It’s March 29. You’ve just left New York’s JFK Airport on American Airlines, headed for Chicago O’Hare—perhaps on a business trip, or maybe to visit family. It’s a happy time. You’re excited and delighted to be soaring up into the bright, blue sky.
What could go wrong?
Suddenly, an hour before the planned landing, a male passenger begins screaming, “I will blow this f—king plane up!”
Jason Douglas Pazol of Illinois was completely out of control.
Did he really have a bomb? No one knew.
“Jason has no criminal history or mental health problems. He is a longtime and well-loved schoolteacher, husband and father.”
“I swear to God, I am going to do something terrible. Land this f—king plane, right now,” he said.
“I am paranoid right now. And I know I’m paranoid…. Someone better be f—king landing this plane right now. I will blow this f—king plane up. And you heard it, you heard it everybody. You heard me say that. I want this plane on the ground.”
Pazol got what he wanted. The frightened flight crew followed bomb threat protocol, landing the airplane immediately at Detroit Metro Airport, where they swept the aircraft, luggage and all passengers for explosive devices.
Following the landing, Pazol was arrested, charged with conveying false or misleading information and is awaiting trial.
Investigators later laid out the scene in a federal criminal complaint.
“No explosives/incendiary devices were located on the airplane, in any luggage or on any person,” the complaint states.
But exactly how did Pazol, a respected teacher at Kildeer Countryside Elementary in Long Grove, Illinois—where he is still listed as a staff member—turn into an unhinged maniac?
When questioned by the FBI after the incident, Pazol said he was having adverse reactions to the psychiatric drugs he had been prescribed and was experiencing “racing thoughts” that led to his breakdown.
His attorney, who remains unnamed, said, “The incident should be viewed no differently from a physical emergency. [Pazol] is currently receiving mental health treatment and is essentially allowing the medication to work its way through his system.”
Psychiatrists know these risks. They prescribe the drugs anyway.
The attorney added, “Jason has no criminal history or mental health problems. He is a longtime and well-loved schoolteacher, husband and father.”
There had been no bomb—just a sad, scared man driven over the slender edge between reason and temporary insanity by mind-altering drugs.
What happened on that plane was not an isolated incident. Antipsychotics and antidepressants have long been known to cause the very same conditions psychiatrists claim they cure: racing thoughts, anxiety, agitation, hostility, manic reactions and, in extreme cases, suicidal urges or violence.
They act as chemical restraints—sometimes dulling symptoms, sometimes intensifying them, and sometimes turning suddenly on the patient, like a striking snake.
“There is substantial evidence linking the consumption of psychotropic medications … to mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation,” reads a research review on violent behavior and psychotropic drugs, drawing on large-scale studies of tens of thousands of patients.
Psychiatrists “depend utterly on psychotropic drugs, prescribing pills such as Prozac, Seroquel and Xanax in 86 percent of all office visits,” the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) reports.
Diane Stein, president of the Florida chapter of CCHR, echoed the warning: “Rather than helping the individual, psychotropics alienate and push them into more and more potentially dangerous behavior.”
In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration initiated “black box” warnings on antidepressants, indicating that the use of certain antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide, homicide and other acts of violence.
Psychiatrists know these risks. They prescribe the drugs anyway.
The results can be seen in case after case, with school shooters repeatedly found to have been on psychotropic drugs, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz, Columbine killer Eric Harris, and James Holmes, who murdered 12 and wounded 70 in Aurora, Colorado.
Addressing the Aurora shooting, psychiatry professor David Healy was blunt: “These killings would never have happened had it not been for the medication James Holmes had been prescribed.”
Pazol is less a criminal than a victim—of an uncaring, drug-peddling psychiatric industry that prescribed him powerful, mind-altering drugs as casually as if it were handing him a loaded gun.
And when he boarded that plane, they cashed their checks and walked away.
Now Pazol sits waiting to learn his legal fate. And if that fate is a jail cell, the next question practically asks itself: Should he be there alone—or should his psychiatrist be sharing it with him?
