I'm pleasantly surprised by some of the reception here. After I had my breakdown, I did alot of reading about psychiatric medication. What I found out was - disturbing.

I read about toddlers literally being given anti-psychotic meds and I started to honestly wonder if the world was rigged against life. It's one thing to be depressed yourself but where I was at - good Lord, man. It seemed like the world itself was in decay.

One of the posts recently on James Holmes got a very good reception. It sounded like the case I'm presenting - that over prescription of pharmaceuticals could be causing the havoc we're seeing - may finally be taken seriously. The only people making this case previously were Scientologists, and well look at them... It seriously makes the world seem a better place to be listened to.

Take a look at this picture of James Holmes after being arrested:

This is what officers said:

The man accused of shooting dead 12 people inside a Colorado cinema was relaxed but "out of it" in the moments after the massacre, a court has heard .

James Holmes, who is alleged to have sprayed the audience of a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises with bullets, wounding 58 people, appeared unmoved as he "stared into space", the police officer who arrested Holmes told the hearing.

"It was like there weren't normal emotional responses", officer Jason Oviatt said, according to a report of proceedings by the Denver Post. The testimony came as prosecutors in the US began laying out their case against Holmes, watched by family members of those who were killed.

Who is "relaxed" or "out of it" after shooting 70 people? Users of Vicodin - which Holmes had as much of in his system as killed actor Heath Ledger - often report "feelings of relaxation and euphoria."

Now look at this picture:

The pictures almost look like different people. His pupils are extremely dilated in the latter picture. This is called "mydriasis." A little bit of research brought me this:

Drugs that increase overall serotonin levels in general are capable of causing mydriasis in the same way as the 5-HT2A-mediated psychedelics. This is because serotonin itself is naturally responsible for normal 5-HT2A stimulation. Hence, in sufficient quantities serotonin is mydriatic and can even be mildly psychedelic, though the potentially fatal serotonin syndrome usually ensues before the psychedelia becomes overly-pronounced.

More than likely, the first picture you see is someone drowned out on painkillers. The second picture you see - someone buzzing out on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Take someone with an underlying mental illness, put them on drugs that dull normal emotional and physical regulators that keep most of us from being horrible to ourselves or others and then make it really easy for them to get a hold of a firearm. That is what is really going on here.

I still have antidepressants in my apartment. A big part of me still believes I need this stuff - that the diagnosis was true, etc. I don't really want to believe that all that energy was in vain. I don't really want to believe what I'm writing in this article. I attended a psych clinic that helped me get back to my "normal" self again and many of those at the clinic talked me in to getting antidepressants - even so much that they talked in to getting the tricyclic class of drugs that came out before SSRIs.

When I got really angry at my sister during an argument which I posted about here, I actually wrote to a family friend and requested that he send me over medication that was in my old house. I put it away after reading comments here that said most of what occurred was fairly normal. Like the self destructive/suicidal thoughts I've had, I try to leave that pill bottle in the cabinet.

I think that when my parents' generation decided to raise their kids with psychiatrists instead of taking the time to do it themselves, they didn't know what those kids would grow to look like. Look in to James Holmes' eyes - that's what it looks like.

The worst shootings in this country - the worst ones - have all involved individuals in educational settings with hard to define mental disorders (ADHD for Eric Harris in Columbine, "selective mutism" - whatever that is - for Cho Seung Hui in Virginia Tech) and treatment with mood altering drugs. They have all been given the same class of drugs and been in the same basic age range.

Adam Lanza apparently had Asperger's syndrome and/or a personality disorder - SSRIs are usually given as "treatment" for Asperger's. Cocaine is also a drug that stimulates serotonin in the same way and violence has been associated with it. (See the movie Scarface sometime.) Cocaine is illegal, however. People would be up in arms if children and young adults were being given cocaine - why are they not up in arms about the over prescribing of SSRIs?

Obviously, this is not a case for not taking on guns. Holmes got a gun way too easy - it would have been harder for him to get a car or a dog! You will hear alot of gun rights advocates pull the drug card and vice versa - it's important to be smart about this.

For anyone who likes these posts, please check out my SSRI group on Facebook at Lives Destroyed by SSRI Antidepressants. Thank you!