Pill Popping and Drug Companies: Does withdrawal drive people to acts of violence?

The shocking murder-suicide rampage of 27 year-old graduate student Steven Kazmierczak appears to have been completely out of character. Reports are that he had been a disturbed adolescent who would cut his arms' however, a year of hospitalization plus medication apprently set him on track to an apparently successful academic career and a two-year relationship with a fellow student. His girl friend when interviewed yesterday on CNN said that she he was an affectionate, positive person. The only thing out of the ordinary in the week's before the incident was that he stopped taking his meds. I'm sure over time we will find out more about this tragedy, but I was astonished to read an article in yesterday's on-line edition of the New York Times by Judith Warner in which she attacks a growing number of people who have raised serious doubt about how drug companies are marketing drugs to convince people that they are "mentally ill." Warner herself quotes some of these disparagingly in her article. For example the American Psychiatric Association has collaborated with the drug industry to label "shyness" a mental condition requiring treatment. Parents are now being encouraged to have their children tested for a variety of "mental illnesses" as early as three years old. Are they restless, do they reject authority, are they perhaps shy? Let's medicate them and get them on the right track. I would highly recommend SHYNESS: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane--one of the books Warner dismisses and SURVIVING AMERICA’S DEPRESSION EPIDEMIC: How TO Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy by Bruce W. Levine, Ph.D, who also regularly posts on Alternet on the subject. The occasion for Warner's article was a review by Peter Kramer in Slate Magazine of a new book by Charles Barber COMFORTABLY NUMB: How Psychiatry is overmedicating a nation. I haven't read the book myself. I read Warner's book, PEFECT MADNESS, Motherhood in the age of anxiety with great interest when it came out. What has stuck with me is the pressure on upper middle class women to produce children fit to compete on a career track that begins by gaining acceptance in the best pre-school, and on, in order to be accepted in a top school like Yale or Harvard. In her Times article Overselling Overmedication she comes down heavily against

Just because it feels like, just because it sounds like, just because soaring drug company profits and obnoxious direct to consumer advertising seem to indicate that everyone around us is popping pills like mad doesn’t mean that they are doing so. Nor does it mean that we’re in the grip of some new, previously unheard-of, and uniquely epoch-defining social phenomenon. People have been unofficially drugging themselves for as long as they’ve had the capability to do so. They smoked cigarettes to boost their concentration. They drank cocktails with lunch and dinner — and more — to deal with anxiety and despair. Prior to the modern era of F.D.A.-regulated prescribing practices, they slugged down untold quantities of tonics and bromides. All of which suggests that what social critics now identify as the signature event of our time (the urge to manage psychic pain through substance use) may, in fact, almost always have been a facet of the human condition. It may just be that we’re better at it than ever before – with cleaner, safer, less addictive and debilitating tools at our disposal.

Many of the host of comments following Warner's article reflect my concerns about her article. As a college student I was given dexamil, an amphetimine somewhat similar to ritalin I believe, because I was going through a stressful period. It sure was a feel-good pill but when I checked it out, I decided to stop taking it. But it was a period in which amphetimes were routinely prescribed to women as uppers or diet pills. When it was realized that they were addictive and led to hideous side effects, things became more controlled, but then it was the era of tranquillizers. I am not claiming expertise on the subject, just serious concern that pill-popping is a system of the kind of "Brave New World," that Aldous Huxley wrote about. In the books I have read there is discussion about the side effects of SSRI's like Prozac, and the need to carefully manage dosage. Many times people appear to be taking a cocktail of pills in order to get the desired effect from them. I have also read that weaning someone from the pills is a complicated process and should be done other medical supervision. They too can become addictive. A further source on the subject has collected articles and medical reports on the subject. I haven't myself had time to check them out. because of time. In my opinion we are a culture in serious trouble. As long as the dollar is king and fewer and fewer people make it to the top, the stresses on the rest of us mount. I don't deny that some people are in need of pharmaceuticals to deal with depression or psychotic conditions, but I do worry about the pressure to get with the culture and think positively. Much better to take on the drug companies and those doctors who have capitulated to their pressure and emoluments, and ensure that we have Universal Health Coverage.