This report by David Cox has been published in The Telegraph. It begins:
“In the 1970s and 1980s, vast numbers of people in the UK began taking benzodiazepines, a group of drugs more commonly known as tranquillisers, for stress, anxiety and insomnia. Drugs like Valium (diazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Ativan (lorazepam) rapidly became household names.
As father to a young family, working two jobs to make ends meet while studying for his accountancy exams, Barry Haslam was prescribed steadily increasing doses of Ativan by his GP after suffering a mental health breakdown.
After 10 years, Haslam quit the drug after experiencing increasing cognitive side effects, and being told by his wife that his personality had changed. Today, nearly 40 years on, he has no recollections at all of that decade.
But amnesia is far from his only problem. ‘Being prescribed benzodiazepines for 10 years left me with brain damage,’ he says. ‘All these years on, I still experience daily chronic headaches, brain fog, intense fatigue and neuropathic pain. Brain scans have shown that I suffer with fluid on the brain and brain atrophy. The impact on my daily life is immense.’ …”
You can read more from here.
