What is the Reality of Benzo Addiction?
Executive Summary
- Benzo is an addictive drug.
- Benzo addiction and Benzo withdrawal symptoms are deliberately minimized by pharmaceutical companies and the overall medical establishment.
Introduction
A primary method used by pharmaceutical companies, MDs, and the overall medical establishment is to minimize addiction. This article covers the gaslighting of patients, the public, and patients with benzo addiction.
About Benzo Withdrawal Symptoms: What the Medical Establishment Says About Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Symptoms
The following quotes are from the website The Recovery Village.
Assertion #1: Benzodiazepine is Not Addictive — But Can Lead to Benzo Addiction?
Benzodiazepine addiction occurs when people misuse prescription medications like Benzodiazepines or Benzo. This could include buying the drug illegally, taking it in larger amounts, and taking it for an extended amount of time. An addiction likely won’t occur if a patient follows a doctor’s instructions, but some people become accustomed to the drug’s calm and high.
But then, just a few paragraphs later, this follows.
United States legislators began to notice this and developed laws to help control benzo use. Most significantly, the 1970 Controlled Substances Act categorized benzodiazepines as Schedule IV drugs, which means the drugs have a high potential for abuse, addiction, and have limited medical uses.
However, benzos aren’t only an American issue. They’ve become an issue across the globe.
These two paragraphs do not make sense when compared to one another. And if the drugs have a “high potential for abuse, addiction,” why is Recovery Village claiming in the first paragraph that only those who abuse benzodiazepines are at risk for addiction? Benzodiazepines are more addictive than heroin, but because pharmaceutical companies sell them, Recovery Village will tow the medical establishment line and state that they are not addictive when taken as prescribed.
Studies have already been performed that have explained the addictive mechanism in benzodiazepines, which is covered in the article How Benzodiazepines Produce Addiction Through Altering the Neurotransmition Process.(Subscription required)
Assertion #2: Benzodiazepines Are Habit-Forming But Not Addictive?
Benzos are habit-forming sedatives, meaning that gaining an addiction to them can be possible if not taken properly.
Could another term for “habit-forming” be addictive?
Assertion #3: Broadscale Availability of Benzodiazepine is Primarily Responsible for Its Addictive Quality?
The drug’s easy availability is also a major contributing factor. Between 2014-2016, 66 million patients left doctor’s offices with benzodiazepine prescriptions or 27 in every 100 visits, according to Psychology Today.
Let us draw a distinction that Recovery Village does not want to be drawn.
Commonly Available Items Versus Addictive Items
Many things are readily available but are not addictive.
For example, Subway Sandwiches seems to have a location every mile or so. However, I don’t recall anyone stating that Subway sandwiches are addictive. Benzodiazepines are highly addictive, and this addictive quality is due to the changes that benzodiazepine makes to the brain’s neurotransmitting process.
The fact that psychiatrists and general practitioners have been so irresponsible about prescribing benzodiazepines and have downplayed the risks of benzodiazepines or otherwise misled patients about side effects (under the influence of pharma reps who misrepresent the drugs to MDs) is why benzodiazepine rates are as high or higher than opioids for causing addiction problems.
It is incredible to see Recovery Village state that drugs as addictive as opioids are only addictive when misused. Patients taking a benzodiazepine, without finding other sources of information that are independent of the medical establishment, would conclude they are to blame for the addictive drug they were hooked on when they went to their MD for anxiety or insomnia.