Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(114)

CCHR’s main effort has been an international campaign against the use of psychiatric drugs, especially for children. The surgeon general of the United States issued a report in 2001 claiming that more than twenty percent of children ages nine to seventeen had a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder, and that four million American children suffered from major mental illness. There is obviously an immense market for medications to treat such disorders. About ten percent of Americans over the age of six are on antidepressants, and antipsychotic drugs are the top-selling category of drugs in the country. They have become a plague on the schoolgrounds of America, with indiscriminate prescriptions creating a new culture of drug dependency—one that the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession bear some responsibility for.

Haggis has been a substantial supporter of the CCHR. As a boy, he says, he spent most of his days staring out the window, daydreaming—a candidate for an attention deficit disorder diagnosis. “I identified with the oddballs and the misfits,” he said. “Those who conform have very little chance of making a difference in life.” He was sure that if his parents had medicated him, he might never have become a writer. He hosted fund-raisers for CCHR in his home. “I simply believe that psychiatric drugs are over-prescribed, especially to children,” he said. “I think that is a crime.”

Scientologists have been seeking ways of criminalizing psychiatric remedies. In the same period that Cruise was chastising Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants, Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston were testifying before state lawmakers in Florida, who passed a bill, written in part by Scientologists, that would hold schoolteachers criminally liable for suggesting to parents that their children might be suffering from a mental health condition, such as attention deficit disorder. Governor Jeb Bush vetoed the bill. Governor Jon Huntsman did the same in Utah. Similar bills have been pushed by the CCHR in other states. In her Florida testimony, Kirstie Alley held up photographs of children who had committed suicide after taking psychotropic drugs. “None of these children were psychotic before they took these drugs,” she asserted, sobbing so hard she could barely speak. “None of these children were suicidal before they took these drugs.”

Some drug makers have covered up studies that indicate an increased danger of suicidal or violent thoughts caused by psychotropic medicines. Eli Lilly, for instance, suppressed data showing that patients who were taking the popular drug Prozac—the only antidepressant certified as safe for children—were twelve times more likely to attempt suicide than patients taking similar medications. Antidepressants have been implicated in a number of schoolyard shootings, such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where two students killed twelve of their classmates and a teacher. One of the killers was taking Luvox at the time. Adderall—one of the drugs cited by Cruise—is an amphetamine often prescribed for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; it sometimes causes increased aggression in children and adolescents. Ritalin, the most common drug prescribed for ADHD, is similar to cocaine in its potential for addiction. According to The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, a person using Ritalin, Adderall, or other cocaine-like drugs “can experience nervousness, restlessness, agitation, suspiciousness, paranoia, hallucinations and delusions, impaired cognitive functions, delirium, violence, suicide, and homicide.”

But people who are taking antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood-stabilizing drugs are already at a higher risk for suicide or violent behavior. One of the dangers of prescribing an antidepressant is that it may give the patient the stimulus he or she needs to act on suicidal impulses that are already present. Sudden withdrawal from antidepressants can prompt suicidal thoughts as well. Several studies have found that the risk of suicide was just as great for those who don’t receive antidepressants as for those who do; over time, however, patients taking antidepressants are less likely to kill themselves. Such medications now come with warnings about increased suicidal behavior. And yet, one study noted the steady decline of overall suicide rates in the United States since fluoxetine (Prozac) was introduced in the American market. The authors estimated that the drug was responsible for saving 33,600 lives between 1988 and 2002.

There are numerous examples of Scientologists who have considered or actually committed suicide, or engaged in violence, who might have been helped if they had taken psychotropic medicines. In Buffalo, New York, on March 13, 2003 (L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday), twenty-eight-year-old Jeremy Perkins stabbed his mother seventy-seven times. He was a schizophrenic with a history of violence and hallucinations, who had rejected psychiatric treatment because he was a Scientologist. Hana Eltringham, who had been Hubbard’s chief deputy, believes that Scientology itself caused her own shattered mental state. For years after attaining OT III, Eltringham had frequent thoughts of suicide. The unremitting migraines and voices in her head made her despair. Several times, she came close to jumping off the top floor of the church’s headquarters in Clearwater, but restrained herself because she was worried that it would bring disgrace upon the church and Hubbard’s teachings. It was only when she left the church and began taking Prozac that her headaches and her suicidal thoughts went away. “It has changed my life,” she claimed. Her friend Mary Florence Barnett, Shelly Miscavige’s mother, had similar symptoms—constant headaches and suicidal thoughts. She confided to Eltringham that she wanted to kill herself in order to stop the suppressive body thetans from taking over her mind. Barnett eventually went outside the official church to receive Scientology counseling, a heretical practice known in Scientology as squirreling. (The church denies that Barnett became involved with dissident Scientologists, but if she had, that would have placed David and Shelly Miscavige in a compromised position with the church. They would have been Potential Trouble Sources if they failed to disconnect from her.) On September 8, 1985, Barnett’s body was found. She had been shot three times in the chest and once through the temple with a rifle. Both of her wrists were slashed. She left two suicide notes. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled her death a suicide.