Benzodiazepines

Psychologist and Professor Amber Gum has published the story of her personal journey of rethinking psychotropic medication in a special issue on "The Politics of Mental Health" in The Journal of Medicine and the Person. Influenced by Mad in America and the work of Robert Whitaker, Gum became aware of evidence that “suggests that psychotropic medications are less effective and more harmful than most believe” and now hopes to encourage other mental health professionals and researchers to engage in open-minded, critical self-assessment of standard practices.

Note: The episode did not air as expected. ABC indicates it will air Tuesday, January 21. Six weeks ago a producer from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer contacted me. “ABC wants to do a piece on addiction and prescription drugs,” she told me. “Would I agree to an interview?” I was not without reservations. I have a healthy disregard for much of mainstream news, but I also realize their reach and potency. The proposition was risky, but one which I decided to take. It’s a cliché, but one with truth: If one person can benefit, then it’s worth it. I said “yes.”

My sincere message to those whose vitality and lives have been sapped and zapped by this iatrogenic dis-order: most of us DO recover! And even if it is not without some benzo remnants lodged in our cellular memory, what we learn about our own resilience will guide us to places in our lives we didn't expect to reach. HOPE was my key through the arduous path of withdrawal and recovery.

On October 23, the New York Times ran a very nice feature story about a Los Angeles woman, Keris Myrick, who, even though she...

"Fish that have been exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug are more active and have better chances of survival than unexposed fish," reports Nature....

The May issue of Addiction includes a review of pharmacological and phenomenological issues around benzodiazepine (BZD) and SSRI discontinuation.  Definitions, perceptions and management of the...

Two years ago, when I first felt the dizzy confusion of benzo disability, I talked about it openly. I remember discussing it briefly with an older friend who found my plight strangely fascinating. He asked if I remembered Quaaludes, a sedative-hypnotic that was all the rage in the 1960s and ‘70s. “We called them ‘Stumble Biscuits,’” he told me, “because you’d stumble down the street and hit one car and then stumble over and hit something else and it was just happy and goofy. It’s too bad they took them off the market. Those things were great.”

Although opioid addiction and overuse have garnered significant national attention, similar trends in benzodiazepine overprescription and overuse continue to go unnoticed.

Pneumonia cases in the elderly are strongly associated with use of anticholinergic medications, including benzodiazepines and tricyclic antidepressants.

As the benzodiazepine crisis spreads throughout the United States and other parts of the world, so does the debate within the benzo victim/survivor community. We know that it can be terribly invalidating to label and treat a person as a “drug addict” who is only physically dependent on benzos — and taking these drugs exactly as prescribed by a doctor. However, it can be equally invalidating to deny that “iatrogenic benzo dependence” intersects in multiple ways in the lives of people struggling with “addiction.” People will ALSO SUFFER when yanked off of their benzos, or forced into similar rapid tapers when a doctor becomes aware of their addiction history. 

I hope this post doesn’t seem like a stretch, because it’s about something so basic it’s almost embarrassing: Walking, the intuitive act of putting one foot in front of the other to carry you from one place to the next. Yet if you’ve ever endured damage or a withdrawal syndrome from a psychiatric medicine, you’ll also know that things, like walking, that look and seem basic to others, and that did so in your past, “pre-medication” life, do not in fact come easily. Sometimes, on the worst days, they don’t come at all.

A "systematic review" of all outcome studies of patients with mood disorders, in the March issue of the Australia & New Zealand Journal of...

Massachusetts Bill HD 4554 needs to gain sufficient state representative support by Tuesday, March 1, 2016. This bill will put restrictions on the prescribing of benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine sleep aids, and will require that all patients be informed of the potential dangers of these drugs, specifically the dangers of long-term use.

A meta-analysis of studies found that the risk of dementia increased 22% for every additional twenty daily doses of benzodiazepine medications annually.

H. 3594 would require pharmacists to distribute pamphlets containing information on benzodiazepine misuse and abuse, risk of dependency and addiction, handling and addiction treatment resources. This would be a major legislative response to the prescribing patterns for these drugs today.

Finnish researchers found that among 2,588 patients hospitalized for the first time with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, benzodiazepine use predicted almost 4x the rate...

Members of the group Benzodiazepine Recovery have created a video about the often debilitating symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal. Video →­

Research from Germany finds that people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective diagnoses given multiple medications - an antipsychotic plus a benzodiazepine or more than one...

The minute you sit down in the chair in a mental health professional's office, you’re no longer seen as a person. The mental health system is incapable of seeing past the solid wall of your current label. Their only cure is drugs. "First Do No Harm" are powerful words. It’s unfortunate they don’t apply to psychiatry.

From what I’ve learned, it seems that the minute you walk into a psychiatrist’s office or have the misfortune to be locked up on a ward is the minute you’re given a diagnosis and medication(s), and perhaps even electroshock. There is no “normal”; “normal” is not allowed. You have a “lifelong disorder” of whatever ilk, and it must always be medicated. This is the paradigm.

Study details Medicaid-insured birth cohort’s exposure to psychiatric medications and mental health services.

Military.com reports that doctors from the Department of Veterans' Affairs are continuing to prescribe tranquilizers such as Valium and Xanax despite the VA's guidelines...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publication Psychiatric News has released an article about the recent British Medical Journal study finding strong links between long-term...

Research examines the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on experiences of chronic pain among low-income patients.

As a service user of the REST project at Mind in Camden, I want to celebrate World Benzodiazepine Day 2018 by telling the world a little bit about what REST has done for me. I’m now 18 months off benzos, but I still attend REST regularly to process the anger and grief I feel about what I went through, and to support those who are still tapering.