Gary’s Comments (group member since Jun 22, 2009)

Gary’s comments from the Q&A with Dave Cullen group.

I appreciate your response Dave. My big question is how does one become a psychopath? I doubt they are born that way, so somehow, they got into wrong thinking, misperceiving. Eric had a habit of seeing everyone as stupid, and believed stupid people didn't deserve to live. He saw himself as separate and superior to the human race. I think that this kind of thinking can be changed because it obviously doesn't lead to happiness or peace of mind. If a person thinking this way can be shown that it doesn't work, and is presented with alternatives that do work, his life would turn around. There are alternatives.

Yeah, you may be right, I don't know that much about psychopaths. The people I met that were hospitalized for psychopathic behavior were all adolescents and they all seemed to have a history of drug and alcohol use. I've seen some incredible transformations when those substances were removed from the experience, along with counseling and 12-Step Program work.

If you are privy to the inside information of psychopathic behavior you will find that drug use is so common that a non-drug using psychopath is so rare as to be statistically irrelevant. I've worked with some very angry and anti-social people who, after some months clean and sober, reveal themselves to be halfway decent. If these people were to relapse they would be just as disturbed as ever. The deciding factor in the negative behavior was drug and alcohol use.

I've dealt with a lot of troubled teenagers while working in the acute psychotic intervention unit at the Camarillo State Hospital. Most of the problems were precipitated by drug use, even "harmless" marijuana was a culprit. These boys drug use didn't seem to be a major factor in the book but I believe it was. In fact, the tragedy would not have happened but for the drug use.