Benzo Injury? Tell the FDA!

JC Curle
By
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14
2049

Almost a year ago, Benzodiazepine Information Coalition launched a non-profit focused on harm from benzodiazepines, particularly their ability to injure those who were taking the drug exactly as instructed. It has been a busy year for a strictly volunteer-reliant organization, and we feel we have accomplished a lot:

We successfully put together a medical board that is aware of the potential for damage caused by these drugs.

We were invited to submit a 2 minute video about the harm and injuries caused by benzodiazepines to an annual psychiatry conference.

We have collaborated with Allen Frances for a blog about benzodiazepines.

We were also interviewed for Vice and quoted in the Colorado Gazette.

We gained a new director, Dr. Christy Huff, a cardiologist who suffers her own benzodiazepine injury.

We are sending one of our board physicians to testify at the Massachusetts Benzodiazepine Bill.

In addition, we added a United Kingdom extension to our non-profit. The UK is ahead of the United States in recognizing benzodiazepine withdrawal and issues, even if imperfectly. The British Medical Association is concerned about how to handle benzodiazepines and withdrawal. They’ve had a lot of media coverage in the BCC and the Daily Mail and are debating the best solution to aiding those who are injured. They have had a successful petition for a public inquiry on benzodiazepines. It will be very exciting to see where the UK ends up with this.

Our latest initiative involves and requires full participation from the benzodiazepine injured community. For World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, we are asking everyone to submit an FDA report about their injury.

This initiative developed after speaking to the non-profit organization Public Citizen which has an especially successful track record for petitioning the FDA for labeling changes on dangerous drugs. Their success stems from their passion, the high caliber of their volunteers and employees, and their large access to funding. Public Citizen helps individuals and small groups to fight fights they are not be able to afford to take on on their own.

World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, Benzo Buddies and the various support groups are all participating. We are not getting enough of the FDA forms we need to move forward with this initiative. We need help. We need those injured by benzodiazepines to take the time to fill out the form. We have teams of people willing to help with this. If you need assistance with filling out the form please contact Dr. Christy Huff at [email protected] and assistance will be arranged.

The time to act is now. This problem has been going on for 60 years, and we can be the generation that stops it, but we need to come together and take action.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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14 COMMENTS

  1. You want awareness ? http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/mental-health/

    Lets see what you activist are made of, lets see one of you bring it there. Its worth 1000s of views and if done right could attract /create alot more activists. Me and that site battled. You will likely face opposition. This a job for someone besides me. They will resist, watch it or they accuse you of having an agenda and ban you. You have to infiltrate smart. Good luck.

    Resistance if futile you will be assimilated… Just don’t tell them that.

  2. “This initiative developed after speaking to the non-profit organization Public Citizen”

    “Public citizen” gives Edwin Fuller Torrey a voice

    Until Mental Health Services Are Improved, Tucson-Like Mass Murders Will Not End
    Statement by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. and Sidney Wolfe, M.D.
    Unless two predictors of mass murder are addressed and changed, the United States will continue to lead all developed countries in the number of people killed by inadequately diagnosed or treated people with serious mental illness.

    https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/until-mental-health-services-are-improved-tucson-mass-murders-will-not-end

    Ban those evil benzos but force those nueroleptics ! “Public citizen” typical Liberals nothing but hypocrisy and contradiction.

    WHO: Moderator: Dr. Sidney Wolfe, founder and senior adviser of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group
    Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center
    Dr. Azza AbuDagga, health services researcher of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group

    “A joint report of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.”

    Not with a 10 foot pole “Public Citizen’s Health Research Group”

  3. I am trying to be polite and not spam up the comments but I would like to know why any psychiatric survivor would want anything to do with this “Public Citizen” organization when they are calling for https://www.citizen.org/documents/2330.pdf Page 12 “Public Citizen” calling for “widespread assisted outpatient treatment programs” Forced drugging, they are promoting psychiatry’s very worst human rights violation, why would we want anything to do with them ?

    How could you stand in the same room with these people ?

    • The_Cat

      You are stuck in state of “political Purgatory” that has created a major blind spot when it comes to your activism against psychiatric abuse.

      You have an appropriate level of distrust of the government and the various forms of government repression.

      BUT, you have a major uncritical blind spot when it comes to analyzing how “free” market capitalism has brought us to this point of a Psychiatry/Big Pharma (with all their drugs and labels) dominated world.

      And you seem so ready to go forward WITHOUT seriously questioning whether or not this profit based and class based dictatorship (“free” only for those who have the gold and the related power that goes with it) should be allowed to continue running the show.

      So the best you can come up with is some type of Libertarian “hands off the marketplace” approach that will simply allow all those in strategic positions of power in this economic and political system to continue to run amuck with their unending forms of oppression.

      While sometimes your critique of a problem is spot on and your personal sharing of how the System has harmed you is truly heartbreaking, it is this “blind spot” (I mentioned above) that can be so frustrating and, at times, annoying to some readers here.

      For every one’s sake here at MIA, and especially for your own sake, I truly hope you will not be condemned to this state of “political purgatory” for eternity.

      Richard

      • The leftists gave birth to today’s crony capitalism with their millions of rules and regulations making it so only big corporations with massive legal departments and all kinds of staff to keep up with them can survive. Companies like Walmart and Monsanto would never have dominated in a true free market without the endless leftists rules and regulations to suppress the competition.

        • Cat there are times when I agree with you, and I’m certainly alarmed by Public Citizen advocating for more forced treatment. But I don’t want to live in a world without regulations making sure that large corporations don’t harm me and others. I am sympathetic to the libertarian position up to a point, but regulations exist for a really good reason. I don’t ascribe to your viewpoint that leftists are responsible for this. If libertarians got their way, we’d have no protection at all from corporations (and individuals) who do serious harm.

          • “no protection at all from corporations (and individuals) who do serious harm.”

            I don’t pledge allegiance to any political system, that’s for extremist retards but the libertarians say the only role of government is to protect you from harm. They are the only ones without glaring contractions like the Democrats and Republicans so called “ideologies”.

            http://www.google.com/search?q=Libertarians+say+the+only+role+of+government+is+to+protect+you+from+harm
            Google says I got it right.

            Anyway I won’t align myself with the “widespread” forced drugging people “public citizen” and their NAZI inspired plans to control undesirables with kidnappings restraints and injections. I just can’t do it.

            I could tell something was up with that “W-BAD” from the very start with the deceptive vagueness, I know that technique from reading psych industry propaganda.

            I could see they were mirroring what the war on pain patient opiate crew is doing, drug testing and databases turn your doctor into a probation officer that’s been a total backfire like you used either on a diesel but alignment with the forced drugging NAZIs, again like the NAMI’s patient lemmings who fight against their own rights. Count me out.

    • I am trying to be polite and not spam up the comments but I would like to know why any psychiatric survivor would want anything to do with this “Public Citizen”

      Because “Public Citizen […] has an especially successful track record for petitioning the FDA for labeling changes on dangerous drugs”?

      • “Public Citizen” calling for “widespread assisted outpatient treatment programs” Forced drugging

        The whole Idea of working with “Public Citizen” the architects of “widespread assisted outpatient treatment programs” brings me to > Nazi Collaborators http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Nazi_Collaborators

        For a wile the NAZIs had an especially successful track record, they kicked butt at warfare and then there was that thing of the first ones in the gas chambers were the mental patients.

        “Widespread assisted outpatient treatment programs” is there anything more NAZI inspired then rounding up undesirables who committed no crimes for force drugging with Nueroleptics depot injects against their will ? Kidnap them , restrain them , inject them. Widespread.

        Thats the problem with leftists, they have no honor, not for themselves or anything, they can’t even understand what the fuss is about.

  5. “Written prescriptions for less than a 10-day supply will not be refilled.”

    -the Massachusetts Benzodiazepine Bill.

    This ain’t about warning labels, these people have another agenda are tapping benzo survivors to make the whole thing look grass roots same way NAMI gets their patient followers to fight against their own rights.

    “Written prescriptions for less than a 10-day supply will not be refilled.”

    Well when your stuck in the insanity of withdrawal when they won’t refill your scripts or having an “all natural” anxiety attack try and act calm in the ER so the don’t sign you up for “widespread assisted outpatient treatment programs”

    “Written prescriptions for less than a 10-day supply will not be refilled.”

    See how they just sneak that in there wile telling you the whole thing is about informed consent warning labels.

    • Help “Public Citizen” with their agenda take to away your benzos and force people on to mood remover pills nueroleptic injections.

      We can pretend its grassroots wile we play on the AstroTurf.

      Its OK we only got hurt with benzos who cares how much the people subjected to the “Public Citizen” forced drugging campaign suffer. Widespread Kidnapping Restraint and Injection for a whole lot of people, Sucks for them.

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