Prescription drugs caused possible psychotic break in Col. Williams?

Did you know the Biblical Greek word for "witchcraft" is "Pharmakeia"? It is, of course, where we get the word "Pharmacy". Why is this interesting?

There's some speculation right now that the prescription drug prednisone may have been a contributing factor in causing a psychotic break in former Col. Russell Williams, who's crime spree is believed to have begun out of the blue sometime in 2007... right around the time he was prescribed a series of drugs to deal with chronic pain.

Now of course, it's no excuse for his actions, but it does perhaps shed some light on how he supposedly "fell through the cracks" of the military's psychological screening programs. The side affects of some of these powerful drugs are not even close to being well understood, and in some cases have even been covered up by the big drug companies.

One example that I'm personally somewhat familiar with is the drug Viiox, which is now off the market, but was prescribed to me for a minor but painful injury I had a few years back. (pre-2004) One of the fairly rare side effects of that drug was depression, and I had a pretty weird experience while on it. I had a dream one night while taking it, during which a former classmate of mine died. But for the next two days, I was in a pretty depressed state, having somehow mixed my dream into reality, thinking that my friend had ACTUALLY died. It was difficult to separate the two, but when I finally realized what the drug was doing to my head, I stopped taking the meds right away. It was a pretty scary experience though, realizing that a supposedly "safe" drug had so badly messed with my mind.

But more and more these days, this sort of thing seems to be happening. According to this Toronto Star article, prescription drugs may be considered a contributing factor in some violent crimes. I think it's interesting that this has come to light in the Williams case.

In some ways, it actually makes me feel a little better. Rather than a secret nut-job having been on the loose for decades, having completely fooled the system, his crimes may have instead been more recently initiated by a bi-polar psychotic break, possibly induced by prescription drugs.

"Pharmakeia" ("Witchcraft") indeed... food for thought, at the very least.