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In 2018, it revised its recommendations again to suggest an even slower withdrawal, based on evidence that Dr. In 2013, the British National Formulary, which advises doctors on prescribing practices, updated its guidelines to recommend benzodiazepines for short-term use only and to suggest a withdrawal schedule based on Dr. “But really, if you look at what’s happening in the brain, it’s probably not that different.” “If patients take them only as prescribed by their doctor, then they don’t meet criteria for addiction, because addiction involves behaviors that correspond to compulsive drug-seeking,” Dr. Doctors still had limited awareness of benzodiazepines’ addictive potential and some patients could continue on the same steady dose for years without exhibiting any symptoms or obvious changes in behavior. One study found that the overdose death rate among patients taking both benzodiazepines and opioids was 10 times higher than among those who only took opioids.īut unlike opioid prescriptions, which started declining after 2012, benzodiazepine prescriptions continued to rise. Scientists were starting to realize that patients who became dependent on benzodiazepines often misused opioids as well. Patients who tried to quit cold turkey faced extreme restlessness, irritability, insomnia, muscle tension, racing heartbeats and other debilitating symptoms.ĭr. The brain adapted to the sedative effect of the drugs to the point where patients would pop a calming pill just to treat the symptoms of withdrawal since the previous dose. Long-term use, she found, often led to physical dependence. She acknowledged that benzodiazepines could be useful in the short term, but said that they should not be taken for longer than two to four weeks. Ashton ran a benzodiazepine withdrawal clinic at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, tailoring her tapering schedules for each patient. “She was very upset by this problem of benzodiazepine dependence that was essentially caused by doctors overprescribing the medications, and she took it upon herself to help patients struggling to withdraw from them.”įrom 1982 to 1994, Dr.
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“Heather was a remarkable person,” Nicol Ferrier, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Newcastle University who worked closely with Dr.
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“Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How to Withdraw,” better known as “The Ashton Manual,” has become a cornerstone for those looking to quit anxiety drugs safely. Ashton would dedicate much of her career to listening to hundreds of patients’ experiences and rigorously collecting data. Others had developed muscle weakness, memory lapses, or heart or digestive issues.ĭr. Some continued to have symptoms of depression or anxiety. She said that patients who had been on the medications for months or years would come to her with fears that the drugs were making them more ill.
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Heather Ashton, a British psychopharmacologist. “Patients themselves, and not the medical profession, were the first to realize that long-term use of benzodiazepines can cause problems,” wrote Dr. The dozen or so different types - including Xanax, Valium, Ativan and Klonopin - became the most frequently prescribed drugs around the world, even as concerns arose about their potential side effects and addictive properties. Benzodiazepines worked quickly and effectively to quell racing heartbeats and dismiss spinning thoughts. When researchers began tinkering with a class of tranquilizer drugs called benzodiazepines in the 1950s, they felt they had uncovered a solution to modern anxiety and insomnia.