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There was a shooting in the Capitol building this summer. You heard about it. It will be reviewed in end of the year digests of news events come late next December.

Some speak of the heroism of the two policemen who were killed in the line of duty. Some bemoan that nowhere and nothing is safe anymore. Some may feel moved by the fact that his parents can say they still love this troubled man.

To me there is an obvious message the media, for the most part, missed. Russell Weston Jr. is a schizophrenic who didn't take meds. Medication is a form of bottled sanity and had he taken whatever he was supposed to take, this most certainly never would have happened. A swig of Pepsi and, say, some haldol administered by any half decent doctor who managed to pass his boards, and we would have seen that Friday afternoon's Oprah. There would have been no network coverage of a funeral because no one would have died that Friday in the Capitol building.

Russell's current life is as an injured, despised murderer. Things might have been different had he only taken his medication. Would he have been an Ivy Leaguer mastering Chaucer with a pretty coed under each arm? Not likely. He'd probably be struggling with mental illness—just like the rest of us.
Taking prescribed meds is the right thing to do. They stabilize us and sometimes even work wonders.

But some of us are inconvenienced by a dry mouth or say a twitching finger. Some don't like meds because they remind them that they're ill. Some don't like to be bothered with them. Others are disappointed that pills don't transform their current dreary world into a paradise. At this point in time, paradise for Russell Weston Jr. is simply walking into a 7-11 and ordering a Mars bar. He is paying ever so dearly for not taking his meds. Russell's torture is now doomed to antiseptic locked wards and long dreary hallways.