Benzodiazepines
quotes
Benzodiazepines
Pharma addiction
[1.5 Million addicted in UK, and millions damaged. Now its moved on to drugs like Prozac while nutritional medicine is suppressed.]
See: Toxic psychiatry quotes benzo.org.uk : More Quotes
[2010 Nov] Drugs
linked to brain damage 30 years ago Secret documents reveal that
government-funded experts were warned nearly 30 years ago that tranquillisers
that were later prescribed to millions of people could cause brain damage.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) agreed in 1982 that there should be
large-scale studies to examine the long-term impact of benzodiazepines after
research by a leading psychiatrist showed brain shrinkage in some patients
similar to the effects of long-term alcohol abuse. However, no such work
was ever carried out into the effects of drugs such as Valium, Mogadon and
Librium – and doctors went on prescribing them to patients for anxiety, stress,
insomnia and muscle spasms. ....There are an estimated 1.5 million "involuntary
addicts" in the UK, and scores display symptoms consistent with brain
damage....Professor Lader said yesterday: "The results didn't surprise us
because we already knew long-term alcohol use could cause permanent brain
changes. There should have been a really good, large-scale study but I was never
given the facilities or resources to do it.
"I asked to set up a unit to research benzos but they turned
me down... they could have set-up a special safety committee, but they didn't
even do that. I am not going to speculate why; I was grateful for the support
they did give me. There were always competing interests for the same resources,
so maybe it wasn't regarded as important enough."
He repeated the small study and found similar, inconclusive
results, but then gave up. "I was getting on with other research and didn't want
to be labelled as the person who just pushed benzos... I should have been more
proactive... I assumed the prescribing would peter out, but GPs are still
swinging them around like Smarties."
[2010 March] Agony of the very
unlikely addicts: Thousands of over-60s are hooked on tranquillisers that have
turned them into virtual zombies 1.5million people in the UK
addicted to benzodiazepines....Although UK benzodiazepine prescriptions have
fallen since their peak of 31 million a year in 1979, there were still 10.7
million prescription for the drugs written in 2008. .....For those who try to
give up the withdrawal effects are severe, but unlike addictions to heroin and
cocaine, there is virtually no specialist assistance to help them quit.
..... 'My wife Joan says these drugs turned me into a zombie, but the truth is I
wouldn't know, as I have hardly any memory of the past 40 odd years,' says
Keith, a retired electrical engineer.
.....Barry Haslam: The withdrawal side effects were horrendous. I was
violently sick every day and over 15 months I lost 7st - half my body weight.
'I suffered night sweats that were so severe that I had to change the sheets
every day and had hallucinations and horrendous nightmares. My skin felt like it
was crawling with maggots and I became terrified of going out.....He claims they
wiped his memory and left him with brain shrinkage, visible on a scan.
.....Tess Higham, 80: 'My consultant just took the "cold turkey" approach of
stopping my tablets. The withdrawal symptoms were horrendous - my body was
flooded with adrenaline and I barely slept day or night for weeks. 'My head felt
as if it was being squeezed in a vice. Once, I suffered a convulsion which was
so violent I was later told it could have triggered a heart attack. It was
almost two years before all the withdrawal symptoms disappeared.'
In Scotland in 1998 - the most recent figures available - 114 people died from heroin and morphine overdoses. But 151 died from taking benzodiazepines. In England and Wales between 1990 and 1996, 1,623 people overdosed on heroin, morphine and other opiates while 1,810 died from benzodiazepines. [Media 2001 Benzodiazepines] Drug 'killing more than heroin'
The Benzodiazepines are the most common (1983) class of drugs used as hypnotics, sedatives, and anxiolytics...They have replaced the barbiturates....their advantage over barbituates.....dependence less likely to occur. BNF 1983 p.120
"1.5 million Xanax addicts are produced (in the U.S.) each year." - John Steinberg, Medical Director of the Chemical Dependency Program at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
"These (pills) relax people and put them to sleep, but they also cause physical dependence. It's not as dramatic a story as heroin or cocaine, but if you totalled all the damage, benzos would be comparable. Tranquillizers, the group of drugs formally called benzodiazepines, are too easily prescribed by well-meaning physicians who don't know enough about the drugs' addictive qualities." – Dr Doug Coleman, British Columbia, Canada.
"The benzodiazepines are probably the most addictive drugs ever created and the vast army of enthusiastic doctors who prescribed these drugs by the tonne have created the world's largest drug addiction problem. – Dr Vernon Coleman, The Drugs Myth, 1992.
"We are prone to thinking of drug abuse in terms of the male population and illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. It may surprise you to learn that a greater problem exists with millions of women dependent on legal prescription drugs." Robert Mendelsohn, M.D
"THIS MEDICATION IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE AFTER AS LITTLE TIME AS 4 WEEKS."--CITA
Since 1960, the UK medical profession has turned at least three million adults and two million ‘Benzo Babies’— infants whose mothers took tranquillisers during pregnancy—into brain-damaged addicts. There are currently still some one million patients trapped in addiction and another million disabled by withdrawals. The big tranquilliser cover-up by Margaret Bell
MORE than 50,000 babies a year are at risk of brain damage or death because they are poisoned by tranquillisers in the womb...The effects on the infants, who absorb the drugs through the placenta,. are even more devastating than those of heroin. One mother who was prescribed Valium while pregnant told yesterday about the agony her child later suffered. Janet Kerr, 62, said her son Charles was was born "in real distress" and doctors thought he would die. She nursed him through but he grew up with learning difficulties that made him "burst with embarrassment." He became addicted to Valium and committed suicide -at the age of 19....Research by pressure group Benzact supports fears that 50,000 babies a year are affected by tranquillisers. The organisation’s co-ordinator, Sue Bibby, said: "This problem is now. out of control." Experts believe tranquillizers could even be the cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome- cot death. [Medisa July 22, 2001] In the womb and hooked on tranquillisers
Basically, long-term use of benzodiazepines causes disintegration of the personality, largely because of an increase in anxiety and a simultaneous suppression of the ability to cope with it. The anxiety becomes totally destructive and disabling. ...the continual use of benzodiazepines leads to the inadequate production of coping chemicals and to anxiety that becomes enormous and out of hand....Fear is the overriding problem faced by a benzodiazepine-addicted individual and, without exception, all will tell you that unexplainable fear rules their lives. Carrying the fight to stop tranquilliser addiction--Pam Armstrong
More than a million adults in Britain are hooked on drugs prescribed for them by their GPs, a BBC documentary reveals. [Media May 2001] Hidden world of tranquilliser addicts
I am one of the benzodiazepine (BZD) statistics - a group of drugs that were popular with the medical profession as an all-purpose quick-fix from 1960 to at least the late 1980s. They were inappropriately prescribed far too often and indeed, judging by the statistics, even though they are now controlled drugs, the number of repeat prescriptions still issued, indicates that they still are inappropriately prescribed in a number of instances. .....People become unwitting drug addicts and even if they are fortunate enough (after one or twenty years) to realize that the distressing symptoms they constantly endure are caused by BZDs, some never recover from the neuronal damage sustained. Over the years, these people have been diagnosed with MS or ME. Perhaps the most tragic of all is that babies born to addicted mothers start life enduring the torture of withdrawal. How much this situation contributes to the ADHD statistics is a question nobody wants to examine. [Letter BMJ Oct 2004] The cost of progress