Our son, B.J. Poole, had it all - good grades, good looks, popularity, tremendous athletic ability and a bright future.  Add to that a beautiful, smart fiancée and everything should be perfect, right?  Wrong! 

B.J. was always what we described as “high maintenance” or “high-strung.”  He was very bright, opinionated, and articulate.  If he disagreed with something that happened at school (like another kid being picked on, an unevenly applied rule or punishment, etc.), B.J. was the first to stand up and speak his mind.  He was meticulous in everything he did.  He had to succeed.  Anything less than total success was utter failure.  We called him “Stat” because he could quote football and other sport statistics at will.  He was very opinionated, stubborn and easily frustrated but, for the most part, he kept it under control. 

He sailed through high school on the Honor Roll and was awarded such distinctions as “Athlete of the Year,”  3-time “Who’s Who Among American High School Students,” “All-District” in Cross Country and Track, “High Point Champion” at several area track meets (extremely rare and difficult for a distance runner) and 9-time Arkansas Junior Olympic Gold Medalist.  He ran the anchor leg of the Arkansas State Track Class AA 4x800m championship in 2001. He ran cross-country for his high school.  His team placed 2nd and 4th in the State Class AAA Cross Country Championship the 2 years he ran.  He competed in the National Junior Olympics Cross Country Meet in Chicago, placing in the middle of the pack of more than 300 racers.  In 2001, he received a partial scholarship to Bacone College in Muskogee, OK for track and cross-country.  That’s when the trouble began.

He was trying to maintain his grades, train and compete in cross-country, work part-time and see his fiancée – she lived about 3 hours away from Muskogee and he traveled to see her when he could.  He became increasingly stressed and began to talk of dropping out of school.  He said that it was just too much for him to handle.  We stressed the importance of a college education but allowed him to transfer to a community college in Fayetteville, AR where he would be in the same town as his fiancée.  While things weren’t perfect, B.J. and Jenny were happy until B.J.’s great grandmother died in June of 2002.  B.J. lost his job because he took off from work to travel home and attend her funeral – his boss was on vacation, which left B.J. in charge of the store.  Losing his job meant that he and Jennifer couldn’t afford to keep the house they were renting.  Jenny was working, too, but with both of them trying to go to school and work, it was too much.  They moved back home to southern Arkansas later that summer. 

B.J. was not happy about moving home and became increasingly angry and resentful.  We talked to him about his attitude and things seemed to be okay for a while.  He and Jenny had an old home that she had inherited but it needed a lot of work.  B.J. decided to drop school for a year and work full-time while Jenny worked full-time and went to college part-time.  He was working for the county road department when he got into a huge patch of poison ivy and was covered from head to toe with welts.  The doctor put him on a double round of corticosteroids to help.  He was out of work for 10 days and never really seemed to be the same after that.  He became even more easily angered.  He couldn’t relate to us why he was so angry.  That’s when I made my big mistake.  His attitude was straining our relationship with him, as well as his and Jenny’s relationship.  I acted as objectively as I could and supported his and Jenny’s decision that he should move back home with us while he got a handle on things.  I also told him about a website I had seen – www.effexorxr.com.  I had already visited the sight and was alarmed by the results from the answers I had entered into an online survey from my perspective on B.J.’s behalf about depression.  I asked B.J. to complete the survey for himself and the results were even worse that when I had answered for him.  He was urged to “seek professional help” for his problems.  I encouraged him to go to our local mental health facility and enlisted Jenny’s help in getting him to go.  He followed our advice and began seeing a psychologist.  He got to talk about his frustrations and his reactions to stress and obstacles. Things seemed to be getting better.  He was asked to keep a journal of his thoughts and feelings.  Then after a couple of months of talking to the therapist, she referred him to a psychiatrist at the main office of the mental health center which was in a neighboring county.  He said she told him that he had completed the “intake and assessment” process.  Now it was time to get down to “treatment.” 

B.J. was extremely upset when he came to my office after his first visit with the doctor.  He said that when he walked in, the doctor was raging at his receptionist for overbooking his schedule.  Apparently, he had lunch plans that B.J.’s appointment was interfering with.  B.J. told me that the doctor grabbed a stack of papers from his fax machine and began to read them over.  The papers were B.J.’s records from the psychologist.  After a couple of minutes, the doctor told B.J. that he was suffering from depression and handed him a large grocery bag full of samples of, ironically enough, Effexor XR and a sleep aid.  He told B.J. that it would take several weeks to know whether the medication was the right one for him and that they might have to switch brands if this one didn’t work.  He told him that it takes awhile for a person’s body to adjust to the drugs, but to be patient.  He scheduled another appointment for a week later and sent him out the door.  He put B.J. on a schedule that would increase his dosage from 75 mg per day to 300 mg per day over several weeks.  The sleep aid was for insomnia that the doctor said was a common side effect.  B.J. felt slighted by the lack of time and care that the doctor exhibited but said that he was going to take the medication because he wanted to be his old self again. 

From the very first dosage, B.J. was a different person.  His mood swings became much worse.  He would rant and rave at us, then not appear to remember what he had said.  He started binge drinking.  He started telling me of horrible nightmares and daydreams he was having.  Dreams of killing me, his step-dad and Jenny (not his sister for some reason); impulses to run into other vehicles head-on on the road.  I was, of course, alarmed.  I called the mental health center to express my concerns and was promptly told to mind my own business.  B.J. was an adult and it was none of my concern, she said.  She told me that he “had a number he could call” if he felt like he was in crisis.  I explained that he was telling me that they were trying to poison him and that he said he wasn’t going to go back.  She told me that I should call the police if I thought he was out of control.  No mother wants to call the police on her son, especially if he is not committing a crime. I was under the impression it was a problem adjusting to the medication that should lessen as his body became accustomed to the drugs – besides, during upswings, B.J. was telling me that he felt so much better and could “see clearly” what he had to do.  He said that he would go back to the counselor and he did.  He re-enrolled in college, got a new job and, for a few days, seemed to be doing better.  Then he freaked out again and it became a vicious cycle of ups and downs.  Anger and crying spells.  He was so confused.  Then – like magic – he would feel great again.  We would stay up all night…talking, crying and trying to figure out what to do.  Up, down, up, down.  It was a dizzying spiral. 

After much discussion…many all-night talks, B.J. agreed to find a job and re-enroll in college. He did this within a couple of days of agreeing to. Once again, I thought he had found a stable level. However, the night of September 2, 2003, he had a bad night again. We talked, cried, and talked some more. He said he was just so confused about everything. Sometimes he thought the medication was the only thing helping him maintain his sanity; other times he knew the medication was causing him to think about becoming a murderous monster. “When would it level off?” he begged of me. He told me how sorry he was for all the trouble he had caused. It all came to a tragic end the next day, September 3, 2003.  I had gone to an out-of-town meeting and came home about 3:30 p.m. with a headache.  I spoke to B.J. about how he was feeling – “Fine, I’ve got my head together now.  I know what I have to do to fix things.” were the last words he said to me.  I went to lie down for a while.  About an hour later, my husband woke me up – he couldn’t find B.J. (who should have left for work by 4:00 p.m.)  Our daughter told us she had seen B.J. petting our dogs in our yard and then walking towards our wooded acreage.  My husband ran to find him thinking that he had gone off to think and had lost track of time.  That’s when he saw it.  The rope we used to close one of our outbuildings had been tied from the inside.  He cut the rope and found our beautiful son hanging by a rope.  He was neatly dressed and shaved.  His work uniform was folded neatly and placed on the seat of his truck.  He had 21 suicide notes tucked into the waistband of his jeans. 

His memorial service was beautiful.  We played his favorite modern rock music…Godsmack, Stain’d…and “our song” Lynard Skynard’s “Simple Man” which I used to sing to him when he was little as he stood on my feet and we danced.  Many kids, parents and others he knew gave testimonial after testimonial about how B.J. had helped them deal with their problems…how B.J. would always stand up for the underdog…how B.J. had been an inspiration in so many ways. 

I had to find out why we lost him.   His journals spoke of having horrible thoughts after he started taking the Effexor…of how the pills made him feel numb and how he could tell when each dose was “wearing off” because those evil thoughts became very compelling.  He wrote in his journal that he wouldn’t ever be the kind of person his mind was telling him to be – violent, hateful, murderous.  He described vivid dreams of killing those closest to him – me, his step dad, Jennifer.  He stated that the medication had helped him see that he had to die to keep this from happening. 

I didn’t know that the drug companies’ data shows these drugs to be about as effective as a placebo. I didn’t know that there is no test to determine whether there is or the extent of the “chemical imbalance” the drug companies claim SSRI/SSNRI drugs treat.  I had never heard of “activation syndrome” – and obviously neither had the “professionals” I sent him to – but now I know that’s what happened to him.  The ever-increasing dosages of Effexor XR made him unable to function; it made him decide that suicide was the way to keep from becoming a monster.  Then I read of people on these drugs who had killed; people who described the same types of thoughts and dreams B.J. did; mothers who drown or cut the arms off their babies...children and teens killing classmates in school shootings while on these drugs.  Columbine.  Andrea Yates.  Christopher Pittman.  And I thanked God that we had only lost him to suicide and not to prison or the death chamber after a homicidal rampage.

I see people all around me who are taking these drugs. Some of those close to me (through personal and work relationships) have actually started taking these drugs despite information I have shared with them. The media will cover tragic stories like Christopher Pittman, Cody Posey, Andrea Yates, etc. – but once their trials are over, no one in the media puts the pieces of this puzzle together and demands to know why these tragedies keep occurring. No one questions the motives of the companies who keep selling obviously dangerous drugs. No one questions the competency of the doctors who prescribe them. Eventually, over the past few years, the FDA has taken steps to warn people about the effects of these drugs…first for children, then for adolescents, then during the beginning of treatment. It is time to recognize that the only way to prevent the side effects of these drugs is to ban them. We urge you to do so.

Terry Bearden

nandtbearden@yahoo.com

Mother of B.J. Poole

3-4-82 – 9-3-03

Effexor-XR Induced Suicide Victim

Rison, Arkansas