A doctor at an ER thought it was a wise choice to give me a prescription for a benzodiazepine, which is a family of medication for people with anxiety, chronic pain, depression, joint pain, seizures and headaches. I only took the medication for my chronic pain on a daily basis like it recommended and boy was it an extremely hard medication to wean off and the withdrawals from this type of medication lasts forever. Please be very wise when doctors want to give you any kind of medication, do not trust them. They work for Big Pharma and can care less about helping you. Research everything! Benzodiazepines are xanax, klonopin, ativan and librium.

Rings a bell. I think I was on 20 mg of Lexapro and this at the same time. I agree that doctors prescribe too recklessly.

Exactly!

I watch the 6 o'clock local news followed by World New Tonight. One of these days I'm going to write down all the drugs they push on commercials and all of them end with "ask your doctor if XXXXXXX is right for you." Big Pharma at work. All the drugs on the commercials are aimed at an older audience who still watch the news on TV.

If you experience a nine hour boner---or if you experience death by renal failure---consult your physician immediately.

I don't understand why in the world they advertise prescription drugs on TV. Of course, I can imagine that the reason is to prompt we patients to ask our doctors for them so that it becomes likely that a doctor will prescribe them. But, that's an individual patient decision. I leave it to my doctor to decide what he/she needs to prescribe without any prompting from me.

Methadone+ xnes good time if you wake up.

First post in general. Heap withdrawl of benzos can kill u like booze. No sleep for weeks and you take a lil nap you body sweats out any h2o in the body scary. I'd wake up with a imprint of my body on my bed. Gross. Oh well heading to the l store.

They are legalized dope pushers! pmac, you sound like you have been through benzo withdrawal yourself. Sorry to hear that.

Most of the time the doctors are paid to write certain meds by the manufacturers so they don't really look out for us.

I never heard of prescribing xanax for pain. Anxiety, panic attacks, and in conjuction with one of the antidepressants for depression. Valium has more of a muscle relaxing action to it so some people got them for back spasm pain and it's used for alcohol withdrawl but up to now i never heard of xanax being prescribed for pain.

You have to be careful with all the benzo's, you don't think they're a big deal until you stop taking them, espescially if you took them for any length of time.

Yeah, they'll wean you off a Benzo with a short half-life (like Xanax) with a Benzo with a long half-life (like Valium), and vice versa. But all that does is trick your body for a little while. At the end of the day you're still gonna have a problem.

Valium does have a muscle relaxer in it and does have a long half life (about 12 hours) compared to Koldapin which is prescribed a lot for anxiety and whether people want to hear this or not Bi-Polar Disorders.
Xanax is the strongest benzodiazepine and has a short half life of about on 4 hours per 1 mg.

Librium(s) are used to get off of benzos; doctors think if you take that for a week you can just ween yourself off.

You're not supposed to just stop taking your dosage though. You have to decrease it gradually. And you have to maintain regular communication with your doctor.

Maybe some people just try to stop taking these things cold turkey. I know I have and I was warned not to. Not that I had any problems but everyone responds differently.

It can deadly it's no joke with benzo's it just as powerful as alcohol withdrawl you can DIE from it. A friend of mine has been on anti-depressants is whole life and told me once he stopped taking them and then switched to another it made the kid suicidal very powerful stuff.

I don't know a lot of medications and fortunately don't take any, but isn't Xanax one they advertise on tv with a sh*tload of possible side effects including suicidal thoughts?
Or am I thinking of something else?



TIS

Because you never heard of it means it's not true?! No pun intended, but my doctor gave me ATIVAN for pain, not XANAX.

No no, i didn't mean it like that. Just never heard of it before. Like i said some of the benzo's had more of a muscle relaxing effect and were given for muscle spasm type pain. I'm not that familiar with Ativan, for all i know it could be one of the benzos they used for that. Valium would probably work good for tension or stress headaches.

Yes, you're right about that. There are a lot of different benzos. Some people can taper off in a few months and be fine but others can taper off at the same amount of time and have a really terrible withdrawal from it. The withdrawal symptoms are painful. The worst mental and physical pain ever. I was only on them for over a month and went cold turkey thinking that since I was on it a month it would be ok. Boy, was I wrong.

Not to rain on anyone's misinformed medication parade, but very little (almost none) of what I have just read on this thread is even close to being correct. Yes benzos can be addictive, but if used correctly, they have been a tremendous help to millions of people. In addition, there is no conspiracy between big pharma and physicians...no money changes hands, and if your doctor doesn't have your best interests at heart, it's not because of big pharma...you've got other issues at hand.

I've always heard never take a laxative and a sleeping pill before turning in for the night...

No money changes hands (maybe), but there are other perks. Drug reps at my mom's job are constantly coming in and ordering massive catered lunches for everyone while doing conferences and of course holding business retreats for the doctors in the Virgin Islands and Vegas and shit.. sounds shady to me..

So a "massive" lunch does exactly what?...besides making you loosen your belt?

As posted above, I don't know why a medication such as Xanax would be prescribed for pain; there are plenty of medications that are specifically designed to reduce or otherwise minimize pain. Xanax (or its generic equivalent) is not; it is meant to relax the patient.

As also posted above, when medications are prescribed and used correctly, they are quite beneficial.

However, as a function of marketplace competition, I do think that pharmaceutical companies provide physicians with incentives to prescribe their product instead of another company's product.

Yeah, and Oxycodone is every bit as dangerous as anything in the Benzo family.

Well why focus on the lunch part? That's just the bits that the rest of the office gets to be in on. What about the retreats to tropical islands for the doctors. All expense paid of course

Really?....can you give an example of a paid trip to the islands or any other destination? I'm truly interested.

it's 2014, if you're unaware of the dangers of benzo's, opiates and/or sleeping pills that's on you. this fake idea that so many who run into problems push that it was the doctor's fault is transparent bullshit. most of the time, it's not the dr pushing narcotics on unsuspecting patients, it's patients pushing dr's to prescribe narcotics. oh yeah, give me a break about benzo withdrawl in the short term. if you have been taking a normal, moderate dosage for a few weeks, you will be a bit uncomfortable and have some problems sleeping. if you gulped down the entire 30 1mg pills in a few days, don't cry!

Well I don't have documentation. My mom works in a medical office and lots of times I hear from her or her doctor friends that the drug reps are bringing the doctors out to some retreat to have seminars. The seminars are basically the reps pushing new drugs. Any time I've heard the location it's always been some touristy vacation spot.

Benzos are NEVER Rxd for pain...again, another bit of misinformation....this thread is actually quite silly in its immaturity and lack of factual basis.