Valium: It’s more addictive than heroin, with horrifying side-effects, so why is it still given to millions? | Daily Mail Online
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One of the first - and most infamous - of the ‘benzos’ was Valium. Launched in the 1960s it 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 and Valium was soon dubbed ’mother’s little helper’.
But Valium and the other benzos are derived from chemical compounds which make some of them more addictive even than heroin.
And their legacy is a vast group of people suffering appalling withdrawal symptoms so severe they are unfit for work, relationships or even independent living. Some have also been left with permanent effects, including memory loss.
Increasingly worried about what the drug might be doing to her after six years on it, Baylissa started researching clonazepam-type drugs 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.
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.
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 benzodiazepiones, and every GP has at least 180 long-term users on their books.
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.
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.’