A-Z of mental health
Information and advice on a huge range of mental health topics
Involuntary tranquilizer addiction
Posted Thursday 24 February 2011
There are currently an estimated 1.5 million people addicted to prescribed tranquillisers and sleeping tablets such as Valium/Diazepam, Temazepam, Ativan/Lorazepam, Mogadon/Nitrazepam and Zimovane/Zopiclone. (See Mind’s Making sense of sleeping pills and minor tranquilisers for more information.)
Not only are these drugs highly addictive with significant side effects, they can also have incapacitating withdrawal symptoms making coming off them extremely difficult. Since 1988, the guidelines have stated that they should be used for 2-4 weeks only; however, doctors have ignored these guidelines leaving many patients on them for months, years and decades.
Although this problem has been caused by the health service, there is still no specialist NHS support to help patients safely withdraw from these drugs (to which they have become addicted through no fault of their own). GPs do not have the knowledge or resources to help patients come off safely and reverse the addiction they created. Doctors have in the past applied abrupt and enforced withdrawals which is dangerous practice and unlikely to be successful.
The All Party Parliamentary Group for Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction was set up in 2008 to raise awareness of involuntary tranquiliser addiction and lobby NHS services. We want the NHS to give specialist help, so that patients can safely withdraw from these drugs, and we want to help prevent future addictions.
Successive governments have allowed this public health crisis to continue and one of the problems is that pharmaceutical companies strongly influence government health policy.
The Department of Health has ignored expert scientific evidence presented to them showing the dangers of benzodiazepines for 30 years. Correspondence from the department to patients, academics and MPs demonstrates that the department’s energies have been mostly focussed on denial, feigned action and concealment.
In response to these concerns the Department of Health has sent formulaic letters with stock phrases such as ‘the Department considers addiction to prescribed medicine to be an important issue’ yet no action ever follows.
Professor Ashton, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychopharmacology at Newcastle University, a world expert on benzodiazepine use and withdrawal, has repeatedly asked the Department of Health to take action. Professor Ashton ran a withdrawal clinic in Newcastle from 1982-1994 with a success rate of nearly 90%.
At a recent meeting with the Public Health Minister none of her advisors from the Department had even heard of Professor Ashton, even though her successful taper method is used worldwide. Effectively, benzodiazepines are government delivered drugs, their main function being to feed the chemical addiction created by the health system with a drug that cures nothing.
Help us campaign for better services – take up this issue with your MP.
Michael Behan, All Party Parliamentary Group for Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction
10 Comments
-
I want to commend Mind for your articles on learning to live without harmful pharmaceuticals. It's heartening.
-
I'm very disappointed to see Mind using the term 'Involuntary Tranquilizer Addiction'.
The reality is that nobody 'chooses' addiction. The vast majority of people who use illicit drugs -- even those more closely associated with dependence like heroin and crack cocaine -- do so without problems, and stop when they wish to do so. A fairly small proportion (around 10%) of triers go on to develop problems. This is probably about the same proportion of people who become dependent upon their prescribed medication.
The fact is, all addictions have a complex aetiology -- some combination of biological, psychological and social factors produce a susceptibility -- not a lack of will power, or moral fibre. This is just as true for people who become dependent via the iatrogenic route as it is for those who become dependent on black market drugs. To suggest that one group is somehow less culpable, or less deserving of support is just plain wrong.
Nobody asks to be sexually abused as a child, to go up in the care of the local authority, or to be subject to severe social and economic deprivation either -- the fact that these people choose strong forms of self-medication as a coping strategy is no more 'wicked' than those who go to their GP and have their self medication written on a legal prescription.
The sole point of this term, 'involuntary tranquilizer addiction' is to attempt to differentiate people who have become dependent upon prescribed medication from those who are dependent on other drugs. The implicit suggestion is that 'we're innocent victims, and therefore worthy of your support -- unlike that other shower, who brought it on themselves.'
The reality is that the causes of the condition are the same (even if the route by which people arrive there differs slightly) and the treatment for this condition is the same, and so the only possible purpose of continuing to use such a value-laden term is to continue to heap stigma and moral opprobium on a group that is already the most stigmatized group in our society.
It's time to say goodbye to the idea of involuntary tranquilizer addiction, and the divisive moral assumptions that underpin it.
Peter McDermott
Policy Officer
The Alliance
http://www.m-alliance.org.uk -
(Ed's note: John is responding for Michael)
These blogs were written simply to highlight the problems of people addicted to prescribed drugs. There is no reference to anything other than addiction to drugs prescribed by doctors.
It is not suggested that one group is less deserving than another and there are certainly no moral assumptions underpinning the work of APPGITA which was formed because prescribed benzodiazepine addicts have no access to treatment, no re-hab, no aftercare, and the protracted withdrawal symptoms which have in many persisted for decades is not recognised by the health system or the Dept of Work and Pensions.
If I had turned up at the surgery as an illicit user I would have had more available to me than for prescribed addiction, which is nothing. There is no treatment or help at all.
I have lost the ability to earn an income and I have debilitating symptoms which are not even medically acknowledged.
As far as how addiction occurs benzodiazepine dependence is chemical; it effects GABA activity and when you come off it withdrawal symptoms occur. Many patients who became addicted were prescribed them for conditions other than mental health issues such as muscle spasms; this is not complex aetiology.
I agree that all addictions require proper treatment and perhaps you may wish to offer your support in lobbying the Department of Health for at least the same level of services provided for illicit use.
-
Hi Peter, Thanks for your comment - this post is about highlighting the very difficult situation where people find themselves addicted to tranquilisers with little support from the services that prescribed it to them in the first place. We may have used the wrong terms in the title and we apologise for that. John from APPGITA (the author) has already responded above.
-
You seem to be insinuating that no help is available through our Health Service / PCTs for the problem of dependence on Benzodiazepines and/or Z-Drugs.
Certainly my local Dependency Clinic offers help and structured support for those with tranquilizer / Z-drugs addictions.
Although I am not 100% sure, I believe that in fact most drug services do.
That said, any help with raising awareness and support for this widespread problem is commendable.
My best,
Skunkworks -
Could i please reply to Skunkworks. It is good that he/she has a local Dependency Clinic, to treat addiction to benzos/z drugs.This however is the exception rather than the rule.The Dept of Health have passed the problem onto local PCTS,who are very loathe to tackle the issue due to lack of funding.The current economic climate exacerbates the problem.
Drug Manufacturers/ Big Pharma have made vast super profits, from these particular set of drugs.They have ample Capital Reserves.As such they should accept social and moral responsibilities, and fund Dependency Clinics. -
Just tell me what is the point of coming off anything? If your branded mental and the world doesn't want you then years later they tell you theres nothing wrong but your personality but the world still doesn't want you, ignores the fact that your income is taken away, brands you a scrounger and leaves you to live a half life where the best thing you can hope for is a lifetime of voluntary work? Worse thing to do is let the system label you an addict where you become an EX addict and dont get painkillers even when you are in pain. Whats the point when the future will get even worse for you and no one gives a toss and no one will write a single word about you in the media unless it is to demonise us.
-
Hi Linda, Sounds like a difficult time for you. Do contact Mindinfoline by email or phone if you're struggling - they're great for information and advice: http://www.mind.org.uk/help/advice_lines#contact
If you're feeling particularly low, the Samaritans are always at the end of a phone call or email. Take care.
-
If you are lucky, your location will provide something of a service to help you come off medication. But many areas don't as is the case where I now live. Some services are well run and others are not. I came off of medication in 1984 and Orwellian life became a reality. That was at a day hospital. Adequate funding is a problem along with adequate suitable staff. I still take anti-psychotics but no sleepers. On the most part you are very much on your own in coming off as no one appears to want to take responsibility for what happens.
-
I was addicted to benzodiazepines from the age of 17 to 43. I originally went to my GP with a physical problem, and was prescribed diazepam. It sort of worked because for quite a while I didn't really worry about my physical problem..I had tranquillsers to stop me worrying. Over the course of the 26 year addiction my health and emotional and spiritual wellbeing decayed to frighteningly low levels. I kept going back to see a succession of different GPs because I felt so ill all the time, I had a constant feeling that I was about to die.
During all this time I managed to keep working, though it was very hard, I never felt well or relaxed or happy, my life was a nightmare. Through a book that came my way (by Shirley Trickett) I finally realised what was happening to me. What followed was a six year struggle to get off the drugs while continuing to work. I can recommend this as an exquisite form of self torture, I have no idea how I got through my life at that time. Eventually my health collasped to the point where I could no longer work and, to cut a long story short, I managed to come off the drugs.
I have never managed to get back into full time employment. By the time I finally managed to get these drugs out of my life I had descended from a middle-class professional life to living in very reduced circumstances. I am nearly 60 now, and though my life is better than it was while on the drugs, I know I have suffered damage from taking them that is unlikely ever to go away. The lives of my children have been damaged too as I was unable to be a proper father while all this was going on.
These drugs are wonderful for helping people for very short periods of time while ways of changing the circumstances that are causing them problems can be found. Unfortunately for people like me, our overpaid, self-seeking and frankly lazy general practitioners have for a long time used these drugs as a means of reducing their workload. They measure success by the non-return of a patient, whether that non-return is because of a "cure" or lapse into despair that any real help will be forthcoming.
Commenting is now closed.