“Marilou Danley, the woman investigators hoped would provide key details into the motive behind her boyfriend’s deadly shooting attack, said she remembers [spree killer Stephen Paddock] exhibiting symptoms such as lying in bed and moaning.” nbcnews.com also reports “She said he would lie in bed, just moaning and screaming, ‘Oh, my God.'” Strange that NBC hasn’t shared the relevant revelation from The Las Vegas Journal that . . .
Paddock was prescribed diazepam in June; as he had been the previous year. The Journal says . . .
Paddock purchased the drug — its brand name is Valium — without insurance at a Walgreens store in Reno on the same day it was prescribed. He was supposed to take one pill a day.
Diazepam is a sedative-hypnotic drug in the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, which studies have shown can trigger aggressive behavior. Chronic use or abuse of sedatives such as diazepam can also trigger psychotic experiences, according to drugabuse.com.
I’m not sure how someone experiencing psychotic episodes could have planned the Mandalay Bay spree killing. That said, while correlation doesn’t equal causation, there’s no doubt that plenty of mass killers were on benzodiazepines.
And this not the first time observers have pointed to a connection between psychiatric drugs and suicides, homicides and mass murder. The question is, did the medication somehow trigger Stephen Paddock’s murderous frenzy or did it prevent him from carrying it out sooner?
You do realize that Kirstie Alley is a scientologist fruit loop right?
Doesn’t mean she’s not right.
And that somehow changes this obvious fact? I guess politicians weren’t the only ones lobbied to overlook these things.
You think there are problems now, take away psych drugs, and see how it goes. As to the scientology thing, they are against all psychiatric help, period. Maybe that murderous asshole stopped taking his valium, ever think of that?
Whether the drugs caused the violent behavior, or stopping the drugs triggered it, seems like the problem is viewing drugs as a magic solution to mental illness, instead of engaging in serious psychiatric intervention. Relying on a psycho to take his meds every day to keep him from killing people is a pretty rickety solution.
Ditto. Psyche drugs make more lives more tolerable than you know.
I mentioned this yesterday in this article (last one):
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/10/robert-farago/here-it-is-the-dumbest-post-vegas-spree-killing-pro-gun-control-editorial-until-the-next-one/
The murderer had lost 30 million in a failed property deal and was prescribed Valium as an anti-depressant. I’m not sure of the dosage but known side-effects are aggression and other symptoms. And there is the possibility of the person over-medicating and mixing with other substances such as alcohol and “recreational pharmaceuticals”.
So what? That means she can’t say something sensible. She is actually right. The guns have NOT changed, they have been here all along, our CULTURE has changed.
Just because she’s a paranoid hollywood nut job doesn’t mean the aliens AREN’T manipulating the thetins in her brain!!!
Where you planning to refute her observation and add something insightful or just name call?
The point is that in Kirstie Alley’s world, the solution to all of these problems is Scientology. She is totally biased against psychiatry, and psych drugs. Her answer to all of these problems is to rid ourselves of all of the body thetans that we carry around because Lord Xenu blew up a billion people in a volcano 70 million years ago. She would accomplish this buy having everyone drop hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Church of Scientology, so that they could do auditing. Even if she is right (she’s not), it has nothing to do with any sort of rational look at facts.
Diazepam is a benzodiazipine, for anxiety. It is not an SSRI.
Still:
Says about 1 in 8 will experience this with Diazepam.
At least she’s looking at relatively newly introduced variables and not at centuries old tech that has always been around aka:guns.
Text amended. Thanks.
No motive, multiple reports of multiple shooters….whatever. When you believe false narratives, you’re hostage to the planned outcomes from the interests who designed the false narratives.
Technically, diazepam isn’t an SSRI… I would like to learn more.
These drugs could push a very few to do these things, but the few were damaged in the first place. I wonder if certain street drugs combined with Valium or other drugs of this type could set this few off.
Scientologists tend to get very angry and violent. Ban Scientology.
Anyhow, there were mass murders in the USA before 1980.. one nut blew up a school in Michigan nearly a hundred years ago because he was mad about paying property taxes. Richard Speck, Charles Manson, Whitman, H.H. Holmes, … ad infinitum…
What kind of drugs were the Manson people on? Sarc. Besides their choice of murder weapons were knives, she said shooters not mass murders.
Actually, on of the first recorded school shootings happened in Ontario, Canada in 1902.
The schoolteacher, confronted three school trustees who he had some problems with, drew a revolver, and shot all of them. He then returned to the schoolhouse and shot three female students who were the children of the trustees before turning the gun on himself. One of the students died and the shooter died months later.
And that’s discounting crap like a teacher spurned a students advances, etc.
The first recorded “school shooting” in the US happened in 1764, in Greencastle, PA. The “Enoch Brown School Massacre”. Took place during the Pontiac War, four Delaware (Lenape) American Indians entered the schoolhouse, shot and killed schoolmaster Enoch Brown, and nine children (reports vary). Only two children survived. (I didn’t open with this one, because the children weren’t shot, as they were beaten and killed with clubs knives and etc.)
The first high-casualty school shooting (what we think of today as a “school shooting”) was the University of Texaas Massacre in 1966. 17 deaths, 31 injured. Charles Whitman holed up on the observation deck at the University of Texas-Austin, from where he killed seventeen people and wounded thirty-one during a 96-minute shooting rampage. He had earlier murdered his wife and mother at their homes.
Some people are just murderers. Guns are irrelevant.
He also left a note saying something was wrong in his head, he sought help multiple times. Post mortem a large tumor was found in his brain. He KNEW he was off, he just couldn’t communicate how or why.
I’ve known a lot of Scientologists personally. One thing they almost NEVER are is violent. And as their focus in life is to improve their mental outlook, and ANGER is very low on the list of desirable traits, they avoid anger, unless confronted by ignorant bigots.
What is this compulsion so many people seem to have to belittle other people’s religious beliefs? So long as they are not hurting you, leave them the hell alone.
Unless you leave the church or are declared a “suppressive person”, then it seems Scientologists can get pretty ugly…
Religion seems pretty irrelevant; no matter how you break it down, in any group of people, there are assholes.
I have taken about every possible combination of SSRIs and benzodiazipams over 30 years and never felt the slightest abnormal homicidal urge. Fantasizing about auto-cannon use on bad drivers is quite healthy and normal. I realize that this is anecdotal and that other people have different reactions. A shitload of people take these drugs though so it would have to be a very tiny subset of them that were so affected.
Oops, I meant benzodiazepines, not benzodiazapams. Maybe they are effecting me more than I thought;-)
Does that anger you?
It’s also true that correlation is not causation.
The fact that people who tend to be mass shooters might tend to take a specific class of drug doesn’t mean the drug has anything to do with the tendency to shoot a bunch of people. The underlying disorder, the one for which they take the drug, could easily be the cause of their behavior.
It’s a particularly tough nut to crack when most of the people you might study for data on the topic are dead.
And they tend to blow their own brains out leaving their brains too damaged for extensive study.
I had a former GF who had a manic bipolar episode after taking various anti-depressants for a lengthy period of time, despite no previous history of bi-polar. Scary stuff, she became delusional and paranoid and extremely impulsive; ultimately she was hospitalized. Not being a violent person she did no harm to anyone but herself, but I can see how a person with violent tendencies could turn that paranoia into violent action. My GF, for example, threw her phone in the trash because she thought the CIA was monitoring it; another person may attack people they suspect of trying to harm them. Her case is not particularly rare, and there is no doubt in my mind that misuse (and perhaps correct use) of prescription “mental health” drugs can lead to mania in some people.
I do agree more or less with Kristie Alley’s timeline. The drug industry was granted permission to advertise in the early 90s under the Bush Sr. administration and that lead to an explosion in prescription drug consumption. Homicidal side effects are exceedingly rare but with tens of millions of patients . . .
With that said, this seems to be too meticulously planned to be a bipolar episode so this seems to be an exception. This appears to be the work of ideology rather than insanity.
I reread the summary of SSRI effects. It seems like those drugs might be partly responsible for suicide spree killers who are below the age of 25. Killers like Holmes, Lanza, etc. There is only a very slight probability of causing suicide “ideation” in middle aged men. And it actually reduces suicide ideation in middle aged women.
So Valium is not an SSRI. But he could have been on both, not that it would likely matter at his age.
my wife lies in bed moaning sometimes too
isn’t that normal? 🙂
If she stops when you come in, yes;-)
*Zing!*
*Fist-Bump*
I actually hit the delete button and yes on that one. It was harsher than I wanted it to be. Seems like it stayed anyway. I wish I’d have said something “Dreaming is a perfectly normal human activity. You are okay:-)”
so true, I don’t pull out like most girly men do
According to Wikipedia all benzodiazepines are listed as inappropriate for use in adults age 65 and older as the risks outweigh potential benefits. The Vegas fruitcake was 64. I’m pretty sure the line between adult/senior is just as fuzzy and individualized as is the line between punk adolescent and mature adult.
Also according to Wikipedia diazepam is not recommended for long-term use due to decreasing effectiveness and increasing likelihood of negative side effects. The Vegas fruitcake was on them over a year?
You are assuming, without evidence, that he took them every day, and what his dosage was. Fact is that Valium is addictive, and just as is the case with morphine drugs, the patient develops tolerance over time, and requires larger and larger doses to achieve the same therapeutic effect, and THAT is the reason it is not recommended for use over one year. “Mother’s little helper” was a very popular drug back in the 60s and 70s, until the side effects caught up with the patients, and now its use is much diminished.
I seldom agree with the cult of Scientology. But Ms. Alley nailed it. The shooter was obviously damaged. And his dad was a psychotic bank robber. Hitler was insane but that NEVER excused his evil…
“his dad was a psychotic bank robber”….and this our proof….you write for the Onion?
Hitler was insane and HEAVILY drugged.
In the 1890s people were also using “cough medicine” that was 90% cocaine or heroin, which also cause paranoia, etc… Not stay we blame guns, but people have been medicated as long as there have been medicines that make you feel good. More likely than not, the rise in mass shootings has to do with collapsing social bonds.
The stuff you’re thinking of was no where near 90% and wasn’t heroin.
Cocaine tinctures and other products had various amounts of cocaine in them as a stimulant or a painkiller. Why do you think Coca-Cola is called what it’s called?
Opiate based drugs on the other hand were well understood as early as the 16th Century when it was discovered that mixing opium and alcohol greatly increased the analgesic effects of both and sped up take. Following that discovery the drug Laudanum became available but wasn’t widely used until the late 1600’s.
By the beginning of the Victorian era the drug was widely used for a variety of ailments and as a surgical anesthetic. By then Laudanum had become fairly standardized to 10% opium which is approximately equivalent to 1% morphine.
I won’t bother with much more history but the notion of 90% cocaine/heroin is ludicrous. What we call heroin wasn’t discovered until 1874 (research on pain meds) and wasn’t really even known to the public until it was resynthesized in the 1890’s and trademarked by Bayer as “Heroin”, which was sold OTC as a less addictive form of morphine cough suppressant/painkiller. Previous to that it was known exclusively by the name “diamorphine”.
Sci-Fi author John Ringo published a similar theory a few days ago – apparently his wife had a bizarre reaction to Cymbalta some years back where she meticulously planned the murder of every registered sex offender in her area, before checking herself into a mental hospital when she realized that life is not a Dexter script.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/john-ringo/a-theory-on-las-vegas/10155111388257055/
I blame the drug, on that stuff you do not have to abuse it in order to go off the wall, I know that it is prescribed by head doctors for PTSD. and that after a few weeks it gives some weird reactions, voices, distortion of clear thought, increased paranoia, certain kinds of music are inspired not of this world. the symptoms of drug reactions are muted too self, and if mentioned bring Hostility
I haven’t studied the drugs mass shooters have been on, but I wouldn’t doubt what she is saying without thoroughly researching it. I think she could be onto something as our bodies aren’t designed to take massive amounts of drugs. And for those that say “I’ve taken drug X and never had any suicidal or violent tendencies while taking it…” that’s great. But not every person is affected the same way, obviously. Curious as to see more research on her claim.
+100
No. Once again we are attacking an inanimate object/substance for an individual’s behavior. The individual had it in his subconscious to carry out this atrocity. The drugs may have played a role in lessening inhibition, and the bump stops may have aided in spraying that crowd with more noise. What they did not do is drive a man to psychopathy, or influence radicals to inspire him to kill. Plus an investigator revealed that he chose the vantage point to eliminate the possibility of a counter-sniper. That was the human, not the drug that facilitated that kind of calculation and execution. When the guns are banned, people are next.
“No. Once again we are attacking an inanimate object/substance for an individual’s behavior. ”
That’s the favorite defense from the drug companies.
“The individual had it in his subconscious to carry out this atrocity.”
You don’t know that. Drugs can cause deep personality changes. Pertinent to this site, I witnessed a person who had never had thoughts of harming anyone in her life — she wouldn’t even kill flies or spiders indoors, but caught and released them — and couldn’t stand the sight of weapons flip to being fascinated with knives, daggers, stilettos, bayonets, rifles, crossbows, and was starting in with old dueling pistols when a roommate recognized that something was wrong. She herself wasn’t aware she was any different at all, until after three weeks off the drug she suddenly snapped back to her old self. That’s the most extreme example I’ve known; I could relate others — so unless you want to argue that Original Sin means we all “[have] it in [our] subconscious”, this is an unfounded claim.
“The drugs may have played a role in lessening inhibition…. What they did not do is drive a man to psychopathy, or influence radicals to inspire him to kill.”
Drugs can do many things. Our brains are chemical entities, run on chemistry, run by chemistry, changed by chemistry, limited by chemistry.
Great argument- here is my rebuttal: the point I was trying to make, and sorry I get long-winded, is this: you are right, drugs can take a serious toll on the psyche. Many people take the exact same drug before every flight they take, they do not go on killing sprees. If you want to reduce the human organism at the organic chemistry that is the brain, that’s pretty scientifically sound. However, you can’t take into account or refute that most individuals have a conscious, and the vegas shooter obviously lacked that basic value of empathy. Pharmaceutical companies are not known for being forthcoming, but we have to be careful to pass off accountability to substances. I mean we could shut down liquor companies if we blamed them and not the irresponsibilities of the driver. The argument for him having the subconscious potential to commit mass murder is difficult to prove, but the evidence (or lack thereof) points to him having it buried without giving himself away. We will see if other factors influenced him.
There is a specific part of the brain where a person’s “conscious” operates. Drugs can effect that or even turn it off.
“But if he had been unable to buy guns…”
— you know who
All of the killers also had fairly severe mental illnesses, were male, used guns, ate, peed standing up (probably), and nearly all were democrats. All of them were almost certainly psychopaths or sociopaths (2 sides of the same coin, and not controlled by meds). Lots of common factors. Which one caused them to snap? Maybe all of their mothers made them pee sitting down. Or more likely, those psychoactive drugs simply didn’t tame their mental problems. And in one or two cases, may have made them worse.
Tens of millions of people take psychoactive drugs and are able to live normal lives as a result. Every drug has negative side effects. Even aspirin. Most of the hype about the dangers, opiates being an exception, are created by the extremely lucrative lawsuit industry.
-“nearly all were democrats”
Plenty of these shooters have no stated political affiliation and many come from various backgrounds. Just look at the list of mass shootings from the last few years. Pretty diverse group which includes Republicans and others on the right. The only real connection is that most of those who go nuts and kill large groups of people are relatively young men.
He should have been under treatment for a Pituitary Tumor , he has all the physical characteristics of abnormal glandular secretions and pituitary anomaly’s .
Or maybe what’s really to blame is the giant national/global news media machine, which gives these mass killers a platform for being remembered. It also amplifies the apparent damage done by focusing on that incident, or type of incident, to the exclusion of other horrific incidents.
So all the Antifa, BLM and Hollywood assh0les are on SSRIs? That explains it.
Say, I wonder what Harvey Weinstein was taking.
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/harvey-weinstein-sexual-harassment-leave-of-absence-new-york-times-1202581677/
That is a bad attempt at “whataboutism” there Ralph.
I often suffer from “depression” and my wife wanted me to see a doc. That doc immediately put me on 1 SSRI and then I couldn’t sleep so gave me another pych drug to sleep. I saw a change in my behavior, my outlook on life, I was pretty much stoned and chilling enjoy life. I moved, I stopped going to that doctor and he never followed up to make sure I was “okay”.
Then after a while I found there was unwanted side effects on my drugs, got a new doc and new drugs. After a year maybe I wanted to get off the stuff, quit cold turkey, never talked to doc, no follow up to make sure I was “okay”
In the end I found out I don’t need drugs….I need MONEY but those docs are willing to throw out those drugs to anyone, each bottle said I may become more suicidal and even after the doc did not hear from me for months they never checked up on me. I find this to be very irresponsible.
These days my wife gives me crap cause I never go to doctors, never trust doctors, I do know the stuff they gave me messed with my brain and truly scary stuff. While it made me “happy” and maybe more enjoyable to be around, I also lost all drive to push myself to prosper, grow, and be successful in life.
It is my personality, I work and stress busting butt to get something like a new truck then I start all over to get that boat and rinse repeat…sometimes by time I get that boat it is time to get a new truck. It is who I am, it is my nature. I really wonder how many people are given these drugs when reality is the doc should have said, “Suck it up buttercup”
Also forgot to mention my kids….daughter 1 having a hard time with school and they put her on paying attention drugs….no side effect besides loss of appetite. Kid 2 was put on the same meds, was hearing voices and hallucinating, I kid you not and she did not tell us for weeks, she thought she was going crazy and the doctors never told us about this side effect because it affects .01% or something like that. Both kids are now off all meds as well
Your story highlights a big problem with the way psychoactive drugs are used today: there’s very often zero followup. Patient complains of some issue to the doctor, doctor writes a prescription for the magic meds, and it’s “good luck, you’re on your own.” SSRIs and anti-anxiety drugs can literally save some peoples’ lives, but there are significant incidences of really scary side effects, so prescribing them with no further observation is incredibly irresponsible.
“I’m not sure how someone experiencing psychotic episodes could have planned the Mandalay Bay spree killing.”
The same way someone experiencing psychotic episodes could have planned the Aurora movie theater shooting.
Also, please, ALL observers: stop trying to make a causative a connection between psychiatric drugs and suicides, homicides and mass murder. Most of the time, the person in question is misdiagnosed and undertreated. It’s not the meds, it’s lack of correct meds.
As one woman of many who were prescribed Prozac for PMS, and not depression, many years ago, I read in horror that a postal worker had gone to work and shot up his branch of the U.S. Post office. He had recently been prescribed Prozac. So, I immediately called for another appointment with my OB/GYN.
Once there, I was given a couple of facts and a few opinions. One, Prozac takes weeks to build up in the body and start working as an anti-depressant. The postal worker wasn’t on Prozac long enough to make him Postal.
Two. It is often possible that a patient does not tell his or her doctor all the symptoms the patient is experiencing. Like wanting to harm himself/herself, and others. Working on a plan to do so. Which would most likely get him or her on a 72 hour watch in a Psych ward and not even prescribed Prozac.
Of course, comparing Valium and Prozac is comparing apples and oranges. Valium works within minutes of taking it. One pill a day sounds like a bed time prescription. My husband was recently prescribed one 10 mg pill for an M.R.I. as long as he promised that he would be driven there and home. He wasn’t allowed to play with guns for 24 hours, among other machinery, either. Margarita and Bloody Mary were off limits, too. Makers Mark stayed in the cabinet.
I’m eager to see the results of this guy’s autopsy. 24/7 news is allowing real reporting to go down the toilet.
Diazepam is pretty low grade stuff. I doubt that was making him loopy.
The VA gave me that stuff for a while. All it did was make me sleepy. So,I stopped taking it after because I could accomplish the same thing by slamming a beer before bed.
I prefer the holistic approach 😉
I was given one of Valium’s cousins shortly after I returned from Iraq. It worked pretty well, taking the edge off of my anxiety and other ptsd symptoms, allowed me to sleep, and kept the dreams mostly at bay. The worst side effect was a little hard (or not, as it were) on my sex life. Once I realized the correlation, I stopped taking it and pressed on. But at the time, it did the job. Without any hallucinations, or suicidal/homicidal ideations.
I’ve heard that the harder (pun 😝) stuff has that side effect. I guess because my sleeping patterns and dreams weren’t too bad, they gave me the lesser strength Meds.
I still wake up yelling and screaming from time to time, or so my wife says, I don’t ever remember. I just tell her I had a dream I was arguing with the kids.
I don’t even know why I’m talking about it now. I usually avoid the topic all together. I must be in a sharing mood today.
Ted Nugent’s a pussy
Speaking of and for yourself.
Projection is not an argument.
Hmmm, i was prescribed Zoloft for depression some years ago and after a while on this drug i started feeling possessed by thoughts of impulsively wanting to drive my car over bridges and into oncoming traffic. I realized that these thoughts were not my own and were being caused by the drug. once i stopped taking Zoloft they went away completely. So yeah, psych drugs can deeply affect your thoughts.
My wife has a prescription for diazepam, to be used on an “as needed” basis—for muscle spasms. And hey, it works. Funny, our shooter was found at times lying in bed moaning…Is it at least conceivable, given the MINUSCULE amount of information released (and which, I submit, is intentional in order to craft a narrative) that he had bad back? And maybe, just maybe, mind you, he gave up his pilot’s license since his medications prevented him from passing the medial exam?
Without the doctor’s records as to why and how much was prescribed, all of this gross speculation is just that: GROSS.
My drug of choice is beer. (No firearms, no driving while partaking thereof).
One source reported that he was on Cymbalta, a selective nor-epinephrine re-uptake inhibitor.
Mark Steyn, a person I somewhat respect, opined to Tucker Carlson that Paddack couldn’t have planned and executed his attack if he was taking these drugs, but my experience is different: I know two high functioning people, a registered nurse and a music teacher, who are both competent, motivated and intelligent. I dated them briefly, and learned that the first thing that they perceive as a slight upsets their apple cart, and they go completely haywire! Their performances were some of the most bizarre behavior I have ever witnessed.
The music teacher was about to apply for her concealed handgun permit. A thing that concerns me a great deal.
Charles
Diazepam is a first gen benzo that is relatively weak and long lasting compared to the most commonly prescribed benzo alprazolam (xanax.) However it is still very abusable and chronic benzo abuse can lead to a slew of bad things like uncontrollable impulsivity, an unparalleled since of apathy, and complete disassociation. However, even worse is withdrawal which is considered the most dangerous physically and mentally. If he was an abuser, which I figure he was, he could have potentially been going through a terrible withdrawal which literally turns people into monsters. Benzos should not be schedule 4 and I forsee them being the next major drug crisis as they are heavily prescribed and dependency sets on faster than any other physcoactive pharmaceutical drug. Regulating benzos on gun level is one of the things the UK got right.
He was on a benzo or an SSRI? I also heard he had ears. Come to think of it, almost all mass shooters have had ears! Implication?
Comments are closed.