Were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on medication?

How Do We Find The Truth?

The simple answer is that Eric was on medication, but Dylan was not.

Dylan did not have any medications in his system at the time of his death which means he was not taking medication at the time of the shooting. And if Dylan was on medication at any point in his life prior to the shooting we won’t know unless his parents divulge that information to the public. There is no documentation available to the public that confirms Dylan being prescribed medication.

Eric, on the other hand, had therapeutic amounts of Fluvoxamine (Luvox) in his system at the time of his death. This was from the drug he was prescribed by his psychiatrist.

 

Did Luvox play a part in Eric’s choice to kill his classmates?

Some say that being on the drug alone caused Eric to feel homicidal and suicidal. But in Eric’s private journal he lamented about how taking Luvox made him feel too “normal” and he therefore stopped taking it to “build on the rage” so he could go through with the shootings. He was talking about eliminating everything that made him feel bad about it, including keeping a far distance from his parents.

If Eric admittedly stopped taking Luvox because it was making him feel good, then taking the drug alone probably didn’t contribute to his homicidal rage. While pharmaceutical drugs are very dangerous and often increase feelings of depression, they do actually work wonders for many people. It is fairly clear that Luvox was a drug that was working well for Eric. But no matter how great the drug may have been working for Eric, if he really did stop taking it without tapering off, the effects would have been severe. In that case, if he really did stop taking it – then the fact that he stopped taking it would have contributed to his rage.

But did Eric really stop taking Luvox as he claimed?

With therapeutic amounts of Luvox in his system, it is hard to believe that he stopped taking it. But it’s also possible that he only took it a day or two before the shooting.

We can’t ever know for a fact if Eric really stopped taking Luvox, despite his journal entries mentioning it. For all we know he could have stopped for a day – or a week. The medication was found in his system at the time of his death with a therapeutic amount which means he had taken a recent dose. But in order to determine how recent the dose was, we need to know how much he took. But there is no way we will ever know how much he took. Even if we know what dose he was prescribed that doesn’t tell us how much he actually took. There is reason to believe he was messing around with his dose, so basing any calculations on his prescribed dose isn’t going to be reliable. But we don’t even know his prescribed dose.

While it’s true that psychotropic medication can induce homicidal and suicidal thoughts in people (or enhance those that already exist), that isn’t true for everyone. We can’t really say that Luvox influenced the massacre. Eric documented the fact that Luvox made him feel normal and he had to stop taking it to feel his rage again.

I’m not saying that psychotropic drugs are harmless, but they each play a very unique role in people’s lives, and we can’t really determine what role Luvox played in Eric’s life.

Reasons to believe it:

Eric had Luvox in his system when he died

Eric’s records of prescription anti-depressants are public

Reasons to question it:

Dylan did not have any medication in his system when he died.

There is no indication that Dylan was ever prescribed anything, and his medical records are sealed and his parents aren’t talking.
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  • February 27th, 2012 7:38 am
    Rob B.

    Ah, but you’re leaving out one key component. We don’t actually know what the long term effects of the medication are because no long term, large sample studies have been conducted. We do know that many medications have long term neurological and psychological effects that continue to linger long after the patient has stopped taking the medication. We have enough anecdotal evidence that the U.S. Army will not accept recruits who have ever taken Ritalin due to potential issues that can surface much later in life. So we do know that Eric had Luvox in his system. It seems to me that the public has a right to know whether or not Dylan EVER was prescribed anti-psychotics or any other mood altering substances. His rights to privacy ended when he opened fire on innocent people. His parents should consider themselves lucky that they weren’t brought up on charges of neglect for not seeing what was clearly a dangerous situation and release any information they have on what medications he was precribed, if any.

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  • March 17th, 2012 9:23 pm
    Cal Emerson

    Hi Rob,

    Thanks for sharing. It is my understanding that Dylan’s parents didn’t know how bad his depression was and that had they known, they would have gotten him help from a psychiatrist – so based on that alone, it’s unlikely he was prescribed medication – but we will never really know. Just like we will never really know how long Eric was actually taking his medication for – he claims he stopped taking it, so there may be no long-term effects in Eric’s case.

    All we know is that Eric had Luvox in his system when he died – we don’t know how long he was actually taking it for. We know it was prescribed, but that doesn’t mean he took it when he was supposed to. For all we know, he could have taken it for 2 months and then stopped.

    Normally this wouldn’t be questionable in someone else’s case, but in Eric’s case it is questionable because Eric is documented stating that he stopped taking his medication because it was working, and he wanted to feel the rage.

    Really, we know nothing…

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