Excerpt #14: SSRI's

     Over the years I've taken many different medications including antidepressants classified as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. These things are powerful mind altering substances that I believe can alter brain chemistry in such a way that serious consequences may result, as I believe did with me. Over the years there has been much controversy over these things as problems with them continue to mount. The much publicized problem has been that of induced violence, a propensity toward violent acts while on these medications.

Right now there are a number of people sitting in prison for crimes they'd committed who blame it on one SSRI or another that had been prescribed to them. Many of these people believe that somehow and someway the medication drove them to commit unruly and sometimes violent acts  of crime. Some of these crimes have even resulted in murder. One such incident has been documented on the television program 48 Hours Hard Evidence a while back. This one involves a 12 year old boy who shot his grandparents to death while they slept. He'd been on an SSRI prescibed by his doctor at the time. There are some people, including those close to him, that believe it was the medication that drove him to do it.  Evidence continues to mount as to the dark side of these drugs and perhaps, with time, they'll be pulled from the market. However, I don't think so, not in this country anyway.

I too was on one of those things for a period of time, years ago, and had one frighteneing experience that I'll never forget. I'll always believe, I will always know, it was the drug that caused the violent behavior I displayed in public. I'll leave off here and go to an excerpt from my book that will tell of that one frightful day. How lucky I am that I can sit here and tell you about it.

Excerpt

After I started on one of them (SSRI), I immediately started having muscle pulls and strains, along with gross fatique. I'd gotten so weak that my free weight workouts were reduced to lifting a wooden broomstick. Then, one day, my relationship with the stuff got real personal.

I'd gone to a nearby park, where there was a one-mile circular track I'd used years earlier for jogging and walking. I could hardly run two or three steps that day without my legs buckling under the weight of my body. In pain, I walked back to my car only to notice that the light jacket I'd left on the front seat had disappeared. Someone had swiped it, and I was mad like I'd never been before, in my entire life. I had a simmer in me that quickly turned into a rage. Quite frankly, it was frightening. I looked up in time to see some old geezer walk past on the grass about fifty yards away. He was a known thief who'd been caught breaking into cars before, and right then and there I knew he'd taken my jacket.

I ran to the trunk of my car, opened it, and grabbed a hold of a baseball bat that had been neatly tucked inside. I looked up and there was the old schmuck walking along the grass, so off I went to hit the homerun ball right off the top of his skull! I took off at a run, screaming and yelling as if in combat, with the bat cocked way back over my right shoulder, all ready to commit murder. When I got about ten feet from the old bastard, I drew the thing back over my head to slam it right down on his skull and crush it flat. Luckily for both of us, I heard someone yell out, "Hey Chuck, what in the hell are you doing?"

I looked off to my left, and there stood the old park attendant, Vic, who could see what was about to happen. I lowered the bat, tossed it off onto the grass, and averted a life sentence. Just where in the hell the old park attendant came from I'll never know, just like I'll never understand what happened next.

Just as the bat hit the grass, off I charged over to the track and sprinted like I'd never sprinted before. Around the circle I flew as if my life depended on it. There I was, picking up the pace with each split second, accelerating at a rate that was far beyond anything that I could do in highschool when I ran on the track team. Jesus Christ, I couldn't stop. I couldn't even feel the weight of my legs as my track shoes barely skimmed the surface of the blacktop below. Around the final stretch I rallied and jostled, expecting to be swamped by the large festive crowd that awaited my first place finish. Just before I hit the finish line, something happened: I felt an excruciating pain from down below. My right groin area was split open. With my hand I could feel an enormous bulge about the size of a baseball__I had a hernia! Crumbling over in pain, I crawled to my car and off I went to the nearest hospital emergency room.

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That was the last time I ever swallowed one of those things, and never will again. After surgery, while in bed, the surgeon came in and asked me what medication I was on.  After I told him the only thing he said was: "Well, you're not going to get that here."