The Benzo Scandal

Today I feel the need to write, to get it all off my chest. The sheer injustice of the benzo scandal really makes me want to scream at the so called authorities who inflict these drugs on us and then refuse to accept responsibility. A firing squad would be too good for them.

I’m in touch with many who are suffering in a horrible way and yet there is no support for them except others hurting as they are. As I recover I feel more and more incensed by what is happening and has been happening for the last forty plus years since the dangers of benzos have be known. So many deaths from benzodiazepine drugs and antidepressants both amongst celebrities and amongst us mere mortals, how many more have to die? We should all be standing up and waving banners wherever we will be heard. The media has reported the most horrible stories of suffering and incidences of side effects, yet nothing happens. Many books have been published giving biographies of those fighting for recovery, yet nothing happens. People have stood up in Parliament and reported the benzo facts, still nothing happens. Someone, somewhere has to answer for all this and why it’s all constantly brushed under the carpet. The drug companies play a huge part with their so-called research and publishing but even if they condemned the use of these drugs for more than 7 to 14 days it seems doctors will not be swayed from continuing to poison their patients and ruin lives. What is wrong with a medical profession that is allowed do this?

It’s election time in the UK, once a new Government is installed that’s the time to strike. Everyone needs to bombard the new MPs with their stories. To tell it as it is and to speak of the horrors of withdrawing from these dangerous drugs even when taken in small amounts. To tell of the nights spent rolling on the floor in pain and panic. To talk of the inability to keep still as adrenaline ramps up like a hundred volt battery charging our bodies into physical jerking and shaking and of the months spent lying on our beds in the foetal position as waves of anxiety and pain threaten to engulf us.  It’s a horror story of major proportions and yet is goes unrecognized and unsupported by our society. Friends turn away and shut us out because they don’t want to know, doctors accuse us of malingering or suffering some major mental problem, specialists do tests and say there’s nothing wrong with us. It’s all such a huge scandal that has to break so that no more damage is allowed to happen to innocent people.

Cancer is recognised and treated by the best of tools that research has discovered. Cancer can be seen. Benzodiazepine withdrawal is invisible so goes untreated and unresearched even though this is major brain damage on as large, if not larger scale, than cancer.

I needed to shout it out as it is! As I recover I become angry that forty years of my life has been influenced by these drugs and somehow, I now have to discover who I really am. My feelings and emotions have been blunted for so long, anxiety has fired off at the slightest provocation and chronic pain, night sweats and insomnia have been rife for as long as I can remember. It’s all going now after years of hell. I’m a different person, an angrier person inevitably but I want it to be a productive anger that finally gets something positive done for all of you who are hurting from the prescribing of these drugs.

My Love to you.  ❤