Knackered Goes Historical with Benzos

   Hey there.  Knackered here.  If you’re into daytime TV (for those who can still watch TV), there are limited options.  The Price is Right is still a favorite and if you want to find out who fathered the love child of Sheila’s cousin’s sister’s evil twin, the Soaps are still out there for you.  But the growing favorite of many is the HGTV channels of home renovations.

   Home styles are too numerous for me to keep up with, but a remodeled country barn with a ‘to die for’ kitchen has become ‘farmhouse”.  Fix up a place in Alabama next to a swamp (excuse me, marsh) and you have ‘low country southern.’   Take the drapes, flags and tie dyed sheets that adorned our campus Hippi home, put them up in suburbia, and voila, it’s boho chic.

   Our current home is old and in an old neighborhood.  The tone around here used to be ‘mellow’.  Throw some K into a place around here, and it’s becomes a historical classic.   The old pink tile in our bathroom is now ‘vintage’.  (Go figure anyway.)  Rename something old and you’ve created the new.

  Fixing up old stuff and putting it back out there might work for houses, cars, and your wardrobe, but it won’t ‘cut the muster’ when it comes to the pharmaceutical industries. Most notably is probably the Thalidomide disaster that created the horrific birth defects of the early 60’s.   Cerivastatin (generic Baycol) originally prescribed to lower cholesterol, destroyed the kidneys of more than 100,000 before it was finally recalled in 2001.  Phenylpropanolamine  (PPA) was a psychoactive drug that was used for everything from dieting to colds to psychological disorders.  Never actually approved by the FDA, it was later taken off the market when it was determined to be the likely cause for 200-500 strokes per year, primarily women.

   Shake your head all you want, but we have to acknowledge that we have been caught up as unfortunate victims of the ‘Benzo Age’.  Tranquilizers as such, were born out of rat laboratory studies in the 40’s when Frank Berger found that certain experimental compounds had a calming effect on the little rascals.  Things progressed from there to be developed into what we now know and have taken as benzodiazepines.  By 1977 they were the most prescribed medications in the world.  Between 2003 and 2012, Benzo scripts to older adults in the US showed a marked increase.  Somewhere along the line, we joined the ‘club’.

   Intended for only short term use, many patients were allowed to remain on Benzos for years (myself included).  Despite the increased risk of dependency, withdrawal, cognitive decline, increased user motor vehicle accidents and hip fractures to name just a few, this stuff was passed out by the handfuls until suddenly it wasn’t .

   Enter withdrawal and that pretty much summarizes why we’re here in the first place.  In almost all cases of pharmaceutical debacles, failures to learn from past mistakes have caused medications to be out on the market before adequate time for research and patient follow up.  George Santayana probably said it best:  “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We can hope for better with the next generation, but right now, let’s just work on ourselves.