A Quiet Drug Problem Among the Elderly
From The New York Times: Use of benzodiazepines has risen among seniors despite their increased vulnerability to the drugs' adverse effects.
"'Set aside the opioid issue,'...
Outcome of Mood Disorders Before Psychopharmacology
A "systematic review" of all outcome studies of patients with mood disorders, in the March issue of the Australia & New Zealand Journal of...
“My Road to Hell was Paved with Xanax”
-Ashley Zlatopolsky writes about how receiving a benzodiazepine for anxiety led to a severe, problematic addiction.
Call to Action: Support a Bill for Informed Benzodiazepine Use
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.
Weaning the Elderly off Sleeping Pills
In a follow-up to an earlier commentary on the topic, Paula Span discusses the widespread use and negative effects of sleeping pills among the...
Spiritual Bypass and the Chill Pill
I’ve wondered for a long time how I managed to get caught in the razor wire of benzodiazepines. I didn’t sleep for long enough to have me hovering around psychosis — true. My doctor had a dizzy insistence that benzos would resolve the problem — also true. The benzo wire was so low and sharp that I was caught before I realized I’d fallen. How could I have known? But still, the question lingers.
Latest World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day (W-BAD) Video
“We asked people from all over the world to share about the iatrogenic injury they sustained from taking benzodiazepines as prescribed and why they...
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Syndrome Awareness Video
Members of the group Benzodiazepine Recovery have created a video to raise awareness for benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome. It is estimated that 30 percent of people...
Benzodiazepines Associated With 3.5x Greater Dementia Risk
Researchers in the U.K. find in a 22-year prospective study of 1134 men, 103 of whom took benzodiazepines regularly for one or more period...
Assessing the Cost of Psychiatric Drugs to the Elderly and Disabled Citizens of the...
ProPublica is well known for creating interesting data bases that allow anyone hooked up to a computer to see by name whether a physician is accepting Big Pharma payments — from dinners to speaking engagements to consulting services. What may be lesser known is that occasionally ProPublica will publish other data that when carefully mined can reveal even more about the use of psychiatric drugs especially when there is a public funding source available.
“Study Reveals Benzodiazepines Frequently Prescribed to High-Risk Patients”
A new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that benzodiazepines are prescribed at high doses to patients at a high rate...
World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day: Official Launch
World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day has just launched its official website, w-bad.org. The new site includes useful information about benzodiazepines, ideas for taking action, and video...
Benzodiazepines: Our Other Prescription Drug Epidemic
From STAT: Although benzodiazepines are some of the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications in the U.S., few people realize how dangerous and addictive these drugs can be.
"Highly...
Lawyers Starting to Blame Military’s Psychotropic Drugs For Aberrant Behavior
Military psychiatrists and judges are beginning to see the effects of an eightfold increase of SSRI use in the military since 2005, according to...
5,012 Englishwomen Poisoned Last Year by Benzos, 8,501 by SSRIs
Addiction Today reports "Attention on illicit drugs has deflected focus from the gigantic scale of harms by legal, prescribed drugs. We give you the...
Psychiatric Drug Ads Lead to More Prescriptions and Worse Treatment
A new analysis published in the The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry investigates the public health effects of direct-to-consumer advertisements for psychiatric drugs. The researchers...
Prescription Drugs in Great Lakes Don’t Dilute as Expected
Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in Lake Michigan are undiluted two miles from treated sewage outfalls, according to research published in Chemosphere. Research has linked pharmaceuticals...
Vegas Shooter was Reportedly Prescribed Anti-Anxiety Meds
From the New York Post: Mass murderer Stephen Paddock was reportedly prescribed anti-anxiety medication this past summer. The gunman purchased 50 10-milligram tablets of Valium...
RxISK Adds Prescription Withdrawal Resource
This week the drug monitoring and patients' rights website, RxISK, launched the Centre for Medication Withdrawal, a page dedicated to establishing what causes dependence and how to treat it.
Film Highlights Harm From Benzo Overuse
From The Right Care Alliance: Documentary filmmaker and benzodiazepine survivor Holly Hardman is currently working on a film called As Prescribed, which will document the stories...
How Online Forums Offered ‘Lifeline’ for Sufferers
From The Times: In an age in which benzodiazepine dependence is increasingly becoming a global problem, online forums serve as a lifeline for numerous benzodiazepine...
“Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites”
“The rising death rates for those young white adults, ages 25 to 34, make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid-1960s to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it,” the ‘Times reports.
“Barry Takes Center Stage for World Benzo Day Launch”
Mad In America contributor and prescription drug addiction reformer Barry Haslam has “taken his fight to the world stage by helping create an international...
1 in 6 Adults in the US Takes a Psychiatric Drug
Overall, 16.7% of 242 million US adults reported filling 1 or more prescriptions for psychiatric drugs in 2013.
