In my earlier post on this topic, I mentioned that benzo withdrawal can be dangerous, but it’s been drawn to my attention, by Monica, that perhaps I didn’t adequately stress how dangerous it can be in some cases.
If you click here, you can read Monica’s own account of her experience in a detox center in Florida. It’s a thought-provoking article.
Because for many years benzos were dished out so liberally, there is still a mistaken perception that they are relatively safe and benign, which is not the case.
You can read another personal story by anonymous (courtesy of Hersteltalent and Tallaght Trialogue on Twitter) at this link on KIP Central. Here’s a quote:
“At my first visit to the shrink, and after ten minutes of talking, I was told I was mentally ill and would need drugs for life. Little did I know that set the course for my life. It is insane to me how that initial anxiety I had now seems so mild compared to all the hellish anxiety and all the other symptoms I’ve been through on these drugs and in recovery from them! I was a normal kid reacting to some things going on in my environment! Why did they do this to me? Why did they poison me and mess with my brain? Why did they steal my life?”
For decades these kinds of personal accounts were routinely dismissed by the psychiatric community as the rantings of a few disenchanted “non-compliants.” Often the victims themselves accepted this kind of dismissive characterization, and kept their silence and their shame.
But within the Internet and social media, more and more victims are speaking out, and their voices are adding force and vividity to those of professionals who are no longer willing to go along with a spurious system that has destroyed and continues to destroy so many lives.
The APA’s medicalization of all human problems is a pernicious and destructive process that undermines people’s sense of worth and destroys their bodies.