America’s opioid crisis is built on opiate based prescription pills such as Oxycodone — 80 percent of new heroin users start their habit this way. Once hooked, the addict typically exhausts all options to obtain more prescription pills, until heroin, then fentanyl, becomes the cheaper, more accessible option.
In 2016, more than 64,000 Americans died of an accidental drug overdose - now the LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH for those under the age of 50.
Powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl are driving overdose rates so high that the death toll for 2017 is on track to eclipse 2016 by another half in some areas. Still, in 2015, nearly half of all opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Are you, a member of your family, or anyone you know, an actual or potential victim of a criminal and potentially life-destroying pandemic created by the pharmaceutical industry?
Answer the questions and read the information below to find out...
Have you or someone you know ever been prescribed one of a large class of drugs known as benzodiazepines and commonly called ‘benzos’?
If so, do you know that anyone who takes benzos, even for a very short period of 9 days or less, is at risk of developing a chronically disabling and life-destroying illness called ‘benzodiazepine dependency’ or ‘benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome’?
Do you know also that the symptoms of this illness include not only multiple illnesses but many types of physical pain and psychological suffering that have been ranked worse than the experience of war or even torture by army veterans, and worse than rape by rape victims?
Do you or anyone you know experience symptoms of ‘benzodiazepine dependency’ - for example totally new or increased forms of anxiety in between doses (interdose symptoms), a resulting need to take their benzodiazepine drug more frequently and/or in higher doses, and/or great difficulty coming off the drug? This is a result of what is called ‘tolerance’ - a process by which a drug becomes physiologically less effective over time, so that higher doses of it or needed or withdrawal symptoms similar to those who discontinue a drug are experienced?
Do you know that abrupt or over-rapid discontinuation of benzodiazepines, particularly after long-term use, can be fatal?
Do you know that even those who slowly come of their benzodiazepine medication over a period of several years often not only experience horrific symptoms during this time - but may continue to suffer similar symptoms for a lifetime?
"The biggest drug-addiction problem in the world doesn't involve heroin, cocaine or marijuana. In fact, it doesn't involve an illegal drug at all. The world's biggest drug-addiction problem is posed by a group of drugs, the benzodiazepines, which are widely prescribed by doctors and taken by countless millions of perfectly ordinary people around the world…” Vernon Coleman
But it is also important to understand that addiction to street drugs is quite different in nature from the type of dependency created by legal, prescription drugs. 'Addiction' is generally a craving or desire for the positive euphoric effects or ‘high’ created by using an illegal drug or alcohol. Benzodiazepine ‘dependency’ or ‘withdrawal syndrome’ is not an addiction in this sense, but a physical need for a drug - comparable to the need of a diabetic for insulin. Would you call a diabetic an ‘insulin addict’? More importantly - would you take a prescription drug if you knew or were told that it could quickly create a type of dependency far worse than the dependency of diabetics on insulin? Unfortunately, very few people who are prescribed benzos are warned or properly informed about the awful dependency it can so quickly create.
The fact is that a first-time benzodiazepine prescription, for whatever medical reason at all (muscle tension, sleep problems, anxiety, phobias or panic attacks) is a nothing less than a medical crime that should long have been banned, outlawed and punished by law. So also is unregulated repeat prescribing of benzos without warnings, diagnosis - or informed help and counselling if benzodiazepine dependency has already set in.
The crime of negligent benzodiazepine prescribing ruins lives. It can be compared to violent or sexual abuse of another person’s body. It is a form of medical rape, abuse and torture of patients that is then denied by the perpetrators: in this case the pharmaceutical corporations that created and still make huge profits from the mass marketing of benzodiazepines.
See also www.benzoinfo.com
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