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Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,936
Registered: ‎07-02-2015

Re: Benzodiazapine drugs overprescribed, overused by elderly

[ Edited ]

@tsavorite

 

    From what I could see with my father's experience, these drugs might actually INCREASE agitation instead of calming it.  Once one doc after another started prescribing them, Dad became literally an incoherent, loud, blithering idiot in a very short period of time.

 

.  It was hard to watch.  I can only relate it to other things I've read about young people being prescribed such drugs as Ritalin, which are designed to help calm them and increase their  attention span, but in some people and older people can actually function as stimulants.

 

I firmly believe after that experience that once a patient reaches a very ripe old age (90s), docs and the facility staff have only one goal...........to keep the "inmate" quiet.  It certainly didn't work in my father's case.

 

Absolutely no source exists---I am sure-- that has definitively studied what a  "cocktail" of many different drugs can do to a person, regardless of age.

Frequent Contributor
Posts: 110
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Benzodiazapine drugs overprescribed, overused by elderly

If it were not for the benzo I take every day and have for over thirty years I would not be here typing this. I would have killed myself by now.  Try living every day with panic attacks and the fear of leaving your home; doing the normal things other people take for granted. I lived that life from the age of seventeen until my early thirties. At last I found a doctor (psychiatrist) who put me on the med that gave me my life back. A normal life I should say. I lived my life but it was not normal; it was h e l l .

 

In all these years I have been able to function as a normal person; I take a low dose and I do not pop them like candy.

 

My only fear is that if my doctor retires or for some reason is no longer able to be my doctor I will never find another doctor to prescribe me my drug. By the way, if desensitization worked for panic attacks I would have been cured because I did force myself to do what I had to do. Over and over again. I had no choice.  I think eventually my heart would have suffered.

 

I agree with the poster who said the government needs to stay out of our lives when it comes to what medication we take.

 

Valued Contributor
Posts: 994
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Benzodiazapine drugs overprescribed, overused by elderly

[ Edited ]

@icaughtu wrote:

If it were not for the benzo I take every day and have for over thirty years I would not be here typing this. I would have killed myself by now.  Try living every day with panic attacks and the fear of leaving your home; doing the normal things other people take for granted. I lived that life from the age of seventeen until my early thirties. At last I found a doctor (psychiatrist) who put me on the med that gave me my life back. A normal life I should say. I lived my life but it was not normal; it was h e l l .

 

In all these years I have been able to function as a normal person; I take a low dose and I do not pop them like candy.

 

My only fear is that if my doctor retires or for some reason is no longer able to be my doctor I will never find another doctor to prescribe me my drug. By the way, if desensitization worked for panic attacks I would have been cured because I did force myself to do what I had to do. Over and over again. I had no choice.  I think eventually my heart would have suffered.

 

I agree with the poster who said the government needs to stay out of our lives when it comes to what medication we take.

 

 

 

 

 

@icaughtu

 

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