Dazed and confused is the best way to describe suspected Aurora shooting gunman James Holmes as he sat in a Colorado courtroom during his first court appearance.
Holmes is accused of shooting 12 people dead in a Colorado movie theater and injuring 59 others during the midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises movie early Friday morning.
One point of conversation – which was made evident yesterday as we watched Holmes in court – is that this man is highly medicated. Holmes’ constant nodding in and out of consciousness revealed that he is definitely on something.
It’s being reported that Holmes was hooked on the prescribed painkiller Vicodin, a drug known not only to ease pain, but to include side effects such as altered mental states and unusual thoughts or behavior. It can also impair your thinking and reactions.
Coincidentally, a video surfaced of Holmes six years prior to the massacre during his time at a Miramar College science camp in San Diego. In the video, Holmes explains “temporal illusions,” which as he puts it is “an illusion that allows you to change the past.”
Holmes said he had been working on:
“Subjective experience, which is what takes place inside the mind as oppose to the external world.”
And considering he dressed as the Joker, it would explain how Holmes made that “subjective experience” a tragic reality.
The fact of the matter is, many cases where random unexplainable shootings occur, the suspect almost always suffers from some sort of mental condition and usually the culprit ends up being prescription drugs.
Prescription painkillers have been shown to be deadlier and more damaging than many illegal drugs e.g. cocaine and heroin.
A 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report revealed that more than 12 million were on prescription painkillers only for the high they cause, instead of for their intended medical purpose.
In that same report, it concluded that in 2008, more Americans died from pharmaceutical painkillers than illegal drugs.
Prescription painkillers aren’t to blame for Holmes’ massacre, after all, he was the one who continuously pulled the trigger, but a steady concoction of drugs also played its role.
Shaka Griffith is the News/Politics Editor of GlobalGrind.com Follow him on Twitter @Darealshaka
