PARENTS AS DRUG PUSHERS

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.