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Toxic Psychiatry
In Scotland in 1998 - the most recent figures available - 114 people died from heroin and morphine overdoses. But 151 died from taking benzodiazepines. In England and Wales between 1990 and 1996, 1,623 people overdosed on heroin, morphine and other opiates while 1,810 died from benzodiazepines. [Media 2001 Benzodiazepines] Drug 'killing more than heroin'
Heroin second to pharmaceutical drugs in
numbers and addictive problems:
"It is more difficult to withdraw someone from
benzodiazepines than it is
heroin, it just seems that the dependency is so ingrained and the withdrawal
symptoms are so intolerable that people have a great deal of problem coming off.
The other aspect is that with heroin, usually the withdrawal is over within a
week or so. With benzodiazepines, a proportion of patients go on to long-term
withdrawal and they have very unpleasant symptoms for month after month. I get
letters from people saying you can go on for two years or more."-----Professor
Malcolm Lader, Royal Maudsley Hospital
"The biggest drug-addiction problem in the world doesn't involve heroin,
cocaine or marijuana. In fact, it doesn't involve an illegal drug at all. The
world's biggest drug-addiction problem is posed by a group of drugs, the
benzodiazepines, which are widely prescribed by doctors and taken by countless
millions of perfectly ordinary people around the world... Drug-addiction experts
claim that getting people off the benzodiazepines is more difficult than getting
addicts off heroin... For several years now pressure-groups have been fighting
to help addicted individuals break free from their pharmacological chains. But
the fight has been a forlorn one. As fast as one individual breaks free from one
of the benzodiazepines another patient somewhere else becomes addicted. I
believe that the main reason for this is that doctors are addicted to
prescribing benzodiazepines just as much as patients are hooked on taking them.
I don't think that the problem can ever be solved by gentle persuasion or by
trying to wean patients off these drugs. I think that the only genuine long-term
solution is to be aware of these drugs and to avoid them like the plague. The
uses of the benzodiazepines are modest and relatively insignificant. We can do
without them. I don't think that the benzodiazepine problem will be solved until
patients around the world unite and make it clear that they are not prepared to
accept prescriptions for these dangerous products." - Dr Vernon Coleman,
Life Without Tranquillisers, 1985.
