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Drug that steals women's lives: It's more addictive than heroin, with horrifying side-effects. So why, 50 years after its launch, is Valium still given to millions?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...ing-effects-given-millions.html#ixzz2MssUoQvM
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
With her wedding day fast approaching, Baylissa Fredericks was increasingly worried about a nervous tic in her eyelid.
She'd suffered the problem since early childhood, but was so concerned about it drawing attention to her for all the wrong reasons on her big day that she visited her GP.
Sadly, the drug prescribed by her doctor on that day in 1998 for what, in retrospect, seems like a trivial problem, has blighted 49-year-old Baylissa's life ever since.
Valium has left her suffering around 40 seizures a day, during which her whole body jerks uncontrollably, sometimes for several minutes on end. 'It happens through the night as well, sometimes twice in an hour,' she says. 'I haven't had a complete night's sleep since 2005, so I am constantly exhausted and forgetful.'
Valium's legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms
Valium's legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms
Baylissa is suffering the devastating effects of a tranquiliser more commonly associated with Sixties housewives, but which is still widely prescribed 50 years after it was first launched in Britain. One of the benzodiazepine family of drugs, Valium is more addictive than heroin but is used by 1.5 million people in this country to treat wide-ranging problems including anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, muscle spasms, restless legs syndrome and alcohol withdrawal.
After its launch, the drug - now known as diazepam after the brand name Valium was dropped amid controversy over the scale of its use - was dubbed 'mother's little helper' and quickly became the pill for every ill, dished out in profligate quantities to anyone struggling with the travails of daily life. Sixty per cent of users were women.
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Valium's 50th birthday is no cause for celebration. Its legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms so severe they are unfit for work, relationships or even independent living.
Baylissa took Valium for eight years. 'It was vanity that made me ask the doctor for something to stop my facial tic - something I now bitterly regret.' Now a counsellor living in Cardiff, South Wales, she explains: 'It did stop the tic on my wedding day, but I felt so sedated I was like a zombie.'
She continued taking Valium and when her facial tic got worse, her doctor simply increased the dose. After three years her marriage started to founder. 'I found somewhere else to live, but by then I was having trouble remembering things and finishing sentences.
Baylissa took Valium for eight years: 'It was vanity'
Baylissa took Valium for eight years: 'It was vanity'
'I didn't realise the tranquilisers were causing these problems and thought I needed more of the drug to help me, but the doctor said I was on too high a dose for him to increase it any further.'
Worried about what Valium might be doing to her after six years, Baylissa started researching the drug on the internet and was shocked by what she read. People reported memory loss, dementia, paranoia, hallucinations and excruciating pain, either as a result of being on the drug or coming off it.
'I immediately consulted my doctor, who said I'd have to stay on it for the rest of my life because the withdrawal symptoms would be so bad.'
But Baylissa was determined to wean herself off it. 'I didn't get any help from the doctor, and the whole thing took about a year. The seizures got worse, though, and now I don't know if I will suffer them for the rest of my life.'
Her neurologist has confirmed that her enduring health problems are caused by her taking Valium for nearly a decade, but says there is nothing that can be done to help her. Baylissa has written a book for people who have experienced problems with the drug and also runs a helpline, Recovery Road, for people affected by dependency on, and withdrawal from, benzodiazepines.
'I was lucky,' she says. 'Although I have long-term problems, what happened to me is nothing compared to what others have gone through.'
Sian Hurd, a 46-year-old mother of five and the daughter-in-law of the former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, jumped to her death from the roof of the family home in New York last year while under the influence of a benzodiazepine she was taking for insomnia. Sian's father, Roland Aubrey, a retired GP, pointed out at her inquest that drugs like the one his daughter was taking 'exacerbate morbid ideas and affect the balance of the mind'.
Valium's pernicious legacy has touched everyone from schoolgirls and poverty-stricken single mothers to middle-class divorcees and wealthy socialites. In some cases, distraught addicts resort to suicide: Department of Health figures show the drug is implicated in 300-500 deaths a year in this country.
Despite having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs
Despite having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs
But the scale of the problem has been largely ignored. Despite guidelines dating back to 1988, which warn doctors to limit the prescribing of this potent and controversial drug, clinicians have found it an effective way to handle many hard-to-diagnose, hard-to-treat patients.
There are now 183 different formulations of Valium-derived medications. Doctors in Britain issue almost 18 million prescriptions a year for them, and every GP has at least 180 long-term users on their books.
While the nation's 250,000 to 300,000 heroin users are offered substantial help from the NHS to kick their addiction, benzodiazepine addicts receive relatively little support.
Despite being highly addictive and having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs by the mid-Seventies.
It was originally manufactured by Hoffmann La Roche, but the company lost its patent protection in 1985. Some 500 different versions of the drug were subsequently marketed by different companies worldwide.
Fiona Orr, 55, was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting
Fiona Orr, 55, was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting
Today, Clare Gerada, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, insists that none of her members are condemning new patients to long-term use of the drugs. But she says: 'It's often simply too dangerous to take an addict off these drugs [because of the side-effects]. Going on prescribing them may be the best option.'
Malcolm Lader, emeritus professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, has devoted more than 40 years to campaigning against Valium and its derivatives. He says: 'Doctors have ignored warnings for years, but we need to stop more people going on benzodiazepines.'
Fiona Orr, 55, is one of the many whose lives have been dulled by Valium from a young age. She was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting in 1975. Fiona's GP believed she had torn a stomach muscle and referred her to a surgeon who, after only a cursory examination, wrote to the GP describing her as a 'neurotic young woman'.
He recommended she be prescribed the fashionable panacea of the age: Valium. 'It had a dramatic and instant effect,' says Fiona. 'I was in a lesson at school and I suddenly couldn't move my legs. It was frightening.'
Fiona was taken to the sick bay, where she slept soundly for the rest of the day. Within weeks of taking that first Valium pill, Fiona, who lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire, was hooked on the drug - an addiction that was to last 36 years.
Throughout her teens she took Valium, as well as another benzodiazepine drug, Ativan. Together, she says, these drugs denied her a career and a normal social life.
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression, anxiety, pain and insomnia at bay. Fiona married her husband Bryan, now a 71-year-old retired computer programmer, the year after she graduated from university.
He knew about her Valium use from the start, and accepted that dependency on the drug was part of her life.
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression at bay
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression at bay
They went on to have two daughters. 'I don't think I was a great mother,' says Fiona. 'I was snappy, neurotic and hyper-sensitive, and there's no question that my using Valium had a massive effect on the children. 'There was one year when I just sat in bed and read. I was like a zombie.' Thankfully, Bryan was able to keep the family together.
It was on a holiday to France in April 2011 that Fiona made the life-changing decision to stop taking Valium. 'I didn't take enough with me - I don't know if that was on purpose or not - and we were sitting in a cafe one day when I had a panic attack, mewling like a puppy.
'People were staring and it was awful, but it took about three weeks for the real withdrawal symptoms to appear. By then I was whimpering and shaking the whole time, I couldn't sleep, I was depressed and just exhausted.' Back home, with no further help from her GP, Fiona sought information about Valium withdrawal on the internet and tackled her long-term dependency by gradually reducing her dose to zero over five months.
'It was absolute hell,' she says. 'I felt sick, I had long periods of shaking uncontrollably, excruciating muscle cramps, and all the symptoms of severe flu. I couldn't go out, leave the house at all, or do anything at all.'
But she has now been off Valium since April last year, has started work as a school cleaner, and has lost two stone in weight thanks to her increased level of physical activity.
'I'm a different person now,' she says. 'I can't believe Bryan has put up with all this, and I feel terribly guilty about what I have put my whole family through. I can never get back all the years I lost.'
Lynda Buckley's Valium addiction took hold with the collapse of her marriage in 1992
Her doctor thought Valium would help Lynda, who has two sons, through this difficult time, and before long she was taking the maximum dose. That went on for more than ten years. 'I went along with it because I was told it was what I needed,' she says. 'But it was a distressing and stressful time for all of us, and I knew I was dependent on it.'
Lynda, now 66, finally stopped taking the drug in 2005. 'I did it by myself over six weeks by cutting the tablets into quarters and gradually reducing the dose,' she says.
'I had terrible withdrawal symptoms including dreadful muscle twitching, and could hardly walk up a staircase.
'I was determined to stay off the tranquilisers, but I've been told that a lot of the symptoms I've been left with - memory loss and difficulty finding words - are because I cut down too quickly and have caused myself permanent damage.
'Three years ago I had a heart attack, which I was told may well have been connected with the drug,' says Lynda, who lives in Crawley, West Sussex, and does not work. 'I suffer tinnitus and muscle pain but I do think I'm slowly getting better,' she says.
Britain's growing addiction to sleeping pills and tranquilisers has prompted a series of reviews by doctors and public health chiefs.
Heather Ashton, emeritus professor of pharmacology at Newcastle University, told a meeting of the British Medical Association in January that nine out of ten GPs do not offer any sort of help to wean people off these drugs. 'We are stuck in a slough of inertia and ignorance,' she said.
Meanwhile Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked the public health minister, Anna Soubry, to look at the scale of the problem and consider what steps should be taken to support addicts.
Whatever the outcome, it is likely to come too late for many of the 1.5 million people whose lives have been blighted by their addiction.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...ing-effects-given-millions.html#ixzz2MssdCCeC
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...ing-effects-given-millions.html#ixzz2MssUoQvM
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
With her wedding day fast approaching, Baylissa Fredericks was increasingly worried about a nervous tic in her eyelid.
She'd suffered the problem since early childhood, but was so concerned about it drawing attention to her for all the wrong reasons on her big day that she visited her GP.
Sadly, the drug prescribed by her doctor on that day in 1998 for what, in retrospect, seems like a trivial problem, has blighted 49-year-old Baylissa's life ever since.
Valium has left her suffering around 40 seizures a day, during which her whole body jerks uncontrollably, sometimes for several minutes on end. 'It happens through the night as well, sometimes twice in an hour,' she says. 'I haven't had a complete night's sleep since 2005, so I am constantly exhausted and forgetful.'
Valium's legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms
Valium's legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms
Baylissa is suffering the devastating effects of a tranquiliser more commonly associated with Sixties housewives, but which is still widely prescribed 50 years after it was first launched in Britain. One of the benzodiazepine family of drugs, Valium is more addictive than heroin but is used by 1.5 million people in this country to treat wide-ranging problems including anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, muscle spasms, restless legs syndrome and alcohol withdrawal.
After its launch, the drug - now known as diazepam after the brand name Valium was dropped amid controversy over the scale of its use - was dubbed 'mother's little helper' and quickly became the pill for every ill, dished out in profligate quantities to anyone struggling with the travails of daily life. Sixty per cent of users were women.
More...
It's not just the menopause that makes a woman's 50s the hardest decade of her life
Life in the slow lane's not just for losers
Flapper chic is back in vogue as Louis Vuitton shows delicate slips, furs and mannish coats at PFW - with both Cara and Kate on the catwalk
Valium's 50th birthday is no cause for celebration. Its legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling permanent withdrawal symptoms so severe they are unfit for work, relationships or even independent living.
Baylissa took Valium for eight years. 'It was vanity that made me ask the doctor for something to stop my facial tic - something I now bitterly regret.' Now a counsellor living in Cardiff, South Wales, she explains: 'It did stop the tic on my wedding day, but I felt so sedated I was like a zombie.'
She continued taking Valium and when her facial tic got worse, her doctor simply increased the dose. After three years her marriage started to founder. 'I found somewhere else to live, but by then I was having trouble remembering things and finishing sentences.
Baylissa took Valium for eight years: 'It was vanity'
Baylissa took Valium for eight years: 'It was vanity'
'I didn't realise the tranquilisers were causing these problems and thought I needed more of the drug to help me, but the doctor said I was on too high a dose for him to increase it any further.'
Worried about what Valium might be doing to her after six years, Baylissa started researching the drug on the internet and was shocked by what she read. People reported memory loss, dementia, paranoia, hallucinations and excruciating pain, either as a result of being on the drug or coming off it.
'I immediately consulted my doctor, who said I'd have to stay on it for the rest of my life because the withdrawal symptoms would be so bad.'
But Baylissa was determined to wean herself off it. 'I didn't get any help from the doctor, and the whole thing took about a year. The seizures got worse, though, and now I don't know if I will suffer them for the rest of my life.'
Her neurologist has confirmed that her enduring health problems are caused by her taking Valium for nearly a decade, but says there is nothing that can be done to help her. Baylissa has written a book for people who have experienced problems with the drug and also runs a helpline, Recovery Road, for people affected by dependency on, and withdrawal from, benzodiazepines.
'I was lucky,' she says. 'Although I have long-term problems, what happened to me is nothing compared to what others have gone through.'
Sian Hurd, a 46-year-old mother of five and the daughter-in-law of the former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, jumped to her death from the roof of the family home in New York last year while under the influence of a benzodiazepine she was taking for insomnia. Sian's father, Roland Aubrey, a retired GP, pointed out at her inquest that drugs like the one his daughter was taking 'exacerbate morbid ideas and affect the balance of the mind'.
Valium's pernicious legacy has touched everyone from schoolgirls and poverty-stricken single mothers to middle-class divorcees and wealthy socialites. In some cases, distraught addicts resort to suicide: Department of Health figures show the drug is implicated in 300-500 deaths a year in this country.
Despite having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs
Despite having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs
But the scale of the problem has been largely ignored. Despite guidelines dating back to 1988, which warn doctors to limit the prescribing of this potent and controversial drug, clinicians have found it an effective way to handle many hard-to-diagnose, hard-to-treat patients.
There are now 183 different formulations of Valium-derived medications. Doctors in Britain issue almost 18 million prescriptions a year for them, and every GP has at least 180 long-term users on their books.
While the nation's 250,000 to 300,000 heroin users are offered substantial help from the NHS to kick their addiction, benzodiazepine addicts receive relatively little support.
Despite being highly addictive and having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs by the mid-Seventies.
It was originally manufactured by Hoffmann La Roche, but the company lost its patent protection in 1985. Some 500 different versions of the drug were subsequently marketed by different companies worldwide.
Fiona Orr, 55, was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting
Fiona Orr, 55, was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting
Today, Clare Gerada, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, insists that none of her members are condemning new patients to long-term use of the drugs. But she says: 'It's often simply too dangerous to take an addict off these drugs [because of the side-effects]. Going on prescribing them may be the best option.'
Malcolm Lader, emeritus professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, has devoted more than 40 years to campaigning against Valium and its derivatives. He says: 'Doctors have ignored warnings for years, but we need to stop more people going on benzodiazepines.'
Fiona Orr, 55, is one of the many whose lives have been dulled by Valium from a young age. She was 16 when she started suffering acute stomach pain and vomiting in 1975. Fiona's GP believed she had torn a stomach muscle and referred her to a surgeon who, after only a cursory examination, wrote to the GP describing her as a 'neurotic young woman'.
He recommended she be prescribed the fashionable panacea of the age: Valium. 'It had a dramatic and instant effect,' says Fiona. 'I was in a lesson at school and I suddenly couldn't move my legs. It was frightening.'
Fiona was taken to the sick bay, where she slept soundly for the rest of the day. Within weeks of taking that first Valium pill, Fiona, who lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire, was hooked on the drug - an addiction that was to last 36 years.
Throughout her teens she took Valium, as well as another benzodiazepine drug, Ativan. Together, she says, these drugs denied her a career and a normal social life.
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression, anxiety, pain and insomnia at bay. Fiona married her husband Bryan, now a 71-year-old retired computer programmer, the year after she graduated from university.
He knew about her Valium use from the start, and accepted that dependency on the drug was part of her life.
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression at bay
Fiona realised she was dependent on the drugs, but remained convinced they were keeping depression at bay
They went on to have two daughters. 'I don't think I was a great mother,' says Fiona. 'I was snappy, neurotic and hyper-sensitive, and there's no question that my using Valium had a massive effect on the children. 'There was one year when I just sat in bed and read. I was like a zombie.' Thankfully, Bryan was able to keep the family together.
It was on a holiday to France in April 2011 that Fiona made the life-changing decision to stop taking Valium. 'I didn't take enough with me - I don't know if that was on purpose or not - and we were sitting in a cafe one day when I had a panic attack, mewling like a puppy.
'People were staring and it was awful, but it took about three weeks for the real withdrawal symptoms to appear. By then I was whimpering and shaking the whole time, I couldn't sleep, I was depressed and just exhausted.' Back home, with no further help from her GP, Fiona sought information about Valium withdrawal on the internet and tackled her long-term dependency by gradually reducing her dose to zero over five months.
'It was absolute hell,' she says. 'I felt sick, I had long periods of shaking uncontrollably, excruciating muscle cramps, and all the symptoms of severe flu. I couldn't go out, leave the house at all, or do anything at all.'
But she has now been off Valium since April last year, has started work as a school cleaner, and has lost two stone in weight thanks to her increased level of physical activity.
'I'm a different person now,' she says. 'I can't believe Bryan has put up with all this, and I feel terribly guilty about what I have put my whole family through. I can never get back all the years I lost.'
Lynda Buckley's Valium addiction took hold with the collapse of her marriage in 1992
Her doctor thought Valium would help Lynda, who has two sons, through this difficult time, and before long she was taking the maximum dose. That went on for more than ten years. 'I went along with it because I was told it was what I needed,' she says. 'But it was a distressing and stressful time for all of us, and I knew I was dependent on it.'
Lynda, now 66, finally stopped taking the drug in 2005. 'I did it by myself over six weeks by cutting the tablets into quarters and gradually reducing the dose,' she says.
'I had terrible withdrawal symptoms including dreadful muscle twitching, and could hardly walk up a staircase.
'I was determined to stay off the tranquilisers, but I've been told that a lot of the symptoms I've been left with - memory loss and difficulty finding words - are because I cut down too quickly and have caused myself permanent damage.
'Three years ago I had a heart attack, which I was told may well have been connected with the drug,' says Lynda, who lives in Crawley, West Sussex, and does not work. 'I suffer tinnitus and muscle pain but I do think I'm slowly getting better,' she says.
Britain's growing addiction to sleeping pills and tranquilisers has prompted a series of reviews by doctors and public health chiefs.
Heather Ashton, emeritus professor of pharmacology at Newcastle University, told a meeting of the British Medical Association in January that nine out of ten GPs do not offer any sort of help to wean people off these drugs. 'We are stuck in a slough of inertia and ignorance,' she said.
Meanwhile Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked the public health minister, Anna Soubry, to look at the scale of the problem and consider what steps should be taken to support addicts.
Whatever the outcome, it is likely to come too late for many of the 1.5 million people whose lives have been blighted by their addiction.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...ing-effects-given-millions.html#ixzz2MssdCCeC
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
