Doctors have prescribed addictive drugs for their patients for decades! Now the government has decided there should be a review.

When the UK government ask for a review into prescription drug addiction and dependence it is very clear that there is a very serious issue. There are very serious issues about most pharmaceutical drugs, and we are rarely told about them! And even the BBC has today (24th January 2018) told us about it, which must mean that the situation is very serious indeed.

The UK government, the NHS, health professionals and the mainstream media are usually too busy promoting pharmaceutical drugs to bother telling us about problem side effects!

Apparently the Department of Health (DoH) has tasked Public Health England (PHE) to undertake what they describe as a 'landmark' review into prescription drug addiction and dependence. DoH said that this has arisen from NHS Digital data revealing that 1 patient in 11 (8.9%) has been prescribed an addictive medicine, which is an increase of 3% over the past five years. It wants to know why there has been such an increase, and will look in particular at benzodiazepine and z-drugs, gabapentinoids, opioid pain medicines and antidepressants. Health minister, Steve Brine, is widely quoted

               "We know this is a huge problem in other countries like the United States - and we must absolutely make sure it doesn’t become one here. While we are world-leading in offering free treatment for addiction, we cannot be complacent."

Indeed it is a problem in the USA. It would appear that it is such a serious problem there is even the prospect of pharmaceutical drug company executives being prosecuted. Perhaps this is why these dangerous drugs are the subject of an enquiry when so many other dangerous drugs are not! One PHE director is quoted as saying,

               "It is vital that we have the best understanding possible of how widespread these problems are, the harms they cause, as well as the most effective ways to prevent them happening and how best to help those in need. Many will have sought help for a health problem only to find later on they have a further obstacle to overcome.’

As usual, these warning about the harm caused by drugs come alongside reminders of how 'useful' they are - "many of the prescribed medicines are effective in treating conditions such as pain, anxiety and insomnia" we are told, the balm applied to the warning that these drugs are highly addictive, causing dependence and, if stopped, withdrawal symptoms. The balm is essential. Doctors have been prescribing these drugs for decades, with the blessing of government, the NHS, the entire conventional medical establishment, and the connivance of the mainstream media!

Well, better late than never to have a review into these nasty, harmful and dangerous drugs. We will now have to wait to see if the review will focus on patient safety rather than the need to pour more balm on to the oily waters of patient harm.

Many of the comments about the review seem to indicate that what is important is to better understand the drugs, especially in relation to addiction, in order that future prescribing will be safer.

What nonsense! The conventional medical establishment has known for a very, very long time that these drugs are addictive and dangerous. If they didn't they have been either grossly negligent or inexcusably ignorant! This review is probably more to do with doctor's trying to extract themselves from the responsibility of prescribing dangerous drugs to patients, and damaging them in the process.

Iatrogenic Disease. A warning from a doctor

I am usually critical of doctors, not least because they are the people who give patients ineffective and unsafe pharmaceutical drugs. However, occasionally a doctor is prepared to raise his head above the parapet. Dr Des Spence is a GP in Glasgow, and a tutor at Glasgow University, and he published a blog, "Gabapentinoids - the new diazepam?" in the Pulse magazine (9 September 2016). He talks of the advice of 'experts' and 'media doctors', who tell doctors what to think "however mindless it might be".

          "We GPs are ‘seen’ to take on this advice, but then systematically ignore it. We won’t prescribe statins to everyone because it is irrational and stupid. We don’t accept that ‘pain is what the patients says it is’, because common sense dictates that it isn’t. Regrettably the infallibility of NICE and the deference shown to the ‘expert’ is creating overtreatment, medicalisation and iatrogenic harm. And iatrogenic harm is the worst of all  harms, for doctors are responsible and it is wholly preventable." (My emphasis).

A doctor who recognises the enormity of iatrogenic harm is an unusual doctor. This blog continually points out that the so-called 'side effects' of pharmaceutical drugs are for the patient new diseases, often diseases worse than the condition for which the drug is taken. My e-book, 'DIE's: The "Disease Inducing Effects" of Drugs and Vaccines' is looking at specific illnesses and diseases and examining the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines known to cause the condition.

Dr Spence continues by comparing the use of the drug, Diazepam, and other benzodiazepine drugs (of which Valium and Librium are perhaps best known) "... peddled as a safe and effective treatment for anxiety by companies and experts alike", with Gabapentinoid drugs. He describes how, when he started work in the 1990s, he had struggled with the "consequences of ... thoughtless advice" that produced "herds of middle-aged patients zonked out and dependent on benzodiazepines", and that his surgeries were dominated with "dealing with the fall out of dependence and abuse", including "drug seeking behaviours, lies, confrontation, rebound agitation, insomnia  and withdrawal seizures. Just chaos".

Dr Spence says that it took the medical establishment decades to realise the psychological and physical harm that was caused (but fails to mention that Benzodiazipine drugs are still prescribed today)! He does mention, however, that doctors are still dealing with the 'radioactive consequences' of the "rapid, widespread and poorly controlled prescribing of benzodiazepines in the 1970s and 1980s".

And Dr Spence abhors the thought that the medical establishment has not learnt a lesson from the Benzodiazepine scandal. I have written about Benzodiazepine drugs elsewhere. But Dr Spence brings us up to date with what is happening in the doctors surgeries today with another class of drug, Gabapentinoids, which he thinks are equally harmful.

          "In the last five years my sensor has been off the scale with the gabapentinoids (gabapentin and pregabalin). Patients are actively seeking gabapentinoids using the familiar crude acting skills, that I had witnessed with benzodiazepines 20 years earlier. A cocktail of anger, tears and threats in equal measure. Constant requests for dose increases, fanciful stories of lost scripts and a tag team approach with friends who ‘corroborate’ stories. The signs and symptoms of a drug of abuse and stigmata of iatrogenic harm."

Gabapentinoids, of which the brand name Neurontin, is perhaps best known, is a drug used to treat epilepsy, neuropathic pain, hot flashes, restless leg syndrome, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, post-herpetic neuralgia, and central neuropathic pain. It has a considerable number of known side effects, including sleepiness, dizziness, drowsiness, ataxia, peripheral oedema, tremor, sexual dysfunction, suicide, and aggressive behaviour. It was first approved in 1993.

We live in a society in which conventional medicine encourages us to take drugs for our health. The difference between taking drugs for health, and taking drugs for recreation is small. Gabapentinoids have been described as the ‘ideal psychotropic drug’, producing ‘great euphoria’, ‘disassociation’, ‘opiate buzz’, and other mind enhancing effects so loved by those who crave to such mind-changing, but addictive effects. So prescriptions for these drugs are apparently soaring, doubling in just three years. De Spence says that many doctors prescribe them 'freely and loosely' on the basis of specialist endorsement, even though he claims there are more effective and less harmful alternatives.

Pregabalin is already a controlled medication in the USA (and there is debate about controls in the UK), the research base for the benefits of gabapentinoids is of a short duration and in a small, defined population where as few as one in 10 benefit [7].

Dr Spence ends his blog with an important question, do we want "another benzodiazepines-style disaster all over again?" The answer is, of course, 'NO'. Yet will we get suffer another one? The answer, from past experience, is that if pharmaceutical companies can profit from selling a drug, they will pressurise governments, health authorities, and drug regulators to approve it, and the medical establishment will press doctors to prescribe it. And they will continue to do so until it harms so many people that the media can no longer ignore it, and its dangerousness can not longer be kept from us. It is the way that the conventional medical establishment works!

And it is not just Gabapentinoids that will cause such disasters, iatrogenic disease is being caused daily by a multitude of pharmaceutical drugs.

Conventional Medical Drugs endanger us on our roads

There are many hazards to encounter when we drive on our roads, and we all know about them. Drink driving, and the dangers of alcohol, have been recognised for a long time, and accordingly it has been heavily restricted. More recently, the dangers of so-called 'recreational' drug taking has been raised as an issue on our roads, and in Britain, action has at last been taken. Now, a conviction for driving under the influence of some doctor-sanctioned 'medicines' will lead to a minimum one-year driving ban, a fine of up to £5,000, and a criminal record.

What is important is that medical drugs have now been implicated within this new legislation. A handful of Big Pharma drugs have been recognised to be equally as damaging to our mental and physical abilities abilities as banned or illegal drugs. The list is too small, and needs to be extended. But at least it is a start - a recognition that these pharmaceutical drugs adversely affect our mental and physical performance, and constitute a danger. These are the drugs named.

• Clonazepam (a Benzodiazepine drug for seizures and panic disorders)
• Diazepam, Larium (a Benzodiazepine, anti-anxiety drug)
• Flunitrazepam, Rohypnol (a Benzodiazepine sedative drug)
• Lorazepam, Ativan (a Benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug)
• Methadone (a heroin substitute)
• Morphine (a narcotic pain relief drug)
• Oxazepam (a Benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug)
• Temazepam (a Benzodiazepine anti-anxiety and sedative drug)

Most of these drugs are know under a considerable, and confusing number of other names.

The worry is that doctors, who are nominally committed to 'causing no harm', continue to prescribe drugs that cause those who take them such harm, and thereby, put every other road user under threat of harm too.

Benzodiazepine drugs have been known to be harmful to health, with horrendous long-term consequences, for many decades now. Yet they are still being prescribed by doctors, who are being allowed to do so by the conventional medical establishment. I have written about Benzodiazepine drugs before over recent years (see references below). They are certainly drugs worth avoiding!

Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepine drugs

Benzodiazepine drugs - a life tragedy

The shame of Benzodiazepine drugs.