NL- I can’t imagine being in her shoes, but plenty of people can. And what does she do for help? Getting him arrested is her only option?
I am Adam Lanza’s Mother
It’s time to talk about mental illness
by Liza Long from http://thebluereview.org/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother/
12.15.2012
Friday’s horrific national tragedy—the murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in New Town, Connecticut—has ignited a new discussion on violence in America. In kitchens and coffee shops across the country, we tearfully debate the many faces of violence in America: gun culture, media violence, lack of mental health services, overt and covert wars abroad, religion, politics and the way we raise our children. Liza Long, a writer based in Boise, says it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
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 7:30-1:50 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 waiving 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 James 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.
According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.
With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.
No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.
(Originally published at The Anarchist Soccer Mom.)
liza long is an author, musician, and erstwhile classicist. she is also a single mother of four bright, loved children, one of whom has special needs
I thought this was a porn news website?
They media elites and money moguls of the world like
Rupert Murdoch never mention the thousands of war dead at have been killed in their stupid wars. Check out to see the faces of our military dead at :
http://www.militarytimes.com/valor/. These are the
ones that perished ” in theater ” , not included are the ones that died in transport to hospitals in Europe or private contractors (mercenaries), state department personel, CIA personel and hundreds of thousands of innocents killed by the un-constitutional wars. The media doesn’t whisper of
of the war dead—-lives killed for oil companies’
enormas profits.
Its about 75% porn and 25% pot luck.
Perhaps a good start to this woman’s preventing her “beloved mentally ill child” from being another Adam Lanza would be NOT KEEPING A SHITLOAD OF GUNS LYING AROUND THE HOUSE!!!!!!
its not guns that kill, its criminals and mental cases, so we should outlaw the latter, and keep guns out of reach, locked up
its not guns that kill, its criminals and mental cases, so we should outlaw the latter, and keep guns out of reach, locked up, as well.
One of the rare times I can agree to Jeremy.
holy shit, im on a mainstream set and theyre airing one of their episodes on a big screen during lunch and theres a mysterious character on the phone named “mr. pincus” and one of the characters responds “who the fuck is mr. pincus?… ive never that name before in my life”… im wondering where the writers got it from, as I wrote about michael tierney using it, having got it off his uncle lawrence tierney, who, as michael told me, used to pincus as a fake uIname when he wanted to use one.. that info never was public till i wrote about it! picusdoberman was the full name and as disclosed the email michael registered when hes owned the donkeys pwl
and perhaps im reading too deep into this, and im sure ill be accused of it, but as a test, I guess, they briefly had lawrence of arabia on the screen first… lawrence of arabia, lawrence tierney, pincus doberman… strange
Jeremy did they serve wild mushrooms for lunch?
no, but lunch was awesome, and then we went home… easy day… ever have strange coincidences happen which seem to tell you something? i know there’s sometimes a fine line between “wow, that must’ve been meant to be” and “wow, you’re a fucking nut”, but i’ve had several weird exeperiences that happen in threes… two times, two different celebrities i ran into three times in a row (one of them at completely different places all over town, the other in the same general vicinity), each time i went out… another time three different celebs, one at a time, at the same exact place, each who i had a unique connection with…. but nevermind, i’m sure you’re wiser to the notion that the whole universe is one big cosmic accident and everything we attract or run into is one big coinkadink, right?
Good Find. It is troubling.
You can’t take a broken kid on a picnic and crack his head on a rock. At least that woman acknowledges her kid’s problems. So many parents are the same type of mental as their kid, and recognizing the problems in the child would be admitting their own flaws, so they don’t.
Right now idiots are using this to try and tout gun control laws. They aren’t going to focus on the real problem until some parent kills their child and says they did it to prevent him from hurting others like this CT shooting, or Columbine, or Va Tech, or…..
Ya gun control is NOT the issue, its really about getting to the root of the problem (mental health and how to deal with it). They are gonna whip up a feeding frenzy on gun control. However it was slashing of the state budgets and closing all the mental hospitals and putting those folks on the street that’s the problem.
Some folks that were in state mental hospitals deserve to be out of those places and living in a group home (especially retarded people). Many of them however do not. They are a danger to society and should not be on the streets or living among the homeless. They are a ticking time bomb.
Money needs to be spent to learn how to recongize and help children at a young age that are developing sociopathic or psychotic tendancies and try to break them of those problems before they become deep rooted and become like this guy here that killed all those people.
Puppet Obama and associates are making this about gun control. That’s what this shit is all about, unless you’re one of those nutty coincidence theorists.
Did you know that in the Dark Knight Rises has both “Aurora” and “Sandy Hook” are seen (Aurora is the name in red lights on top of one of Gotham’s buildings and the location of the Batman shootings. Aurora means dawn/sunrise, and Sandy Hook is the location of the conneticut kid killings and the only city name visible on the map that Gordon is pointing to 1hr:58mins into the movie) ?
So evil “defense” corporation DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had projects called Batman (Biochronicity and Temporal Mechanisms Arising in Nature) and Robin (Robustness of Biologically-Inspired Networks).
Darpa is connected to mind control “research” done on alleged Batman shooter James Holmes, who interned as a research assistant at Salk Institute. at the University of California at San Diego in La Jolla.
The Salk Institute teamed up with DARPA, Columbia University, University of California at San Francisco, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wake Forest University, and the candy bar company Mars “to prevent fatigue in combat troops through the enhanced use of epicatechina, a blood flow-increasing and blood vessel-dilating anti-oxidant flavanol found in cocoa and, particularly, in dark chocolate”
The DARPA program was part of the military’s “Peak Soldier Performance Program,” which involved engineering brain-machine interfaces for battlefield use and other bionic projects.
In addition, James Holmes’ father, Dr. Robert Holmes, worked for San Diego-based HNC Software, Inc., a company that worked with DARPA to develop “cortronic neural networks” that enable machines to translate aural and visual stimuli and simulate human thinking.
I worked on both the Dark Knight Rises (in the stock exchange scene where people were shot and killed) and Gangster Squad (in the Chinese Theater scene where tommy gun weilding mobsters shoot the audience). The Gangster Squad scene I worked in was shot for four days, the final day being the day a guy shot people on Sunset and Vine and killed a Capital Records producer. The shooter was killed by a security cop who was working nearby on the Gangster Squad movie I was on. The Gangster Squad audience massacre scene was shown in a preview to the Aurora audience who would soon experience the same carnage, themselves. Warner Brothers pulled that scene, suspended release of Gangster Squad and shot a new scene in Chinatown to replace the Chinese Theater scene. I worked in both scenes.
While researching the mind control connection I came across a couple of websites which showed a still photo which shows me in the Chinese Theatre audience, front row, far right. I also found the original trailer shown to the Aurora audience which has me in it as well.
It seems to me there are no coincidences in life.
When I worked on the Batman movie there was something evil about it, I felt.
Ya so they gonna push gun control to the moon now. Not a single mention of all the dangerous folks on the streets with mental health problems and no money to address it.
They love gun control because one day on the horizon the poor and middle class are gonna get tired of the BS and try to put a stop to it. Washington wants the people to have nothing in their hands to use as a weapon except for their dicks.
Considering all the nuts who’ve been in and on the fringes of porn, the fact that there hasn’t been any porn mope mass shootings suggests that the agenda to get rid of the porn biz doesn’t come close to the need of the illuminati to deprive citizens of their 2nd amendment… otherwise the likes of Steve Driver would’ve been a Manchurian candidate handed an oozie instead of using a samarai sword… or sat in a corner while some other masked guy in full gear does the job as patsy Hill sits waiting.
A quick review:
Albert Pike; Illumanti freemason who declared God = Satan (see Morals and Dogma)
Skull and Crossbones- see movies “The Skulls parts 1-3” or “The Brotherhood of The Bell”… witnesses hear screams of human sacrifice.
Bohemian Grove- Satanic Ritual worshipping owl, men wearing KKK -looking gear, while participating in real or mock human sacrifice. The logo shows the likeness of a child or baby under burning ashes.
Bildergberg Group- discusses how to lower the population through war, famine, sickness and poverty.
Obuma- bombs with drones innocent children, women and men in foreign countries while pretending to wipe away a tear during “We need to do more” speech to get rid of guns, so citizens are completely helpless.
Machiavelli- provides a blueprint on how to run societies for the illuminazis.
Hegel- Thesis/antithesis/synthesis, or cause a problem to cause a reaction to implement solution which serves global objectives.
MKUltra- declassified evidence of mind control. A huge subject which shows killers of the past are patsies, and either commit murders without having memory of it, or are set up as waiting, hypnotized stooges as real killers do the work, while setting them up for the fall. Anytime someone tries to do something to improve the world, they’re killed… JFK, MLK, John Lennon, etc, etc.
Aleister Crowley- part time employee of the secret societies… who said “I’ll do what I want. Fuck you”, advocating child sacrifice as the most preferable of all human sacrifices… allegedly aka Michael Tierney.
bwt… its uzi my friend.
sorry, brain malfuction, or i was thinking of the porn uzi version…oozie…or i was thinking of uncle floyd’s puppet oogie