2009, the suburbs of dallas. the powerful drugs that once helped severely autistic 10-year-old kara zartler were no longer working. the pharmacist said, this is the highest dose i have ever seen a 45-pound person on. this, to me, is equivalent to maybe a 2,000-pound horse. at that time kara was in school with 3,000 hits a day. you heard that right. thee see woo hit herself 3,000 times in a seven-hour school day. that is more than seven strikes every minute. the thing about a story like this want to eat something? it defines you. and everybody soon knew just had bad things had become. one day the zartlers neighbor recommended cannabis.
treatments especially for someone with severe autism as kara. completely nonverbal. one night she repeatedly hit herself for 12 hours nonstop. at that point it s like we need to go a different direction. that s when the anti-psychotics started right after that. kara starting taking a cocktail of medications called psychotropics used for adult and a with disorders. it changed it to a constant to every 15 minute kind of thing. definitely an improvement but with a tremendous cost. mark says the drugs left kara unable to do anything. not present or aware of her surroundings. the little girl they had longed for, that little toddler full of world and smiles was lost to them. it s permanent grief. yeah. she was robbed of a life.
would be pretty happy about that. often time the headline is my kid is taking a cannabis drug, and some people would say, i can t believe you did that? i would be, i am trying to find something that will help my child because at the end of the day, that s my child and i am thinking for the future, for him. that s what we heard again and again. maribel and carlos these look so nice. marie and jay. there we go. the zartlers and kara. i remember them being desperate and in need of some help and really needing some balance for kara and for their own lives. remember, none of this comes easy. the zartlers story takes a frightening turn, when we come back. you are my fire
anything from repettively banging their head against a wall to hitting their head to pinching themselves. any idea why that happens as part of the autism spectrum? it may be very similar to a lot of the other repetitive behaviors that they have. autism. asd for awe stichl spectrum disorder is by definition a wide array of behaviors. mild or severe, the two core symptoms are social communication challenge, one third o nonverbal and second, restrictive or repetitive behaviors like rocking, flapping, even hitting. take a drirng snk. kara is aggressive, throwing things, breaking things, hitsing
of taking because this would happen. we re going home. but one day in june of 2009, they had no choice. kara had an important doctor s appointment five hours away in galveston, texas. christie and mark decided to try the marijuana brownies their neighborhood had made. i just gave it to her and she ate it. it was about an hour where she was sitting no longer rocking and no longer hand-flapping or hitting, and she s sitting there looking out the window and looking at me and smiling. it was like a miracle. i got to see it up close when i went on a drive with them after kara had a dose of