This still blows my mind....

I just looked up benzodiazepines withdrawal again, and it is al just there.....

It,s al well discriped at Wikipedia , how can some quistion that we are going tru this?

Are they deaf, blind and stupid........

I think the best doctors are here on bb, without a quistion .......

How can they not see this, i just can,t believe it, what,s wrong with these people?

Did they get there digree,s with a online study......

I just don,t understand.....

Sandra.

I really think one of the reasons can be some doctors are cowards and become afraid of the situation and what they've done.  I'm pretty certain this is my experience. I think these people should own up to what they created an stick around to help.

I also think in modern practice there are a lot of fast food doctors and they don't take too much time with you. In and out. Here's your ativan(hamburger) now be on your way, you're on your own. (Modern medicine really appears to be shaped after the fast food model.)

I also think a lot of doctors have been tricked themselves and are too dumb to think outside the box of what they've learned. OR some know but are complacent and remain willfully ignorant. In this way they want nothing more than to keep their job and rake in the money despite the harm they cause.

Ego fits in here somewhere

I think in some cases people are scared to admit that a prescription drug can cause so much harm. I've started to refer to it as a neurological disorder that's going to take time to heal. I've got better empathy this way. If we refer to it as 'withdrawal' that's when problems start.

Everyone generally wants to trust drugs, even doctors, so they are shocked into disbelief that something designed to heal can do so much harm. Much better to refuse to believe and decide we are malingerers.

There are even people on the Net who write blogs or start sites purely for bashing those in Benzo withdrawal. I believe they are very very scared if they have to do this to divert attention away from the realities of the situation.....some drugs are evil and can destroy lives. I understand doctors are the third biggest cause of deaths after heart disease and cancer. This must tell us something.

I'm not doctor bashing here as I have good friends who are doctors and work very hard to help their patients. They do care and try their best but our true understanding of the hazards of any drug is at an early stage in its development. We read daily of what's good/not good for us for us and which drugs can benefit or hinder healing. It really is confusing and scary. All we can do is trust in ourselves and our bodies and understand our own reaction to different substances. Sadly, we're finding out the hard way but one day we will be better for the knowledge gained in withdrawal.

I really think one of the reasons can be some doctors are cowards and become afraid of the situation and what they've done.  I'm pretty certain this is my experience. I think these people should own up to what they created an stick around to help.

 

I also think in modern practice there are a lot of fast food doctors and they don't take too much time with you. In and out. Here's your ativan(hamburger) now be on your way, you're on your own. (Modern medicine really appears to be shaped after the fast food model.)

 

I also think a lot of doctors have been tricked themselves and are too dumb to think outside the box of what they've learned. OR some know but are complacent and remain willfully ignorant. In this way they want nothing more than to keep their job and rake in the money despite the harm they cause.

 

Ego fits in here somewhere

You are absolutely right on all points.

There is something else.

We all know that people live longer now. If you go back even 50 years, that is obvious.

But now it is all about "how long", and not "with what quality of life".

We need to push back. We need to make this point to our doctors.

Many of them are willing to listen, and lots do care. But the pressure of insurance and other factors is endangering them too.

I don't have any great love for my doctor, but I do think he is a good human being. I see his office full of seniors, with canes and walkers, overweight, unhealthy. Most of them look like they just stepped out of some kind of zombie movie.

They don't listen to books, or use a tablet. They just sit in the office, like people waiting to die.

Yet most of these people are about my age, and it is not the fault of doctors.

These people all want quick fixes. They want to eat their unhealthy food, do no exercise, sit in front of a TV, and they want all their problems fixed with pills.

That's what WE face in BB. We are in a world that wants quick fixes, and it starts young.

Recently I read that school kid run a mile in an average of 1:30 slower than a couple decades ago. That is not just in the US. It is worldwide.

What we all need is a revolution in life style. Maybe all of us here are a part of the first step.

I think kids are more out of shape and get slower times in the mile now because they don't need to be bread for war anymore. They just need to learn how to play video games since future wars will be mostly fought with hi tech gadgets.

Doctors just want to do what most patients want, cure with a pill. Doctors are also pretty much legal drug pushers for big pharma. What ever lines their pockets. There is no money in curing an illness but plenty of money in stringing it along.

Hi everybody,

yeah..many doctors are cowards, and I swear that they go to med school to get programmed

to be idiots.

Sorry to sound so harsh, but how can any doctor write a prescription without doing homework on

what it does to people? So what if they have to do the homework during their off hours?

They are obligated to do their research: "First do no harm" is part of the Hippocratic Oath.

Things have gotten more complicated in the medical field, but that's just the way it is.

And it is a MacDonald's kind of thing: here's a drug. Take it and good luck.

Iggy

The problem isn't that the right information doesn't exist, it's that it only exists in the wrong places.

As accurate as wikipedia has been proven to be it will always be looked at as a poor source of information. It's one of those "don't believe anything you read on the internet" kind of things.

Same with a message board. Actually probably even more so. For the life of me I can't figure out why people will trust a bunch of strangers on the internet based on an Amazon.com review for a product, but when it comes to patients who have had experience with drugs that are sold by profit driven pharmaceutical companies through doctors who have lots of incentive to go with the flow, no one wants to hear any "reviews".

Gaer said:

"These people all want quick fixes. They want to eat their unhealthy food, do no exercise, sit in front of a TV, and they want all their problems fixed with pills."

Sadly, truer words have never been spoken.  This problem lies at the core of many societal ills. :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

when i was about 8 months off i called the university clinic in Vienna and i spoke

to a doctor there, told  him about the ashton manual and wikipedia and that

benzos should only be prescribed for 3-4 weeks and if longer they do so much harm.

his response was:

well , good for you why are you worried about it now, just get on with your life

and all the best........and then i got the buisy signal. he had hang up.

when i was about 8 months off i called the university clinic in Vienna and i spoke

to a doctor there, told  him about the ashton manual and wikipedia and that

benzos should only be prescribed for 3-4 weeks and if longer they do so much harm.

 

his response was:

well , good for you why are you worried about it now, just get on with your life

and all the best........and then i got the buisy signal. he had hang up.

Wow, how cold and uncompassionate he was.  Jerk. 

 

 

The large majority of people our doctors see don't have any trouble getting off benzos,

 

Since you (rightfully so) expect other peoples claims to be backed up with empirical evidence, I should ask right now for your evidence that supports this claim. Maybe you are right and the large majority don't have any trouble getting off benzos. I think your dead wrong about this, but am open to hearing the objective evidence and if it is compelling, I will adjust my understanding accordingly.

 

I suspect there may be a few other benzo buddies who believe the fairy tale that all of their problems can be blamed on benzos.

 

This statement tells me a lot about you.

I think kids are more out of shape and get slower times in the mile now because they don't need to be bread for war anymore. They just need to learn how to play video games since future wars will be mostly fought with hi tech gadgets.

That's a scary thought, and already true if you think about the drone wars.

But the exercise thing is more about people no longer being able to go outside and run - a combination of many things, among others a more dangerous society and a lack of safe places for children to play in.

Here is my reasoning: If a large number of people had a lot of trouble with benzos there is no way the majority of doctors could or would ignore it. I don't believe that doctors are stupid, or mean, or even ignorant of the facts. They simply do not get a lot (or any!) patients that complain about benzo withdrawal. It is not on their radar!

There most certainly are plenty of people who come off these drugs with little or no problems, but that is only part of the reason why this isn't acknowledged by doctors. The other part being that you can't find something if you don't believe it exists.

In other words, I am sure doctors have seen a lot more benzo problems that they are aware of, not because it wasn't presented to them but because they attributed it to something else.

Never in my life was I depressed until I started taking clonazepam. I remember my doctor asking me that specifically when she wrote the first script. I told her "Nope....never". A year later I was in her office telling her that I didn't feel right, that I was depressed, that I was having problems with sexual function, and instead of looking at the medication she was giving me as a possible cause all she knew how to do was pile on more pills. And there really is no excuse for that.

I no longer believe that all of my problems will go away if I get off benzos.

I never thought all my problems would go away if I got off benzos. But until you get off them, how would you know which problems are and are not caused by these drugs?

I've read a LOT posts saying that people got off benzos and thought maybe they made a mistake. I was one of those people. (That seems to happen at some point after people taper down and jump, but before they have had enough time to heal.)

Later at least a lot of them feel differently. That is also true for me, so far. It took me more than 7 months to change my mind about not having made a mistake.

I suspect there may be a few other benzo buddies who believe the fairy tale that all of their problems can be blamed on benzos.

I'm not one of them, and I've met a lot of people who also do not belong in this fairy-tale group. But I also do not see many people talking about going back on them when they get off, and the few who have gone back on them and write about it have not sounded very happy.

I see a different "reality":

1) People start taking benzos to cope with problems, often with anxiety.

2) The benzos appear to work for awhile, but later they stop working, and people are left with the same problems they had before - plus and addiction.

3) The New Normal of being on a steady dose of benzos can work for decades - it did for me - but it can also not work, with all sorts of new problems popping.

4) Stopping the benzos increases anxiety to more than it was before the benzos, because the old problems come back with a vengence due to withdrawal.

OK, maybe I'm the only one this fits for.

I have never been a calm, happy-go-lucky person. I have always had fear, anxiety, depression. But I was a HEALTHY person in the physical sense, strong, with tremendous energy, in shape. I lost a huge amount of that while on benzos, and I did not realize how much I lost until a lot of things started coming back.

So I still have problems now. I had them while on benzos. I had them before benzos.

I don't think that is the point.

For me the point is what benzos took away.

All,

My life experience is that when others suspect malice, I suspect ignorance or incompetence.  In my 46 years, I have never been wrong about this.

Doctors do not "push" drugs because of kickbacks from pharma, nor because they do not care.  They are just people trying to do their jobs as best they can.  The amount of information a doctor needs is overwhelming.  I for one do not blame them for my condition.  I take full responsibility.

But.

Now that we know better, it i sour responsibility to tell anyone who will listen, including and especially doctors.

Another important fact is that we do not know what percentage of benzo users we represent.  I have seen estimates at 20%, and I think that is high.  There are literally 100 million scrips each year written in the US alone, and we are a few thousand.  I think this contributes to the lack of action.  Benzo withdrawal syndrome is significant enough that something should be done in the way benzos are prescribed, but not significant enough that not solving the problem quickly will have an enormous impact on society, such as for example AIDS.

Be well and good luck,

Ramcon1