The Ashton Manual · BenzoBuddies · APPGITA web site
The Ashton Manual · BenzoBuddies · APPGITA web site
Benzodiazepine Addiction,
Withdrawal & Recovery
LATEST NEWS - January 16, 2012
Are sleeping pills mother's NEW little helper?
Daily Mail, January 2, 2012
Doctors sued for creating 'Valium addicts',
The Independent, December 29, 2011
AVAILABLE ONLINE:
Benzodiazepines: How They Work
and How to Withdraw
by Professor C H Ashton DM, FRCP
THE ASHTON MANUAL IN OTHER LANGUAGES
No frame to the left? Click here.
In the UK and interested in taking legal action against your prescriber? Contact Miss Caroline Moore, Medical Solicitors, Unit 1A South West Centre, Troutbeck Road, Sheffield S7 2QA Tel: 0114 250710. Email caroline@medical-solicitors.com for details.
This web site is dedicated to sufferers of iatrogenic benzodiazepine tranquilliser addiction everywhere. Launched on July 6, 2000 with a dozen pages this site now has more than 1220 pages of articles and information, expert medical documents, news stories and personal accounts. You can navigate this site from the side frame to the left or from the dropdown menu below. A good place to begin is the FAQ Document – "Benzodiazepine Dependency and Withdrawal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file".
For the best and most up-to-date information on benzodiazepine withdrawal you are encouraged to read: "Benzodiazepines: How they Work & How to Withdraw" (The Ashton Manual) by Professor C Heather Ashton, DM, FRCP, Revised August 2002. Versions of the Ashton Manual in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Finnish, Danish, Dutch and Swedish can be accessed from this page.
For online benzodiazepine withdrawal support you may like to join BenzoBuddies or one of the other support groups listed on the Support page. Please note that benzo.org.uk is not associated with any support group so cannot endorse any advice that you might receive.
You are encouraged to visit the website of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction (APPGITA) and to get involved with the campaign for justice for the victims of these drugs. See Manifesto.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Any advice given on this site should not be substituted for the advice of a physician who is well-informed about benzodiazepine addiction and withdrawal. All advice given here is therefore to be followed at your own risk. You are advised never to stop taking any medication abruptly.
Please also note this is a personal web site and its owner has no connections with any organisations or support groups. Here are some of your comments about this web site and a review by Dr James Cave of Clinnix.net.
Ray Nimmo · UK
2000 - 2012
I've met people who've been addicted to benzodiazepines for 20 or 30 years - wrecked their lives, wrecked their jobs, wrecked their families. It's a silent addiction. We all know about illegal drugs, we all know about alcohol, we don't know about this group... I think there has been some denial of the problem and I think that when you're talking about drugs that are legally, albeit unwisely, prescribed causing a problem - you know it's never really fitted anywhere, nobody wanted to grab hold of it - certainly not in denial now. We are going to get a grip of this and it needs to be dealt with on a number of different fronts, there's no doubt about that... I'm taking this very seriously. It's an issue that's fallen through the cracks. We want to make sure that training and awareness is raised so that GPs know how to prescribe well and then we need to make sure that we've got the right services in place to give them the help and support they need to get off these drugs and get back and enjoy lives as they should be able to. – Anne Milton MP, Public Health Minister on BBC Radio 4 Face the Facts, July 27, 2011. More Quotations »»
"On benzodiazepine brain damage reported to the Medical Research Council in January 1982: "The results didn't surprise us because we already knew long-term alcohol use could cause permanent brain changes. There should have been a really good, large-scale study but I was never given the facilities or resources to do it. I asked to set up a unit to research benzos but they turned me down... they could have set-up a special safety committee, but they didn't even do that. I am not going to speculate why; I was grateful for the support they did give me. There were always competing interests for the same resources, so maybe it wasn't regarded as important enough. I was getting on with other research and didn't want to be labelled as the person who just pushed benzos... I should have been more proactive... I assumed the prescribing would peter out, but GPs are still swinging them around like Smarties." - Professor Malcolm Lader, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, Independent on Sunday, November 7, 2010. More Quotations »»
"We now try to prescribe [benzodiazepines] only for a few days because we know that it's very difficult to get people off these drugs...in some people, it can be three or four days of the drug before they get hooked". Read more »» - Professor Steven Field, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, ITV West interview, March 2009. More Quotations »»
"Benzos are responsible for more pain, unhappiness and damage than anything else in our society." – Phil Woolas MP, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, Oldham Chronicle, February 12, 2004. More Quotations »»
"The story of benzodiazepines is of awesome proportions and has been described [by David Blunkett MP] as a national scandal. The impact is so large that it is too big for Governments, regulatory authorities and the pharmaceutical industry to address head on, so the scandal has been swept under the carpet." - Phil Woolas MP, House of Commons Hansard Debates, December 7, 1999. More Quotations »»
"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. More Quotations »»
"It is more difficult to withdraw people from benzodiazepines than it is from heroin. It just seems that the dependency is so ingrained and the withdrawal symptoms you get 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, and I get letters from people saying you can go on for two years or more. Some of the tranquilliser groups can document people who still have symptoms ten years after stopping." - Professor M H Lader, Royal Maudesley Hospital, BBC Radio 4, Face The Facts, March 16, 1999. More Quotations »»
Search this Site:
Click here to go to the top of this page:
No frame to the left? Click here
