Johnny Caustic writes:
Always with these mass shootings, the first question should be whether he was taking SSRIs, antipsychotics, or other drugs that cause suicidal ideation in a substantial minority of takers. I suspect that the vast majority of mass shootings in America, probably around 95%, are caused by pharmaceuticals. (Which is why mass shootings were extremely rare before the pharmaceuticals were invented and marketed.)
I have been taking those drugs off and on for 25 years now, and I am still here. On the other hand, at the very beginning, I got bumped up to a really high dose on Prozac. Not only did it not effect my symptoms at all, but I got suicide thoughts something awful. They had this bizarre, creepy obsessive nature to them. They were insistent and persistent, almost like obsessions. It was almost like they were forcing you to think them, like obsessions. But you believed them, unlike obsessions. It was very creepy, but I have enough ego strength not to buy it with my own hand.
The drugs actually are very good at calming you down. When I go off Lexapro for a while, which I often do, I soon find myself getting pretty angry. I mean pick up the paper, how can you not blow your top nowadays? Anyway, I don’t really like to be steaming angry at my age as I am not an angry young man anymore and I also have high blood pressure and rage is not good for hypertension. Anyway, I take 30mg of Lexapro and the rage just dissipates and it’s, “Frankly world, I don’t give a damn,” all over again. Which is maybe the best way to be.
I took a trip recently and I bumped the Lexapro up to 40mg and even 50mg. The effect was out of this world. It made me so much better it was incredible. Almost like being high on a recreational drug. I was in a whole new saner universe. Unfortunately, you go that high and the drug kills your dick, but who needs a penis at my age anyway? It also calmed me down massively.
So the whole, “SSRI’s make you a violent maniac” thing, well, I am not so sure about that.
P. S.: There does seem to be an effect there, mostly for SSRI’s and not really for the other AD’s, but they are the only drugs that work for a lot of people, so we need them. And the suicide thoughts stuff is not common. I got it once in 25 years for a few weeks. I have had hundreds of clients who have taken these SSRI’s and no one has reported suicide thoughts or violence yet.
Plus my experience has been that SSRI’s are extremely calming and cause the opposite of rage and violence.
It is an interesting effect though, and they do not quite know what is causing it. How the Hell doesn’t an antidepressant make some people more suicidal?
