For years, the opioid addiction and overdose crisis has been headline news across the United States, and rightly so. In 2012, 241,000 privately insured patients had an “opioid dependency diagnosis.” By 2016, that number had ballooned to 1.4 million, not including individuals on state-sponsored healthcare. Also in 2016, over 14,000 people died as a result of overdosing on traditional opioids like Percocet and Oxycontin.
The ongoing health epidemic continues to dominate the news cycle and politicians’ agendas, but there is another pharmaceutical crisis that receives far less attention. While opioids are highly addictive and dangerous, a separate class of legal drugs is also creating widespread dependency and fostering an increasing number of deaths: benzodiazepines.
Benzodiazepines, often referred to as “minor tranquilizers,” were first developed in the 1950s and became in-demand drugs by the 1960s, continuing to surge in popularity through the 1980s. They include widely-known and used drugs like Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, and Ativan and are used largely to treat anxiety disorders and insomnia.
Over the decades, their use has continued to explode. In 2010, Xanax was the most prescribed mental health drug in the United States, issued 46 million times (note: this is a separate statistic from the number of people receiving prescriptions, as cited in data below). In 2016, antidepressants and surged but Xanax kept the top spot in the “sedative, hypnotic and anti-anxiety category,” the Scientific Americanreported at the time.
As the Chicago Tribune reported this week, citing data from Dr. Anna Lembke, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine:
“Prescriptions for benzodiazepines increased by 67 percent between 1996 and 2013, from 8.1 million to 13.5 million. The quantities of drugs obtained with these prescriptions more than tripled during that same period…”
As Lembke noted in her recent paper documenting the problem, published in the New England Journal of Medicine this month, in 2012, “U.S. prescribers wrote 37.6 benzodiazepine prescriptions per 100 population.”
Government-run health care programs have also expanded their coverage of this class of pharmaceuticals. “Medicaid expenditures on benzodiazepines increased by nearly $40 million between 1991 and 2009, even as the price of benzodiazepines generally fell, suggesting greater utilization,” Lembke wrote.
This is ultimately unsurprising considering the vast amount of money pharmaceutical companies spend lobbying Congress. In 2017 alone, the industry spent almost $278 million lobbying Congress and other federal agencies, and since 1998, it has spent $3.7 billion. The pharmaceutical industry spent more money than all other lobbies, both in 2017 and the 19-year period between 1998 and 2017.
Regardless, the Chicago Tribune noted that as a result of increases in prescriptions, “more people are becoming addicted to benzodiazepines and falling victim to overdose. Overdoses involving the drugs multiplied sevenfold between 1999 and 2015, increasing from 1,135 to 8,791 deaths.”
As the New York Times noted in 2011, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year reported an 89 percent increase in emergency room visits nationwide related to nonmedical benzodiazepine use between 2004 and 2008.”
Writing for Stat News last week, Lembke emphasized the growth of the problem, adding that despite the dangers of prescribing benzodiazepines with opioids at the same time, doctors have increasingly done just that:
“Unlike opioid prescribing, which peaked in 2012 and has decreased nearly 20 percent since then, benzodiazepine prescribing continues to rise. The risk of overdose death goes up nearly fourfold when benzodiazepines are combined with opioids, yet rates of co-prescribing benzodiazepines and opioids nearly doubled between 2001 and 2013. Overdose deaths involving benzodiazepines increased more than sevenfold between 1999 and 2015.”
The problem is further complicated by the fact that benzodiazepines are best used intermittently but that too often, they are prescribed for daily use over long periods of time. As Lembke wrote:
“Most doctors don’t realize how addictive benzodiazepines can be for some people and, because they don’t know better, prescribe them long term and without safety monitoring, like checking the prescription drug monitoring database. In addition to addiction and death, long-term use of benzodiazepines can also contribute to cognitive decline, accidental injuries, and falls.”Controversy erupted in 2010 when previously unreleased government documents revealed that despite preliminary research in the early 1980s suggesting tranquilizers could cause brain damage similar to the effects of long-term alcohol use — and despite recommendations from the British Medical Research Council that more research be conducted — such research was never sufficiently conducted.
Withdrawal from benzodiazepines is also severe and potentially deadly (it has been described as more difficult to go off of than opioids). According to a 1994 review published in the journal Addiction, symptoms include “sleep disturbance, irritability, increased tension and anxiety, panic attacks, hand tremor, sweating, difficulty in concentration, dry wretching and nausea, some weight loss, palpitations, headache, muscular pain and stiffness and a host of perceptual changes. Instances are also reported within the high-dosage category of more serious developments such as seizures and psychotic reactions.”
With potential treatment alternatives for anxiety disorders emerging, including everything from meditation and yoga to cannabidiol (CBD), a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid, there is all the more reason for Americans to take note of the rising threat of benzodiazepine addiction and break away from yet another Big Pharma monopoly over their health.
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As one who takes three Opiates and a Valium regimen for pain management since 2003 from a work injury and a cut nerve I can say two things.
Better to die than to live in pain. Taking meds from people who need it because 97% of overdoses is NON-PRESCRIBED should not stop me from having a quality of life.
If we are going off how many people are killed by it, Valium was 8700 or so last year? COPS KILLED OVER 12,000 PEOPLE WITHOUT TRIAL OR CHARGES!
Shouldn't we outlaw COPS, a bigger killer than pain meds, even UNPRESCRIBED ONES?
DiamondsBenzos are forever. I resisted and only got at most two week scripts to get me through rough patches as a result of the anxiety and panic disorder I was born with.It became too much, chronic and I lost function. Xanax gave me back a semblance of a life but I knew from day one what the implications were. My tolerance to the short acting Xanax made them useless after two years. It is probably the most addictive of the lot and there is definitely a recreational aspect to it.
On Klonopin/Rivotril now because of the slow onset and long half-life. Way less druggy and more therapeutic. This is for life. There is no getting of off this for me. Luckily my long history with these substances makes it so that I would never be denied a script because cold turkey can equal a cold slab for my body within days.
When it comes to opiates/opiods where I live, you can get headache and cough medicine containing 10mg codeine per dose. That isn't even worth a mention. You will not be given oxycodone or god forbid, fentanyl unless you are in ICU or final stages of cancer.
Root canal, back injury, broken bone? Here, have some ibuprofen and paracetamol.
I went on Tramadol on Tuesday because gritting your teeth against the pain of rheumatism wears you down eventually. 100mg per day. This is unheard of and I'm only on it because I am suffering hard. I have found no recreational or euphoric value from these tabs and take them only when things get unbearable.
There are many strange things about the US from the point of view of other cultures, but I literally saw the opioid epidemic unfold in front of my eyes from the other side of the world and no one was doing anything. The terrorist group you call the DEA were destroying kids' lives over half an ounce of weed or two tabs of acid, but they don't dare go near the power your lobby groups hold.
Still the greatest country in the history of mankind, but some things operate in the most jaw-dropping ass-about-face manner.
So yeah, I am not at all comfortable being on these medications, but it was wanting to rather die and with all other options exhausted that made me give in.
Here here!
None of this mentions that heroin cut with fentanyl is the worst culprit. Carfentanyl is so potent that it's almost impossible to smoothly cut into heroin, and pockets of death are extremely likely.
90% of the problem is the black market. Who profits from the black market?
The CIA and the banksters that launder the money.
Big pharma makes far more money from black market heroin, often made in the same factories that make legally prescribed opiates, than it does from those legal prescriptions that keep you and I working. They'd love nothing more than to see 90% of the legal sources dried up, so they could start raking in orders of magnitude more profit on the black market for the same drugs.
The CIA and the banksters would love it too. So would street gangs.
I smell a total psyop in this ongoing story, and it pisses me off, and makes me afraid I'll end up bedridden, unable to work, again.
Thanks for speaking up!
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and done stupid things that I wish I hadn't, but the one thing I've stood my ground on is avoiding prescription pills like the plague. Possibly a privilege for me due to good health, but I have had times of illness where I've been pressured to take pills and I've always said no. And everything I read as time passes confirms to me that was always a good choice for me to have made. The only exception I'll make is antibiotics if I absolutely have no alternative. There's a profit motive and as long as that's the case, which will be always, then they will prescribe them like candy. It's very simple. It solves a medical problem, at least on paper, and it turns a profit.
I have been prescribed opiates since the late '90s, and have had to fight hard to keep my scrip. I've been forced to do without from time to time, and it sucked. Was bedridden once for four months.
I also have scrip for Xanax, for a few years now. I will confirm it's far more addictive, and withdrawal is unbelievable. After going through a rough patch, where I took Xanax for three days running, I returned to my SOP, which isn't to take it daily.
The withdrawal after only two days sent me to the doc. My skin hurt so bad I thought I might have picked up chiggers. I made the mistake of not tapering, and that was a life-threatening mistake.
Not a mistake I'll make again.
I can stop the opiates at any time. I'll suffer some from withdrawal (although I'll suffer far more from my injuries) but nothing like benzos. For folks wanting to stop taking them, don't make the same mistake I did. Taper.
Keep fighting Carey.
Great article! I'm still working to get my grandmother to take some CBD for her health issues.
Thank you for this article, people truly need to wake up and realize that western medicine is all about pushing drugs on people. I don't fully blame the doctors, many of them entered med school with sincere intentions of helping people, but brainwashing is a powerful thing, and when the medical schools are funded/run by pharmaceutical companies, well, what do you think they are going to learn. 😕
If I would have listened to the doctors I would only have one leg today, but I'm a little too smart and a lot too stubborn to do that, so I took the natural route and never looked back!
As a result, my work is on educating people about natural solutions so I run into a lot of people who have been strung along by 'the system' far too long, it is heartbreaking but with more people getting the TRUTH out there more and more people will benefit! THANK YOU! 💙 🌻
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the even bigger moral epidemic of placing children on psychoactive drugs for so called adhd a depressive disorders. They are kids for the love of god. They are supposed to be anxious and not pay attention in school.. So stick em on drugs and tell them something is wrong with them. It's the biggest atrocity I know of and people just turn a blind eye... Truly heartbreaking
Good point. I've been seeing an increase in promotion of Xanax abuse in adolescent and young adult populations. Another way they are keeping people doped-up and disconnected from a true, authentic state of being. I believe it is feeding into a larger social-engineering program.