal Death Authority, because they kill more people in a year than the Defense Department does in a typical decade) for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a.k.a. Bipolar Affective Disorder, in which there are swings between a "high," agitated mood and depression. It is in the same family as the SSRI Prozac and is often prescribed to people who are both depressed and have obsessive thoughts.
Drugs as an answer
Why do people become depressed, with all the nasty side effects that accompany depression?
I'm of the opinion that, while having an adequate amount of the right nutrients and neurotransmitters can help one think more clearly and rationally, the root cause for most depression is simply bad ethics and/or a conflict between one's actions and one's values. Unresolved conflicts perpetuate mental turmoil. The Age of Prozac has made it possible for antidepressant drugs to become substitutes for counseling, therapy, cleaning up one's act, and genuine conflict resolution.
Prozac, Luvox and similar drugs give parents an excuse to shirk the need for attentiveness, guidance and supervision because they think some antidepressants will "listen" for them and absolve them of responsibility. In other words, SSRIs and other antidepressants "solve" your problems pretty much the way alcohol does, by making an examination of the root cause seem unnecessary.
Ironically, the first generation to grow up with drugs, the Boomers, have learned neither to use them wisely nor to teach their children to separate the "dumb" drug ones from the "smart" ones. Given the widespread use of drugs as solutions, as well as the general state of the culture and politics, I'm forced to conclude that more Columbines are in the pipeline.
Bad medicine
The fact that psychiatric drugs are widely advocated for children and adolescents (Ritalin comes to mind first) reflects the utter corruption of not only America's educational system, but echoes what's wrong with our whole medical system.
What is now usually referred to as "conventional" medicine was not conventional until just this century. Its protocol grew out of the battlefield (remember the opening scenes of "Dances With Wolves"?) where emergency procedures were developed for acute trauma; this is where conventional medicine shines. When it comes to prevention, conventional medicine is more problematical. When it comes to how the mind works, conventional medicine, in the form of psychiatry, is still in the Dark Ages, using the equivalents of leeches and boiled toad skins. There's a reason Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs" was portrayed as a psychiatrist. Educational philosophy is little better, and getting worse; the school system is increasingly indistinguishable from the prison system.
Using psychiatric drugs in the classroom is tantamount to asking Hannibal Lecter to be your babysitter.
If you want intelligent policy in any area (whether education, medicine or politics) you have to understand how ideas relate to actions; you have to understand that accepting responsibility for one's actions is the basis of civilization. In this regard, drugs do not help. Perversely, and surprisingly to most people, the really dangerous drugs aren't the illegal ones used for recreational purposes, they're the so-called therapeutic ones that can result in their recipients unpredictably "going postal." The fact things like Ritalin, Halcion, Prozac, Valium, Luvox and a hundred others are prescribed and legal means nothing except that there are a lot of people walking around like pressure cookers waiting to blow.
Coincidental with the educational system's transformation into an ersatz penal system, it's not surprising we have seen the rise of the therapeutic state, which acts as a combination father, mother, doctor and clergyman. A great deal of crime is increasingly attributed to "insanity" (to wit: Andrea Yates, charged with systematically drowning her five children in a bathtub) and treated/punished in asylums rather than prisons, much in the manner of the Soviet Union. In fact, during the Clinton administration, lobbyists pushed for inclusion of mental illness as a diagnosable and treatable disease also to be covered by federal largess.
Soon everyone will be able to play Woody Allen with a (taxpayer-funded) weekly visit to their shrink. Once that happens, legions more will cloud their minds in a haze of psychiatric drugs, primed for a violent explosion. Soma, the government's solution to dissidents in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" is not at all far-fetched in 21st century America.
Drugs for kids
The overdiagnosis of mental diseases such as Attention Deficit Disorder has reached epidemic proportion, with some schools reporting 30 percent of the kids using Ritalin (methylphenidate), a drug closely related to methamphetamine, as a supposed remedy. The smart kids palm their Ritalin, and deal it to older kids who like the rush. Like so many psychiatric conditions, however, ADD has never actually been proven to even exist, and the criteria for diagnosis are so general that virtually anyone would qualify for a prescription.
Meanwhile, as the government fights its insane war on recreational drugs, cycling millions of otherwise innocent people through its prison system, it subsidizes millions of doses of Ritalin daily, turning a whole generation of kids into real junkies. It's completely insane giving a powerful psychiatric drug to kids while their personalities – indeed, their actual brains – are still forming.
But surely there must be a reason for all this? Would schools pass out all these drugs unless they were really needed? You can make the argument that kids today are more fidgety than in the past because they eat more sugar and get less exercise than they used to, but that's no excuse to put them on a powerful psychiatric drug – at least not before trying a better diet and more physical activity. Drug companies like to sell drugs, of course, but I suspect the real driving force behind what's going on is a desire on the part of most teachers, and some parents, to "harmonize" and homogenize the most creative kids. Smart, active, creative kids are notoriously hard to handle, especially when confronted with the typically dumb, reactive, and robotic public-school teacher. They're also a threat to the egalitarian system that sets up "special" (handicapped) kids as the standard, and drags everyone else down to the level of quadriplegics.
Creative kids are always troublesome to a system that bores them and parents that are too busy to be real parents. Pumping them full of Ritalin is society's way of telling kids to slow down.
It's fairly predictable a lot of these kids will graduate to Prozac. Longer-term consequences are less predictable, but I can't see any good ones. Among them will be more of the ultra-violence recently seen in U.S. schools.
A better approach
What's a parent (or an individual) to do? First, realize that many illnesses are diagnoses of convenience, and that often, when there actually is a problem, the underlying problem may simply be a nutritional deficiency. There is some evidence that many ADD symptoms are caused by biochemical imbalances which could be greatly alleviated by supplementation with a natural cholinergic agonist, like DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol). In addition to helping with hyperactivity and attention problems, when legitimate, DMAE can increase memory and elevate mood. It can also provide a feeling of mild stimulation, and increase intelligence. DMAE may possibly extend mean lifespan by helping stabilize cell membranes, which degrade with age. And unlike psychiatric drugs, it's extremely cheap.
On the SSRI front (the initials, again, stand for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor), the herbal extract 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) has been shown to be as effective as Luvox, in direct comparison, but without the side effects. A direct precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is now accepted as the principle neurotransmitter involved in preventing depression, natural 5-HTP can help to maintain or restore serotonin levels to the level of a young adult. You are far less likely to have buffering problems, and far less likely to slip into depression. 5-HTP has been used successfully with adolescents without the zany side effects of the SSRIs, especially Luvox.
You might want to seek out a doctor who is not only expert in conventional medicine, but who also responds rationally to the evidence for alternative solutions, and who believes that ideas (or their lack) have consequences.
A solution
It's strange, even surreal: Drugs in the schools actually are a huge problem – but they're not the drugs everyone imagines, nor are they coming from the sources most would suspect. It's scary, but there are lots of scary things going on in the United States today. What should you do? You should take your kids out of the local school, if at all possible, and engage in a program of home-schooling.
It's hard to believe that most parents automatically and brainlessly entrust their most valuable single asset, their children, to a bunch of government employees for education. My experience with most public-school teachers is that they'd have a hard time getting a job anywhere else, with the possible exception of the Post Office, or something low-level in the fast-food industry. They are generally not dedicated professionals; they're union members who almost certainly don't share your values.
What about the socialization that schools are supposed to provide for the kids? That's nonsense. Kids don't need to be incarcerated with the cast from "Lord of the Flies," including an unknown number of Eric Harris clones, supervised by moronic union workers, in order to make friends. School today is a place where they'll learn little except bad habits. And it's going to become ever more dangerous, no matter how many metal detectors they put in the hallways, as long as the trends I've discussed above remain in motion.
Incidentally, my friend Will Block of Life Enhancement Products collaborated with me on the above; we pretty well share views on most things. If you'd like a complimentary trial subscription to his excellent newsletter on continuing advances in medicine and nutrition, call LEP at 800-543-3873 or 707-762-6144. Another version of this article appeared in the International Speculator.