Addiction by Prescription :: Emotional and Mental Health

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Addiction by Prescription
by author Joan E. Gadsby

The medical establishment’s drug approach to normal fluctuations of mind and emotion is seriously flawed. The pursuit of bottom-line profits by drug companies who promote diseases and push pills and the complicity of doctors who foster chemical dependency in patients through their collective denial, ignorance, apathy and neglect have created a worldwide health epidemic of “accidental addicts.” And I was one of them.
On Feb. 2, 1990, I almost died from an unintentional prescription drug overdose. Four months later, I was trying to read Barbara Gordon’s best-selling I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can, but no matter how hard I tried, the words jumbled and the lines ran together. I read and reread, unable to concentrate. (I later found out this was symptomatic of cognitive damage from addiction to drugs.) Despite my difficulties, Gordon’s story of her problems while taking tranquilizers, her drug-induced breakdown and her bizarre and harrowing experiences during a “cold-turkey” withdrawal from Valium triggered memories of my own horrific past and confirmed my decision to free myself of all prescription drugs.

Six weeks earlier–without medical supervision since none was available–I had begun to discontinue the tranquilizers and sleeping pills prescribed to me for 20 years by my former, trusted doctor. The pills were benzodiazepines (Librium, Valium, Dalmane, Restoril, Serax and Ativan)–all addictive, representing a serious and insidiously hidden, worldwide health epidemic affecting millions of people who have become “accidental addicts.” World Health Organization research reveals that benzodiazepines are the most frequently prescribed drugs and remain the biggest sellers in the history of medicine, with current annual sales of $21 billion. I was given my first pill after my son, Derek, four, died of a brain tumour Christmas 1966.

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Joan Gadsbyâ€™s passion to save lives, create awareness and share her experience and research has included co-executive production of a television documentary Our Pill Epidemicâ€”The Shocking Story of a Society Hooked on Drugs, which aired nationally, and her internationally endorsed book Addiction by Prescription (Key Porter Books, 2001). Both are available on her Web site addictionbyprescription.com.

Source: alive #248, June 2003

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