I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Liza Long 

gawker.com
 

Three days before 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year-old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

"They are navy blue," I told him. "Your school's dress code says black or khaki pants only."
"They told me I could wear these," he insisted. "You're a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!"

"You can't wear whatever pants you want to," I said, my tone affable, reasonable. "And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You're grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school."

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don't know what's wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He's been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood-altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he's in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He's in a good mood most of the time. But when he's not, watch out. And it's impossible to predict what will set him off.

Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district's most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can't function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30 to 1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.

The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, "Look, Mom, I'm really sorry. Can I have video games back today?"

"No way," I told him. "You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly."

His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. "Then I'm going to kill myself," he said. "I'm going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself."

That was it. After the knife incident, I told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.

"Where are you taking me?" he said, suddenly worried. "Where are we going?"
"You know where we are going," I replied.

"No! You can't do that to me! You're sending me to hell! You're sending me straight to hell!"
I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. "Call the police," I said. "Hurry."

Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn't escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I'm still stronger than he is, but I won't be for much longer.

The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork—"Were there any difficulties with… at what age did your child… were there any problems with.. has your child ever experienced.. does your child have…"

At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You'll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.

For days, my son insisted that I was lying—that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, "I hate you. And I'm going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here."

By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I've heard those promises for years. I don't believe them anymore.

On the intake form, under the question, "What are your expectations for treatment?" I wrote, "I need help."
And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza's mother. I am Dylan Klebold's and Eric Harris's mother. I am Jason Holmes's mother. I am Jared Loughner's mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho's mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it's easy to talk about guns. But it's time to talk about mental illness. (CONTINUE READING)

Astonishing Hunger Games ‘coincidence,’ and killer’s mother now a Doomsday Prepper?

Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
Dec 17, 2012

CBS News gives us this sizzling report:

(Source): the CBS Evening News, broadcast (on network TV) Sat. 12-15-2012.

Segment begins at 7 minute point in online version of the TV broadcast:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137189n

Program anchor Jim Axelrod (live in Newtown, CT): “You’re also learning more about the guns used in the shooting, that belonged to Lanza’s mother?”

Senior Correspondent John Miller sets us up for the punch line: “It’s about the process. She had to go to an awful lot of trouble to get these guns. CT has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. That meant going down to the state police, filling out the forms, getting finger printed, and then waiting to hear back that she was approved for a handgun permit. Then it meant going down to the store and getting an FBI background check, waiting for another period and picking those weapons up. So it’s not one of those things where you just show up with your driver’s license and make a purchase. She made an affirmative effort to get these weapons and as we learned from the landscaper, enjoyed shooting.”

Ready? Here is John Miller’s punch line: “We spoke to another relative who also said she was worried about the defense of her home if there was a collapse of the economy [on screen - close up casual photo of Mrs. Lanza]. She wanted to have weapons on hand to defend them which of course only underscores the irony that those were the guns used by her own child to kill her and so many others.”

Boom.

And there we are.

 The circle is complete. Now the gun grabbers can really take off and run with this. “The doomsday preppers are responsible for the murders of 20 children! That’s where this whole thing is coming from! Get their guns!”
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out where this is going!

But then there is THIS. SGT Report cites a “coincidence” that will leave you thinking about a planned scenario at Newtown, just the kind of operation secret societies are reputedly famous for.

http://sgtreport.com

In The Hunger Games, many times called a model of predictive programming, the ritual sacrifice of 23 children is carried out. Twelve districts, two children from each district; they fight in pairs and kill each other until one winner is left. 23 children are killed.

In Newton, Adam Lanza killed 20 children.

The author of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, is listed by Wikipedia as one of the famous people who lives in Newtown.

You take it from there. Call it whatever you want to. I try to avoid winging big stretches, but this is too stunning to omit. WTF.

…Meanwhile, the police in Newtown are lying. Here is how that plays out.

We are entering another familiar phase of the standard mass-murder scenario.

It goes like this: “A portrait is beginning to emerge of the killer…”

With Adam Lanza, it starts with “loner, shy, awkward, different, very smart.” It now proceeds to “goth, computer nerd, carried briefcase not backpack, played video games.”

The latter terms are meant to connect the audience, the public, to the 1999 Columbine School mass murders, the touchstone of school shootings, the gold standard. The so-called “trenchcoat mafia”; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the “goth shooters.”

Next, we may hear Adam Lanza was bullied.

These are all synthetic descriptions about Lanza, manufactured to cue the audience to make certain assumptions about a person they don’t know at all.

The “emerging portrait” is a necessary step in the media presentation. It assures the public that they can make at least partial sense out of the killer.

It’s also a false trail, if in fact the killer was on psychiatric meds, because then all bets are off. The drugs (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Ritalin, Adderall, etc.) do things to the brain that result in actions entirely beyond any description of Lanza, even when that description comes from family and friends.

Now, the police are getting into the act.

Connecticut State Police Lieutenant, Paul Vance, dangled a carrot in front of the press today: “Our investigators at the crime scene…did produce some very good evidence in this investigation, that our investigators will be able to use in, hopefully, painting the complete picture as to how—and more importantly why—this occurred.”

A note from Adam Lanza, found at the scene? A recording of a confession? Vance didn’t say. Perhaps his punch line will come tomorrow.

Here’s why this is a lie.

Killing your own mother, and then breaking into a school and killing 26 people, most of whom are very young children, doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, resolve by assigning a motive.

There is no motive that can explain such a crime.

Lanza was bullied, so he killed 26 people, including little children?

He had a very bad experience when he was in school?

His mother was brutal toward him?

But the media and law-enforcement presentation requires some sort of motive. It’s part of the planned sequence of events that occurs in the aftermath of mass murders. It needs to be there. The public is supposed to digest this motive and either accept it or grudgingly acknowledge it might have played a role in the killings. It’s better than a vacuum.

The public is not supposed to be left with a vacuum.

Of course, the television anchors button the whole thing up with their somber, high-minded, and world-weary bottom-line reminders that “we may never understand what really happened here on the morning of December 14th.” That’s folded in to provide the “helpless factor” that’s now engraved on every mass murder.

“We’re all victims and we have to accept what cannot be explained.”

We’re talking about multiple vectors of explaining a killer. Planned vectors.

“Well, he was this way and he was that way, and so-and-so person said he was this way, and at the end of the day all this helps but there is still an underlying mystery about the human mind that researchers are only beginning to probe, and here is Dr. Such and Such, who has been researching the deep corridors and channels of the brain for thirty years at Harvard, to try to help us make some sense of out of all of this…Doctor?”

Smokescreen.

Meanwhile, if Adam Lanza was on psychiatric drugs, the answer is obvious. HE HAD NO MOTIVE FOR KILLING ALL THOSE PEOPLE.

There was no motive.

That’s what the drugs do.

Yes, a person might be angry, might be resentful, might feel put-upon, might fantasize about revenge, might wish that people were dead…but he would never act on those feelings and thoughts.

That’s the whole point.

And then he takes the drugs, or dangerously withdraws from them, and THEN he kills people.
He does what he would otherwise never do.

In fact, some people who feel absolutely no desire for revenge, after taking the drugs kill others or themselves or both.

Dr. Joseph Tarantolo has written about the case of Julie Marie Meade. In a column for the ICSPP (International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology) News, “Children and Prozac: First Do No Harm,” Tarantolo describes how Julie Meade, in November of 1996, called 911, “begging the cops to come and shoot her. And if they didn’t do it quickly, she would do it to herself. There was also the threat that she would shoot them as well.”

The police came within a few minutes, “five of them to be exact, pumping at least 10 bullets into her head and torso.”

Tarantolo remarks that a friend of Julie said Julie “had plans to make the honor roll and go to college. He [the friend] had also observed her taking all those pills.” What pills? Tarantolo called the Baltimore medical examiner, and spoke with Dr. Martin Bullock, who was on a fellowship at that office. Bullock said, “She had been taking Prozac for four years.”

Tarantolo asked Bullock, “Did you know that Prozac has been implicated in impulsive de novo violence and suicidalness?” Bullock said he was not aware of this.

Tarantolo is careful to point out, “Violent and suicidal behavior have been observed both early (a few weeks) and late (many months) in treatment with Prozac.”

Keep in mind that a person doesn’t have to be severely “down” to be given one of these antidepressants. He or she could just be going through a temporary disappointment, but upon recommendation, a visit to a psychiatrist is made…and then life takes a radically different and extremely dangerous pharmaceutical course.
 
As far as motive for murder in the Adam Lanza case, everything is backwards. First, the police should be investigating whether he had been under the care of a physician. If so, what drugs were prescribed? (CONTINUE READING)