![]() The 1960s brought Valium, aggressively marketed to housewives for everything from their existential to quotidian angst, the first drug to gross over $100 million in sales. ![]() Still, we sought to heal these wounds through application of more of the same mentality-one of dominance, management, and suppression of all obstacles into submission. ‘Clear Association’ That Xanax, Valium, and Other Benzodiazepines Can Cause Dementia: Studyīeginning with the glamorization of Miltown in the 1950s, the “I don’t care” pill was a way to ease the growing awareness that the world is indeed unsafe, and that something is deeply bankrupt in the promises of burgeoning science, technology, and industrialization. How did we get here? There are a reported 100 million prescriptions for benzodiazepines written annually with long-term prescriptions written for 14.7 percent of 18- to 35-year-olds and 31.4 percent of 65- to 80-year-olds, and with women twice as likely to be prescribed. Now I suffer the poetic justice of caring for dozens of women who are moving through the birth canal of Klonopin withdrawal, and I am here to guard the gates through which more may pass. I never prescribed Xanax again because of this but had reassured myself that Klonopin and Ativan were safer because of longer half-lives and slower onset. He had missed one dose before heading to the store. ![]() I remember, as an intern working in the Bellevue ICU, treating a patient who presented after having suffered a witnessed grand mal seizure in the CVS parking lot on the way to fill his Xanax prescription. In fact, there’s a bill on the floor of the Massachusetts House that would mandate this discussion, complete with a brightly colored prescription to warn the patient that their doctor is dealing them a potentially harmful substance. No one ever discussed with them true informed consent-risks, benefits, and alternatives- perhaps because we as clinicians are not told the full story in our training. Just a little more of this medication, maybe this new one will help, they were told. Women started on one, maybe two medications, that turned into three, maybe five medications over years of their lives-years when they never felt fully well and may have even struggled through. I have countless stories like this from my work with women dependent on psychiatric medications. The Dark Side of Pill Popping (Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times) She told me of a hell that she had never envisioned possible before her tenure in the world of psychiatry. When she arrived in my office, she had been using a jeweler’s scale to measure micrograms of shaved Klonopin tabs to approximate 1–2 percent dose decrements per month. In fact, he told me I probably needed them after I tried stopping them cold turkey and felt so sick I thought I was dying.” “He never once told me there might be an issue with taking these meds long term. ![]() She had long ago abandoned her original prescriber-the one who put her on Remeron and Klonopin eight years ago after she had discovered her husband’s infidelity. I have to tell you, there’s no way I can live like this.”Ī 63-year-old librarian, Jayne, came to me six months into a Klonopin taper. Of course, I can’t sleep, and I spend the whole day thinking something terrible is happening. I’m nauseous, and my stomach feels like it’s on fire. “It feels like I’m plugged into an electric socket, and every move I make shoots voltage throughout my body. ![]()
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