Tasha Hedges Xanax took 20 years to treat anxiety and panic, just as the psychiatrist prescribed it. Then in 2022, this doctor died unexpectedly.
A general practitioner continued her prescription, but she retired shortly after that. The next doctor moved to Canada. Finally, Mrs. Hedges found a new psychiatrist.
“The first thing I did is to start screaming at my face that I was on Zanaks for a long time.
Stopping the medicine usually requires the dose to reduce the dose slowly over months or even years, a process called Tapering. Mrs. Hedges stopped the cold Türkiye. Track the symptoms of exhausted withdrawal: hot flashes, cold sweating, turbulent legs, tremors and tooth grinding.
She said, “It was a nightmare.” Two years after stopping the drug, she still deals with repercussions. “My mind was not the same.”
In social media groups and web sites such as benzobdies, people like Mrs. Hedges says they have become physically dependent on benzodiazepines. Then a lot of medications are cut or turned very quickly, and they face dangerous withdrawal symptoms that can threaten life that can last for a long time after medications stop. Some doctors, who are afraid of the risks and stigma associated with these drugs, refuse to prescribe them at all.
Dr. Ronald M. said. “Benzus generates a lot of anxiety in the prescription as he does in the patient.” “Do I start that? Is it the right context? Is it safe? Will my patients be misused? What does my colleagues think?”
The prescriptions of the Benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Ativan and Valium have been heading since 2016, partially due to doctors’ fears. However, these drugs are fast and effective, and remain among the most common drugs in the country to treat cases, including anxiety disorders and sleep disorders. In 2019, an estimated 92 million recipes were extracted in the United States, According to the Food and Drug Administration.
Current guidelines Recommend Description of the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible period, usually Less than four weeks. But patients tend to stay longer than that. A FDA review I found that in 2018, about half of the patients took them for two months or more. Dr. Edward K. said. Silberman, an honorary professor in psychiatry at the University of Tafs University, who wrote a lot about benzodiazepines, that patients remain for them for years without regular examination to see if the drugs are still necessary or well -tolerated.
Because patients can develop physical accreditation Within several weeks From the use of fixed benzodiazepine, the exit from the drug – even after a short period – requires a gradual process. However, many practitioners are not well trained to extract recipes. To make the process more clear, experts in the American Association of American Medicine have been issued New instructions To reduce the developed dose funded by the Food and Drug Administration
“It is completely crazy to pressure people to get off and suddenly pull people,” said Dr. Silberman.
Judy Jaro, 60, began taking Clunobin to insomnia 25 years ago while living in Dallas. When the psychiatrist resigned for exercise for medical reasons, he finally found another suggested that he take two benzodiazepines, xanax and Valium, and works on weaning off Klonopin.
About six months after all the three drugs, Mr. Jaro became frustrated and decided to take matters in his hands. It is the weaving itself off the Klonopin and Xanax.
He is still trying to get out of the Valium, with the help of its general practice and a coach from the Benzodiazepine Information Alliance, a non -profit group.
Initially, Mr. Jarreau said that it is very quickly of the drug, the headache, nausea and fear of fear, which is excessive and irrational fear that it will be in open or unfamiliar places. But one of the most difficult symptoms of withdrawal was suicide ideas.
“There is a kind of such rear noise that you say, as you know, just take yourself out,” he said. “It will be easier“
He says he has not tested any of these symptoms before reducing medications.
In 2023Defenders of people with benzodiazepines gave a name for the various symptoms that may appear during use, extraction or stopping medications: the nervous defect caused by benzodiazepine, or fastening.
Not everyone will test the link, they admit. With the correct extraction plan, experts say, side effects can be reduced.
“These are good and very safe medications when they are given to the appropriate person in the correct dose for the appropriate period of time,” said Dr. Karl Salzman, a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard University Faculty of Medicine and former head of the Benzodiazepine Squad.
But although the benzodiazepines have been present since the 1960s, some doctors were not aware of it The best way to help their patients stop taking these medications. This is partly because there is no single strategy that suits everyone. Some patients say that withdrawal symptoms make it necessary for them to continue to reach these medications while moving slowly.
Dr. Silberman summoned a single patient who needs to shave her chips from the pill with a razor to slowly reduce her dose and reduce the difficult side effects.
the name New instructions To reduce the dose of the patient from benzodiazepine, it is severely derived from the clinical experience, given the separate and limited research on clicking. They recommend that doctors establish the constant risk and benefits of benzodiazepine that determine at least three months, and when considering reducing the current dose by 5 to 10 percent every two to four weeks. The guidelines also say that patients taking benzodiazepines for years may require more than a year of clicking, and they should be monitored even after the drug stops.
“Most of us have never been warned of dependency and long -term complications,” said De Foster, a researcher who contributed to the new guidelines and a defender of people like himself who struggled with complications of benzodiazepine. He added: “Slow click can be difficult, but the sudden auditor can be dangerous.”
ASAM guidelines came too late for Latasha Marbury, 49, who lives in buying, New York, and has become physically dependent on Klonopin. In 2022, she visited a toxins from addiction because she was desperate to stop taking the medicine, which started insomnia. The practitioners of the facility weak in just five days.
After that, hysterical cried and felt despair, she said. She has suffered from the night terror that I felt “almost like the lion in the room but you cannot see it while you are fighting it,” which is an inability to sit and depression. She visited another addiction facility in Florida, where she got antidepressants. Within weeks, you began to feel a great improvement.
Now, she said: “I sleep like a strange child.”
She wonders: Was this, instead of benzodiazepine, the medicine that should have been prescribed all the time?
She said, “When I think about it – what I went through – cry.” “It was not physical pain but it was mental pain. I am grateful to being alive.”
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