The drugging of our Miltary with Stan White

BIO: Stan White

Stan White is a retired high school principal. He is the father of Marine Corporal Andrew White, who was a healthy 23-year-old, gung-ho Marine returning from a nine-month tour in Iraq, who, like so many of his brothers in arms, suffered from the seemingly normal stresses of war—insomnia, nightmares and restlessness. The young corporal turned to the military’s mental health system for help. Within a few short months, White became unrecognizable to his family. Eleven months after beginning his first cocktail of mind-altering drugs, he died in his sleep from what the medical examiner ruled an “accidental overdose of medication.” Since taking his first multi-drug cocktail to the date of his death, White had been prescribed no less than nineteen different drugs with many at ever-increasing dosages, including antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety, pain killers and antibiotics. The prescribed drugs Methadone, Oxycodone, Paxil and Seroquel were found in his system at the time of death. Stan and his wife, Shirley, blame the “lethal cocktail” of psychiatric drugs for the death of their son. “We don’t think they should be given to troops in the field,” Stan White said. “It’s worth asking whether they should be given to anybody anytime, civilian or military.” The Whites are advocating more alternatives for soldiers and have testified before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.