The Science Behind Jordan Peterson's Addiction: Benzodiazepines.

what's the old saying physician heal
thyself Wednesday's opinions are a class of medications typically used to treat anxiety and insomnia they include things like xanax valium klonopin when we went back to Toronto our family physician prescribed benzodiazepines one of the fascinating things about Ben's days means in the past let's say twenty years is that there's been a steady increase in prescribing in fact since about 1999 benzodiazepine prescriptions had increased about 67 percent and is something called zopiclone mo vein and I hardly took the Emma vein at all maybe four or five times but I took the benzodiazepine the way that it was prescribed to twice a day point to five milligrams and that seemed to bring the symptoms to a pretty rapid halt which is also part of the reason I didn't need the in vain and then there are so many other things going on around me at that time that I never really thought about it again there's also been a sevenfold increase in benzodiazepine related mortality since 1999 and so what I've written about is that I really think that benzodiazepines are like the hidden epidemic there's been all this national attention awareness around opioids and how they can cause death and all kinds of other adverse health outcomes including addiction but we read very little about benzodiazepines and the fact that they are highly addictive that they can cause death that they cause all kinds of other adverse health outcomes I develop symptoms that I now recognized were associated with its use weakness on the my left side and like a feeling of detachment from people around me people I loved some decrease in the ability to experience joy but it wasn't until much later that I actually associated with the pince-nez being used now the first drug that was tested in his new era was salmon's alprazolam for panic disorder okay and here was the study they conducted that it was for panic attacks it was xanax versus a placebo group and after four weeks xanax was doing better okay but it wasn't a four-week study the way that physicians typically prescribed Dawn's Daisy beans to patients is contrary to how they are recommended to be prescribed by the FDA almost all been stays epeans are recommended to be used only short-term now how we define short-term is sort of in the eyes of the beholder but generally when we're thinking short-term we're thinking you know on the order of days two weeks not months two years at eight weeks the alprazolam patients were doing no better than placebo patients okay and then from eight weeks to 14 weeks westward and you went through the drug because we knew benzodiazepines redic so they had to have a withdrawal phase at the end of 14 weeks that xaniix patients were doing worse than they were at the beginning and much much worse than the placebo patients okay the trial told of harm done it told that people who are gonna get addicted when they came off they'd had so all sorts of withdrawal symptoms and some people unable to get off and yet we commonly see in the medical profession physicians who prescribe benzodiazepines to patients has a sort of one-way ticket they start the prescription the patient starts taking it the patient endorses that they feel better and 20 years later they're still on that Ben's days pain and often at a higher dose so I asked my doctor to increase the benzodiazepine dose but what seemed to happen as a consequence of that was that I just got more anxious like so again in retrospect it seems like I had a rather uncommon but not unheard of reaction to benzodiazepines where increased dose makes anxiety worse instead of better so then at one point when things weren't getting better and Tami was still in the hospital I was trying to take care of her we had lots of help I stopped taking them entirely and tried ketamine which is a treatment for depression while that neither of those were very good ideas as it turned out what did they report what did American psychiatry report they didn't report the eight-week results they focused on the four-week results because that was a story that told of an effective new treatment for panic disorder they basically glided oh you know didn't talk about the eight-week results in the abstracts and completely hid the 14 week results so what's the evidence base these are effective for panic disorder but I continued my sort of downhill spiral and ended up in a clinic in on the eastern seaboard that claim they could do a rapid yeah benzodiazepine detox which was a complete bloody lie yeah well what we figured was we didn't realize that there was this physical dependency until you stopped to try and do the Academy and then we tried tapering and you couldn't stand it because of the akathisia and so we thought well let's go get some professional help right and well and I went to the clinic on the understanding that they could do a multi-day detoxification and treatment for withdrawal and when I got there what they told me instead was that they'd substitute essentially they'd substitute one benzodiazepine for another which wasn't the least bit helpful because clonazepam was already a long-acting benzodiazepine and they're easier to wean off than the shorter acting benzodiazepines and they had nothing to offer essentially I came out of that clinic worse than I when I went in so like significantly worse yes on to more sedative like drugs in order to dampen down the akathisia symptoms rights which wasn't helping much there is there is a body of literature now that shows that these drugs do leave lasting for many many people leave lasting cognitive deficits no I'm thinking of a study where people would you the study I was going to say talk about whether people were using multiple drugs over the years benzos and some people were using opiates and some people using stimulants and the loss of brain function was the greatest and the people using the benzos especially compared to people using the opiates you and Andre your husband took me out of that hospital and we went to Russia of all places near Moscow to try a treatment offered by clinic there that used they use propofol and xtour right right proper fall to as a heavy heavy sedating agent it basically made me unconscious for nine days and it's so strange was we're now in Serbia weirdly enough in Belgrade of all bloody places and we've been here about two weeks and went to yet another specialty clinic run by an anesthesiologist and they modified the medication that I was taking in Florida which is where we were last and I don't know I can't understand it but virtually all my symptoms have disappeared for someone who's not taking benzos I would go to great lengths to convince them never to do it it's not a good idea they can affect the performance in school on the job devastating in terms of driving people can be as impaired with benzos driving as they would be with alcohol so all of the side effects that you associate with alcohol and young people can also occur with benzos and the combination of the two is additive what's the old saying physician heal thyself [Music]