If you’re reading this, then you likely know something about the prison industrial complex. You know, for instance, how inmates around the country provide free labor. You know how businesses make money by overcharging prisoners for connecting them to loved ones, and other basic services. You know how the stakeholders in this operation lobby for longer prison sentences to increase their ‘customer base’, resulting in an ever-increasing prison population. All this you likely know. What you may not know, however, is what role the pharmaceutical industry plays in this system.
This is something that I have personal experience with, so let me start by telling you my story.
I’m writing this from a cell on Texas’ Death Row. The event that led to me being here took place in the span of less than thirty seconds. I was confronted by a police officer, as a suspected shoplifter. After a split-second chase, I was tackled, and in the chaos, I shot and killed him. Everything was captured on surveillance video. Watching that video at trial, it was as if I was experiencing the event for the first time. That’s because I have no memory of that night. It’s a complete blank. Amnesia is one of the most well-known side-effects, among many, of Xanax, the popular anti-anxiety medication.
Subsequent blood tests revealed that I had eleven times the therapeutic dose of Xanax in my system, and the tests were taken seven hours after the event. If we rewind the surveillance video a bit, we can see that I stumble around the store for twenty minutes prior to the shooting, dropping items and running into displays. It’s clear that I’m confused and disoriented. Several shoppers and employees try to assist me, as they can tell that I am not well.
Immediately after everything happened, I was taken into police custody, where I waived my Miranda rights and agreed to speak to detectives. Clearly, this was not in my best interests. But I later learned that this is not uncommon. It’s called “chemical submission”, and it entails an extreme willingness to comply with the wishes of others. Benzodiazepines, the class of drugs that Xanax is in, include the ‘date rape’ drug, as well as experimental medication that the CIA once used as ‘truth serum’. The rest of my police interrogation could be cited in a textbook as an example of other classic benzo side-effects. I continued to have severe amnesia, several times giving the wrong date and time when asked. I responded to detectives’ leading questions by confabulating, my brain ‘creating’ several false memories, differing accounts of what happened. I believe that I was standing when I fired the shot, that several people tackled me, including a person in a ‘blue jumpsuit’. None of this turned out to be accurate.
My friends and family were shocked, no one could reconcile the person that they know with the person that was being described on the news. I had no violence in my past, no felonies. I was a software engineer, with a college education, from a middle-class home. Could a legal, prescription medication really result in such a drastic behavior change?
Now that I’ve done my homework, I know that my case isn’t unique. If we look at benzodiazepines alone, even though they’re not the only pharmaceutical responsible, we see that the FDA did a study examining the link between medication and what they call “adverse reactions”. These adverse reactions included homicides, assaults, suicides, and other acts of violence, and benzos accounted for four of the top five drugs associated with these types of events.
Since 1999, prescriptions for benzos have risen eightfold, so if there is a correlation then we should also see a similar rise in violence over the same time period. In fact, the past two decades have seen a steady rise in mass shootings and other unexplained and senseless acts of violence. Stories continue to come out, exposing the pharmaceuticals that these people are on. The man who opened fire at a Las Vegas concert was on Valium, another benzodiazepine, and so was the shooter at the Southerland Springs Church in Texas. So, does the medication really play a part in causing these types of events, or is it a coincidence? Actually, the medical community has long known about this possible side-effect of benzos. It is reliably reproduced in certain individuals, and it even has a name: paradoxical reaction, or rage reaction. The literature on benzos has always described the possibility of “violent dyscontrol and hostility”.
So, why is the public not aware of this phenomenon? The answer is this: pharmaceutical companies, like the prison industry, have powerful lobbyists and they have great control over politicians and the media. The toxicology report on the Vegas shooter was only released after activist groups petitioned, and they met continuous resistance from officials who said that if it was made public it would cause people to be “scared to take their medication”. The FDA study linking benzos to violence was an “internal” study that was only acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests put out by lawyers and psychiatrists.
Even in my own case, which received considerable publicity in Texas, many news articles referred to me as a “possibly drunken shoplifter”. They leave out any mention of Xanax altogether, even though my toxicology report was part of the record. How is this possible? It is easier to explain when we consider that nine out of ten of the major media conglomerates, such as NBC, have pharma representatives on their boards. This is still where most people get their news, either directly or indirectly. This is why the opioid crisis took so long to see the light of day. This is why the negative, sometimes violent, side-effects of benzos, antidepressants, and antipsychotics remain all but unknown to the general public.
Not every pharmaceutical-related case involves a mass shooting though, or even a murder. The vast majority of people go to prison for other crimes that receive far less publicity: assault, robbery, burglary, etc. All of which are ‘risk-taking behavior’ and, as studies show, are increased by these types of medications, as well. It’s a foregone conclusion that the prison population is overrepresented by people who were on these drugs at the time of their crimes, and may not even be aware that the drugs had affected their behavior.
Besides keeping people in the dark on adverse reactions associated with their pills, the pharma industry also plays a role in making sure that inmates remain pacified and compliant. I certainly wasn’t the only one who, upon coming to jail, was prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants: Zoloft, Celexa, Remeron, etc. It was during this time that I made several suicide attempts, another common, well-documented side-effect of antidepressants, and I was also rendered fairly useless to help with my legal case. My lawyers were handpicked by the judge, they agreed to work for a flat fee, and they put on a subpar defense at the last minute. They hired experts that said that benzo intoxication was comparable to alcohol intoxication, perpetuating the “drunken shoplifter” image. How many other cases get swept under the rug in a similar way?
It was only after I was convicted and sent to death row that I finally got off of the medication and began to research the history of various pharmaceuticals. It was only then that I discovered that chemical submission, confabulations, and paradoxical reaction were all common side-effects of benzos. I discovered that there was even a racial aspect, as people who are of Asian descent, like me, metabolize Xanax faster and it stays in their systems longer. This fact is buried deep in the documentation on Xanax. Other minorities are affected by various drugs in a similar fashion, but, of course, it is all kept quiet by the powers that be.
So, what can we do to combat this situation? After learning the truth, it’s easy to feel weighed down by the power of the pharmaceutical and prison industries; to feel powerless in the face of their size and reach. However, this reaction was only temporary for me. I am now full of hope. All of the information I’ve written here, although not well-known, can be found online. And there’s much more. As with most clandestine operations, the best remedy is exposure. I invite all of you to research this topic on your own; see if it applies to your own legal situation, or someone you know; seek out doctors who are working to shed light on this issue (for example, Dr. Peter Breggin); and share all of this with your lawyers. In many cases, there are legitimate legal defenses on the books, and in others, we need to work to change the law. People should not be going to prison for behaviors that are induced by medications that they believe are helping them.
More information can be found on the website that I’ve put together for my case:
supportbrandondaniel.org. I invite everyone to share their experiences, resources, and knowledge through this site. Together, we can make a change.
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