August 24 DC Protest Against the FDA- What's Everybody Mad About?

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 4 of 9 page(s)

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After a couple months, he started taking larger doses because it was not working. A few months later, the doctor prescribed a medication called Effexor, and abruptly discontinued Paxil. Corey was supposed to gradually increase the dose of Effexor to 300 milligrams over 3 weeks.

The day he took the 300 milligram dose, Corey didn't feel well so he stayed home from school and went back to sleep. That evening he woke up in a juvenile detention center.

Unaware of what he had done, Corey said, "I asked one of the members of the juvenile detention center, and I found out that I had taken my high-powered rifle that I use for hunting to my third period class, took 23 of my classmates hostage and teacher hostage."

Corey spent 14 months in jail, "not really knowing why I had been there, not really remembering anything that I had done," he said.

"These drugs are hell," his father Jay said, "look at what they have done to my son."

Joyce Storey's son, Brian, was 17 years old when the family doctor diagnosed him with depression and gave him 14 Zoloft pills. He never warned about side effects and "even said if a person is drinking or doing drugs, that Zoloft works well with them," Joyce said.

Five days later, Brian killed a woman. After his arrest, authorities found no illegal drugs in his system, only Zoloft.

The psychiatrist that examined Brian after the event was Dr James Merkangis, a faculty member at Yale University. At the trial, he said Brian had a manic reaction to Zoloft and testified that Brian told him it was like being in a dream.

"The news media called my son the All-American boy, and he was," Joyce says. He is now serving life without parole.

Six months after Brian's arrest, another boy at his school, Jeff Franklin, took an ax to both of his parents and three of his brothers and sisters while on Prozac. Both of his parents died and Jeff is now serving two life sentences.

"This is not a coincidence," Joyce warns, "there is a common denominator, teenager, severely depressed, on an SSRI antidepressant."

"There are 13 million people on these drugs, 6 to 8 million are children," she said. "The question is why are we handing these drugs out like candy, and the answer is $17 billion a year business." Joyce noted, "It is always about money."

Jame Tierney was 14 years old when he was prescribed Effexor for migraine headaches. After about a year, the drug lost its effectiveness and his doctor doubled the dose.

"For the next 9 months," Jame recalled, "my life as I had known it was gone. I thought daily about suicide and hurting myself. I felt void of normal emotions. I was so belligerent, agitated, and filled with hate - hate for my family, my friends, and most of all myself. Rage consumed me. I felt trapped," he said.

Jame did things totally out of character. "I had little control and little inhibition," he said, "It was as if I was watching a movie and some villain was destroying all the relationships around me."

He spent most his time alone or else fighting with his parents. "They would ask what was wrong and what had happened to me," Jame said, and "I could not answer them because I did not know or understand myself. I was terrified."

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