stephanie brail

It’s time we stop making Jared Lee Loughner a political football and start looking at the real problem: mental illness.

As soon as I saw the news about Jared Loughner’s shooting in Arizona, I knew that somehow Sarah Palin and the Tea Party would be blamed before all the evidence was weighed, solely because the politician in question is a Democrat. I’ve since gotten into a variety of discussions on the issue on Facebook, where the knee jerk reaction has indeed been to blame Palin, because of the infamous “crosshairs” graphic posted on her website last year. Never mind that the shooter hasn’t self-identified as a Tea Partier; never mind that the Democratic Party itself has used bullseyes and military language on their own websites in the past (see graphic). But this politicizing of the issue is done because people want scapegoats, and some have political agendas that require exploiting tragedies as a means to an end. Meanwhile, the real problem is left unaddressed.

As the controversy has grown, the left points to Mein Kampf a book by Ayn Rand on Jared’s favorite book list, while the right points to his love of the Communist Manifesto, each side trying to paint the shooter as either a radical leftist or right-wing conspiracy theorist. Jared had also posted a creepy video burning an American flag on YouTube, complete with violent music as accompaniment, but I have yet to see anyone blame this violent-sounding band for the shooting.

Unfortunately, because a politician was involved, the assumption must be that the “other side” is to blame. The thing is, what side? Apparently some die-hard Democrats were upset with the Arizona congresswoman because she voted against Pelosi. Would it prove anything if he were some sort of crazy liberal punishing a Blue Dog Democrat? Would it prove anything if he were actually a Tea Partier? (Unlikely, though, with the flag burning.) Crazy is crazy, and it’s clear there are crazies on both sides. People bombing abortion clinics? Right-wing crazies. People giving Bristol Palin death threats over a stupid tv show called Dancing With the Stars? Left-wing crazies.

Should people worry about censoring what is clearly metaphorical language (i.e., “targeting the opposition,” a very common phrase, not just in politics, but in sports and business) simply because one lone lunatic might take it seriously? Do we need to start censoring our national dialogue because we are afraid of being held hostage by a few mentally ill people who might go postal? The issue here isn’t right or left, it’s crazy.

Mental Illness: The Real Problem

Missing in all this back and forth over politics and rhetoric is discussion of the real reason behind why Jared Loughner shot up a bunch of people in Arizona, and it was simply this: He is mentally ill. He has also been self-medicating his illness with marijuana apparently, and according to a friend of his on Twitter, he had dropped out of school after getting alcohol poisoning in 2006. Based on his incoherent statements on YouTube, Jared has a very thin grasp on reality. He is obviously sick.

I don’t think it really matters whether Jared is a self-identified liberal or conservative. From the mishmash of ideas he presents, he seems to be beyond categorization. I doubt very much that any particular politician or political group caused him to act out – it was his own demons and lack of grasp of reality that were the problem. Had it not been a politician, he might have just as easily stalked and shot at a celebrity. It’s certainly happened many times before with celebrities.

A mentally ill, unstable person who is prone to violence is absolutely not representative of any particular group or ideology. And rather than using this tragedy as a reason to blame political ideologies we don’t agree with, maybe we can start talking a bit more about mental health in this country.

Mike Adams, founder of Natural News, and a libertarian-minded holistic health writer, suggests that we may need to dig a little deeper about Jared’s mental health problems. One of the big questions Mike asks is, was Jared on any sort of psychiatric drug?

While we have no proof yet that psychiatric drugs are involved here, we do see a very suspicious pattern of mental instability that suggests a likely connection. The sleepwalking behaviors Loughner describes are, in fact, common side effects of psychotropic drugs such as Ambien, which is famous for causing people to actually “sleep drive” into town and suddenly awake in the middle of the road, driving their car in their pajamas, with no knowledge of how they got there (http://www.naturalnews.com/019413.html).

I must stress that we don’t yet know whether Loughner was on sleeping medications or psychiatric drugs, but his behavior fits the pattern of someone who was: The lack of touch with reality, the violent and indiscriminate shooting, and the interweaving of the dream world with the real world. These are red flags of someone who is either suffering from a severe nutritional deficiency that affects brain function (vitamin D, for example, is important for preventing schizophrenia) or someone whose brain has been chemically altered through pharmacological intervention.

(Read more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030953_Gabrielle_Giffords_shooting.html#ixzz1AbXPmuUn)

Whether or not Jared was on prescription drugs, he was smoking pot and possibly drinking a lot of alcohol. And while I know that pot is generally harmless in that it does not create violent, psychotic breaks in normal people, long-term use of marijuana has shown to increase the likelihood of developing schizophrenia and psychosis in young adults:

Young adults who used marijuana as teens were more likely than those who didn’t to develop schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms including hallucinations and delusions, an Australian study found.

Those who used the drug for six or more years were twice as likely to develop a psychosis such as schizophrenia or to have delusional disorders than those who never used marijuana, according to research released online by the Archives of General Psychiatry. They were also four times as likely to score high on a list of psychotic-like experiences.

The findings build on previous research and shows that marijuana use isn’t as harmless as some people think, lead study author John McGrath said yesterday in an e-mail. The study was the first to look at sibling pairs to discount genetic or environmental influence and still find marijuana linked to later psychosis, the authors said in the study.

(Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-26/long-time-marijuana-use-linked-to-psychosis-in-young-adults.html)

Why aren’t we discussing this? I realize that it’s not “hip” to criticize marijuana in some circles, but I’m sorry, this evidence does not look good. I have known plenty of people who smoked pot regularly, and I can honestly say that it did not help them. They thought they were OK, but they were in denial. I’ve seen it increase neurosis and make people emotionally numb and apathetic. Isn’t it possible that long-term pot use in a young man who may already be prone to mental illness could make his mental health much worse?

Look. I know what pot does to your brain. I used it plenty in college. It distorts reality. And when I read Jared’s YouTube ramblings, they sounded like something someone high would write.

Tie that in with alcohol, and who knows whatever drugs he might have been using, prescription and otherwise, and you have a recipe for disaster.

On a spiritual level, constant drug use also has negative effects. In the Pranic Healing school of healing, they teach that drug use breaks down your aura and leaves you open to negative energies (elementals) that attach to your energy system and harm your health and well-being. In Kabbalah, drugs are seen as an evil, because they keep you from undergoing the emotional growth that is required for spiritual transformation.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. If you are an otherwise healthy person who just wants to relax with a joint once in a while, fine, I don’t care. But drugs aren’t safe for everyone. For some people, they can be quite disabling. And pot is just not something that I would recommend for a person who has schizophrenic tendencies.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where drug use is glorified and the mental health profession is still unable to actual “cure” most mental illness, except by prescribing drugs that sometimes make the problem worse. Holistic alternatives and nutrition can help (as Mike Adams says, even a Vitamin D deficiency can cause mental health issues). But we also show little compassion sometimes with friends and family who are mentally ill – we often criticize, mock and ostracize them, giving them more reason to become alienated and angry. We need more compassion, and better solutions to mental health problems so people like Jared aren’t tempted to self-medicate with illegal drugs that just make the psychosis worse in the long run.

So if we can get past the politics to talk about the real problem here – our collective approach to mental health – maybe we can actually start some useful dialogue on the issue.