Pool: are you addicted or dependent on benzos?

[Guest [Sk...]]

Skyblue--You're right and I'm sorry if this caused distress.  The OP did just throw this out in all innocence, not realizing the topic is a minefield and some people definitely DO feel there's a correct answer to this.  I just hate to see people wasting precious emotional energy worrying themselves over choosing one label or the other, and, in so many cases, beating themselves up for not somehow not being more clairvoyant about the future some doctor was prescribing for them.  You and the others certainly did nothing wrong in answering the tossed out question.  I guess if people actually get something out of hashing this over, who am I to say they shouldn't?

 

[[Fi...]]

back atcha

[[Lo...]]

A couple of observations-

 

"people who promote the benzo addiction narrative were tangled up with opiates or street drugs at some point"

 

Nice.  In other words, people who don't buy your line are nasty addicts.  We are the "other."  You are choosing these words, FG, and "tangled up with opiates or street drugs" is a smear on someone such as myself, who never did any kind of illegal drugs and took opiates only as directed, by prescription, and never took one pill more than I was supposed to.  And yet I came out of the experience with actual SYMPATHY for the people you want to denigrate. 

 

 

I agree. I feel offended by those words, too, and I'd never taken opiates unless Rx'd for extremely short term (we're talking days), never touched street drugs, avoided alcohol as a plague, etc. Yet, I feel like I have to defend myself for taking antidepressants for 16 years and benzos for a bit more than 7, with 2 1/2 years of it being very sporadic use and starting to taper in year 4 after 2 months of daily use. Unfortunately, I am sensitive and the taper is taking me a long time. Does that somehow make me a worthless loser because my body goes into hypertensive crises and exhibits all kinds of horrific problems with the slow taper? Yes, my cognition is coming back slowly, but the fear (more like terror-grade fear had been with me for 3 years, and I am barely able to do anything about it) is here to stay for a long time. And now, here comes Peter Breggin who keeps lamenting how horrible these psych drugs are. Geez, thanks Peter Breggin. You've been a psychiatrist for 50 years. You could have written that "Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal" book about 20 years ago. What kept you from writing it? Peer pressure? His 10% rule is not anything that he came up with. It has been long known for decades in psychiatric survivor circles. And aside from a rare mention of Xanax, he's been very quiet about the dangers of benzodiazepines until some of his 2014 videos. It's not his specialty, really. Apparently, the man makes his money with being an expert court witness and with his own private practice. And yes, I was on Prozac for 16 years and didn't come even close to harming anyone, so, so much about his SSRI and violence claims.

 

And yes, I like to get some support on this forum, too and not be made to feel how every psychiatric drug I'd taken has been a colossal mistake. Maybe I would have done better without Prozac (who knows, really?), but I wasn't agoraphobic and panicked out of my mind and unable to work when I was just on Prozac. People have different psych drug experiences. Yes, SSRI's can be dangerous, but benzos can be just plain deadly.

[[Be...]]

A couple of observations-

 

1- It seems like most of the people who promote the benzo addiction narrative were tangled up with opiates or street drugs at some point.

 

2- The addiction/dependence thing has been discussed over and over through the years, and I have yet to hear an anyone directly address the points that have been made that illustrate how harmful it is to call this addiction. And it's not just that they don't have a good argument, it's that they don't have an argument at all so they refuse to address any of the points.

 

Point #1 is a bunch of crap for the most part because it has addict shaming written all over it.  It’s all part of the  character and moral assasinatiion of addicts.  I’ll say it again.  Addiction doesn’t discriminate.  No one starts out to become an addict.  Point #1 is intolerance, misunderstanding and hate.  Intolerance and hate are easily as reprehensible to me as the supposed character and moral flaws often supposedly associated with addiction.  Any relevance to moral superiority for those doing the judging of addicts is negated completely by these attributes.  The vast majority of addicts live in quiet despair because of this shaming.  Alcohol and prescription drugs, both legal comprising a large majority.

 

Point #1 almost always shuts down any civil conversation in the discussions mentioned in point #2!

[[ma...]]

Ok, as I have understood so far, we have:

 

1) people that have already quit taking the benzo but whose central nervous system is still affected by the neurotoxic effects of these meds - these people are neither dependent nor addicts; they are often severely disabled but there is presently no medical framework that can help them: (i) cope with the symptoms; (ii) justify their lower performance for eg at work.

 

2) people that are physically dependent on a benzo but don't feel/felt any compulsion to take it; they usually started taking or always took the benzo under medical prescription and want to quit but they can't do it as fast as they'd like because of the nasty withdrawal symptoms - these people don't want to be called addicts because: (i) they aren't addicts; (ii) they don't want to risk being forced to undergo an expensive addiction treatment tailored to other types of drugs that don't mess with the CNS so much; these treatments won't solve their problem and will most likely aggravate it because they will be made quit the benzo too fast or even cold turkey; this would make them move into category 1, which they don't want, often in order to stay functional.

 

3) people that feel a compulsion to take the benzo, normally to alleviate anxiety - some of these people also don't want to be called addicts because: (i) they feel it's humiliating; (ii) despite they would benefit from the psychological side of a traditional addiction treatment, the fact is that they are as physically dependent as the previous category and, so, being forced to quit the benzo very fast wouldn't help them too; however, because of their addiction, they feel they are much closer than those that are only physically dependent to being forced to undergo this type of inappropriate treatment; therefore, as a defense, some want to blur the difference between addiction and dependence.

 

PS - I'm addicted to cigarets

[[Lo...]]

A couple of observations-

 

1- It seems like most of the people who promote the benzo addiction narrative were tangled up with opiates or street drugs at some point.

 

2- The addiction/dependence thing has been discussed over and over through the years, and I have yet to hear an anyone directly address the points that have been made that illustrate how harmful it is to call this addiction. And it's not just that they don't have a good argument, it's that they don't have an argument at all so they refuse to address any of the points.

 

Point #1 is a bunch of crap for the most part because it has addict shaming written all over it.  It’s all part of the  character and moral assasinatiion of addicts.  I’ll say it again.  Addiction doesn’t discriminate.  No one starts out to become an addict.  Point #1 is intolerance, misunderstanding and hate.  Intolerance and hate are easily as reprehensible to me as the supposed character and moral flaws often supposedly associated with addiction.  Any relevance to moral superiority for those doing the judging of addicts is negated completely by these attributes.  The vast majority of addicts live in quiet despair because of this shaming.  Alcohol and prescription drugs, both legal comprising a large majority.

 

Point #1 almost always shuts down any civil conversation in the discussions mentioned in point #2!

 

As someone who has been bullied a lot in life (both brutally and subtly), I think what bothers me about point #1 is basically shaming. It's just someone going off at others, locked in his own perspective and unable to see that people are different, have different values and different goals and circumstances in life.

 

It's the bullying and shaming that brought me to Ativan in the first place. Sometimes, I feel that FloridaGuy sometimes shames people just because they'd taken psychiatric drugs, regardless if they identify as addicts or dependents. And this doesn't just extend to benzos. Just because FG had a bad experience with antidepressants himself, he denies that some of us who were helped by them for more than a decade were really helped by them, throwing all this science at us.

And then, the whole Peter Breggin stuff. The man made a career of bashing Prozac, while, for years, ignoring some of the more dangerous anti-depresants and more dangerous drug classes, such as tranquilizers, neuroleptics, stimulants, z-drugs etc. 

 

Well, all I know is that when I was on an AD before taking ativan, I had a normal life. After 4 years of on/off use of low doses of ativan, I no longer had a normal life anymore. I also get shamed for the as needed benzo use because I might have known "something" that prevented me from taking them every day until I got badly tolerant to them. Then once I started taking benzos on a daily basis, I got shamed for that too, because they're supposed to be taken as needed. Then I got shamed by the previous doctor for tapering too slowly.

 

So, it's just shaming through and through, whenever I explain my situation. And of course, the medical community doesn't help because they look at me as a fool for not knowing how to take benzos "properly" and avoiding the disability caused by them. Which is highly ironic because I had a bullying supervisor who just knew how to shame/bully people so well, so I took the ativan so I wouldn't feel so much of the shame and the panic/fear associated with it. And now, I feel I am being shamed for benzo use, too. Nevermind that this has all caused me clinical depression that I'll have heck of a time climbing out of. 

 

And, no, I personally don't believe in addiction as a disease model, and the 12 steps, and the religious undertones of all of it. I am not religious, never have been, have been frequently shamed and judged for not being religious, and can't subject myself to models that are dangerous to my own psyche. The addiction as disease model, for me, is personally extremely disempowering, because it implies that we have to surrender to God 100% and that we have been powerless from the moment #1 and are completely powerless in this situations, which I disagree with. I believe that my own benzo mess could have been completely and totally avoided had I actually known the science and all the ugly history behind these pills. Unfortunately, that information is not easy to find and is hard to understand, and a person needs to know where to look for. Thankfully, I finally found it, and it is because of the scientific understanding of benzodiazepines, I tend to see things quite different, and, knowing how they work, I tend to dispute the benzodiazepine addiction. Unlike SSRI's, which block the serotonin reuptake mechanisms, and affect a few dozen receptors types in the body, benzos are much more dangerous because they have a direct, potent effect on the brain and body from day 1 and affect the entire GABA system through and through, as well as numerous other receptors, neurotransmitters and hormones (I think of benzos as hammers, not helpers), and can cause nasty effects from the get-go, which makes them an extremely poor choice for controlling panic/anxiety. They are anti-epileptic drugs, and are just not meant for treatment of panic and anxiety disorders or insomnia, even though FDA approves them for that purpose.

 

I don't blame anyone for taking benzos long term, because the true information about them has been obscured from the public for decades.

[Guest [sa...]]

Is addiction even a thing? I don't think so.

 

I guess i'm addicted to food and water.

[[Fl...]]

Nice.  In other words, people who don't buy your line are nasty addicts.  We are the "other."  You are choosing these words, FG, and "tangled up with opiates or street drugs" is a smear on someone such as myself, who never did any kind of illegal drugs and took opiates only as directed, by prescription, and never took one pill more than I was supposed to.  And yet I came out of the experience with actual SYMPATHY for the people you want to denigrate.  Maybe the fact that I don't mind considering myself having been made an addict--if only temporarily--is precisely because I have no need to be defensive.  I know I didn't do anything wrong.  My story shows what doctors' prescriptions can do to the brain of a completely "non-addict" type.  They can make you an addict.  It's happening all over America, with people's fears about accepting the label of "addict" preventing them from coming to understand what their meds are actually doing to them.

 

If you are super sensitive to being stigmatized you will see everything as a sleight. In no way, shape or form did I disparage people who are addicted to opiates or street drugs, yet this is how you took it and I suspect this is a large part of the reason why some people are so adamant about pushing the addiction narrative.

 

So in comes the agenda. If society is going to stigmatize people for taking opiates or street drugs it is in your best interest as someone who is treated poorly to lump as many people into that category as possible, even if it means that people will keep getting prescribed benzos inappropriately, doctors and patients will fail to recognize the symptoms when benzos start to alter brain chemistry, patients will keep getting sent off to detox to be ripped off of the only thing that is holding their fragile existence together and then they are left to fend for themselves in the horrific aftermath.

 

If I don't argue this out and don't want to run off and read all the links you post, it's not that I don't have an argument.  It's that I think it's a waste of time.  My argument, my case, is my own experience, my life, having gone through this and come out well.  I think I've earned my opinions.  Readers here can decide for themselves who deserves credibility on the subject.

 

This speaks volumes.

 

Tens of thousands of people suffering with more coming down the pike, and you can't even be bothered to listen when (the majority of?) people who have been affected by these drugs explain how the addiction narrative only serves to perpetuate the problem that has destroyed their lives.

 

You claim that it took you 400 pages to describe the reason why you call this addiction, so you refuse to explain it here. Well, that's 400 pages of a book that I will never read because I refuse to support anyone who pushes a narrative that ruins lives and possibly even kills people.

 

Your book isn't the first benzo book I have passed on because of this, and it's too bad cause reading the preview I can see that you are a talented writer and your book appeared to be engaging. The articles I have posted are free, and the only reason I can see that anyone who has been affected by benzos would refuse to read them is because they are afraid of what they might learn.

 

I'm not sure how you can expect to be taken seriously if you refuse to listen to the points the other side is making or to back up your own position.

 

[[Fl...]]

And now, here comes Peter Breggin who keeps lamenting how horrible these psych drugs are. Geez, thanks Peter Breggin. You've been a psychiatrist for 50 years. You could have written that "Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal" book about 20 years ago. What kept you from writing it? Peer pressure? His 10% rule is not anything that he came up with. It has been long known for decades in psychiatric survivor circles. And aside from a rare mention of Xanax, he's been very quiet about the dangers of benzodiazepines until some of his 2014 videos. It's not his specialty, really. Apparently, the man makes his money with being an expert court witness and with his own private practice. And yes, I was on Prozac for 16 years and didn't come even close to harming anyone, so, so much about his SSRI and violence claims.

 

This smacks of "You shouldn't say it because I don't want to hear it". You are criticizing one of the very few doctors who knows the score with psych drugs and isn't afraid to speak up. Do you have evidence to rebut his points? Just because one individual didn't have homicidal thoughts doesn't negate the fact that it is a well known side effect of these types of drugs.

 

And yes, I like to get some support on this forum, too and not be made to feel how every psychiatric drug I'd taken has been a colossal mistake.

 

This isn't an anti drug forum but it is a forum that is for people who have been harmed by drugs so I don't think you are going to get a lot of people supporting drugs. Basically most of us are here because one or more drugs we took was a mistake. In my case the biggest mistake of my life.

[[Fl...]]

Point #1 is a bunch of crap for the most part because it has addict shaming written all over it.  It’s all part of the  character and moral assasinatiion of addicts.  I’ll say it again.  Addiction doesn’t discriminate.  No one starts out to become an addict.  Point #1 is intolerance, misunderstanding and hate.  Intolerance and hate are easily as reprehensible to me as the supposed character and moral flaws often supposedly associated with addiction.  Any relevance to moral superiority for those doing the judging of addicts is negated completely by these attributes.  The vast majority of addicts live in quiet despair because of this shaming.  Alcohol and prescription drugs, both legal comprising a large majority.

 

See my reply to FJ.

 

If you take this as a sleight against people who have been addicted to other classes of drugs, that's on you. The point I was trying to make is that people who push this addiction narrative have certain things in common and one of them seems to be that they were taking other classes of drugs that are indeed addictive by anyone's definition.

 

I have yet to fully understand why this gets carried over into the benzo discussion but I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the desire to feel less isolated. I think addiction dogma might also have something to do with it. "The first step is admitting you have a problem!".

 

Point #1 almost always shuts down any civil conversation in the discussions mentioned in point #2!

 

In other words, you have no argument. Got it.

[[Fl...]]

As someone who has been bullied a lot in life (both brutally and subtly), I think what bothers me about point #1 is basically shaming. It's just someone going off at others, locked in his own perspective and unable to see that people are different, have different values and different goals and circumstances in life.

 

Please explain to me how this equates to shaming, bullying, or anything of the sort.

 

Sometimes, I feel that FloridaGuy sometimes shames people just because they'd taken psychiatric drugs, regardless if they identify as addicts or dependents.

 

And while you are it it, please point me to an example of me shaming anyone for taking psych drugs. Matter of fact I have been pretty clear about the fact that I understand how people's circumstances are different and I "get it" when someone says they are desperate for relief, so we shouldn't judge them.

 

And this doesn't just extend to benzos. Just because FG had a bad experience with antidepressants himself, he denies that some of us who were helped by them for more than a decade were really helped by them, throwing all this science at us.

 

This isn't a question whether or not these drugs are good or bad or whether they help people or not. I have no doubt that psych drugs have saved lives. I also have no doubt that they have caused many deaths, most of which probably will never be attributed to the drugs. So if they save one life but end ten lives are they bad or good? What if they save five lives but end five more? Ten lives saved to every one life ended?

 

We will never truly know how many people are helped or harmed by these drugs but we can take a look at statistics to determine whether or not they provide a net positive benefit, and if you read Anatomy of an Epidemic it makes a pretty compelling case that overall they are causing more harm than good. We have oodles and oodles of different drugs and people seem to be taking them by the handful, yet the very issues that these drugs are prescribed for have increased exponentially since people started taking these drugs.

 

You don't like to hear these things because you believe that drugs are helping you now or have helped you in the past. And maybe they have helped you. But that doesn't change the fact that many, many people have been grievously harmed by them.

 

Should people who have had bad experiences with these drugs and doctors who make money off of blowing the whistle just keep their mouths shut? That's what it sounds like you are saying.

 

[[Fi...]]

FloridaGuy...I don't believe in name-calling, so I have to choose my words very carefully here in response to your insistence that I am closed-minded and won't  consider other sides of a story.  It's simply not true.  Before publishing my own memoir, I read every other book out there on the subject.  Every memoir, every article.  Then I said my own piece.  How can you say I won't consider other sides while pointing out that you are using the word "addict" in my title as a good reason to not read what I have to say? When I told Robert Whitaker (whom you admire) that there would be people who would take issue with my title, he said, "I like your title.  I think it fits perfectly."  You can read my book or not, as you choose, but I am not going to spoon feed it to you here.

[[Ch...]]

This thread was started as a ‘weigh-in’ poll, not an opening to debate the ever-debated-and-always-contentious addiction vs dependence debate.

 

It has devolved into arguments, rebuttals and borders on name-calling, if not already there.

 

It has been reported as upsetting to others and deviating from the comfort of support and the original purpose of the thread...in other words, hijacked.

 

Let it go now, folks. The team will remove any further comments about addiction vs dependence.

 

Thanks,

Challis

 

[[be...]]

Dependant. I was in so much that a regularly too less than my dose.

[[Te...]]

Me, too. Dependent. That's all there is to it. I never got a craving that people talk about, never felt euphoric. I don't understand what people are talking about when they say "craving" or "euphoria."

[[be...]]

Me, too. Dependent. That's all there is to it. I never got a craving that people talk about, never felt euphoric. I don't understand what people are talking about when they say "craving" or "euphoria."

 

Me neither.

[[sk...]]

Addiction, dependence.  Dependence, addiction.  I don't see any difference.  We are or were all physically hooked and what does hooked mean?

[[be...]]

Your body may not know the difference, but personality behavior says otherwise.

[[Re...]]

Technically: dependent.  In fact, I despise taking my gabapentin dose currently.  Never got any pleasure.  Ativan helped for sleep a bit and then when I stopped after 11 days of use, I discovered just how dependent I was.

[Guest [Kp...]]

Addiction vs dependence. There's much discussion and some confusion around the use of these two terms, so it'll be interesting to know how many of us fall into each category. Which case is yours?

 

1) Addiction - compulsive drug use despite harmful consequences

 

2) Physical dependence - the body adapts to the drug, requiring more of it to achieve a certain effect (tolerance) and eliciting drug-specific physical or mental symptoms if drug use is abruptly ceased (withdrawal). Physical dependence in and of itself does not constitute addiction, but it often accompanies addiction.

 

I take offence at your calling my quest for BWD an addiction or dependency. Is your quest for air, water, shelter and food an addiction?

 

I have been in search for BWD from since the time I did not even know I was searching for BWD. In college I ingested cannabis thinking it will lead me to BWD. But my rusty memories of BWD, that I carried forward from a previous birth, along with the knowledge of natural numbers (arithmetic), whispered to me that BWD could never last for only a couple of hours (as marijuana did). I then tried LSD, mescaline, speed, cocaine in quick succession, again in college, and sensed that I was getting closer to my goal but wasn't there yet. When I tried phenobarbital, I had an out-of-body experience (OBE) and felt that I had reached BWD but even that wasn't to be. It was at the age of 24 that an old doctor in New Delhi prescribed me alprazolam 0.25 mg to be taken twice daily, on an empty stomach. And I have been BWD-ing ever since. What do you call this? An addiction or a prayer?

[[ma...]]

Addiction vs dependence. There's much discussion and some confusion around the use of these two terms, so it'll be interesting to know how many of us fall into each category. Which case is yours?

 

1) Addiction - compulsive drug use despite harmful consequences

 

2) Physical dependence - the body adapts to the drug, requiring more of it to achieve a certain effect (tolerance) and eliciting drug-specific physical or mental symptoms if drug use is abruptly ceased (withdrawal). Physical dependence in and of itself does not constitute addiction, but it often accompanies addiction.

 

I take offence at your calling my quest for BWD an addiction or dependency. Is your quest for air, water, shelter and food an addiction?

 

I have been in search for BWD from since the time I did not even know I was searching for BWD. In college I ingested cannabis thinking it will lead me to BWD. But my rusty memories of BWD, that I carried forward from a previous birth, along with the knowledge of natural numbers (arithmetic), whispered to me that BWD could never last for only a couple of hours (as marijuana did). I then tried LSD, mescaline, speed, cocaine in quick succession, again in college, and sensed that I was getting closer to my goal but wasn't there yet. When I tried phenobarbital, I had an out-of-body experience (OBE) and felt that I had reached BWD but even that wasn't to be. It was at the age of 24 that an old doctor in New Delhi prescribed me alprazolam 0.25 mg to be taken twice daily, on an empty stomach. And I have been BWD-ing ever since. What do you call this? An addiction or a prayer?

 

I don't understand your post. What is BWD? I also don't understand the issue. I'm dependent on benzos and addicted to nicotine and the difference means I need to address them differently. In any case, you don't need to answer or even read a post that makes no sense to you, that's what I do.

[[be...]]

I want to know what DWD is too.....