Benzodiazepine Dependence - History

History

Previously, physical dependence on benzodiazepines was largely thought to occur only in people on high-therapeutic-dose ranges and low- or normal-dose dependence was not suspected until the 1970s; and it was not until the early 1980s that it was confirmed. Low-dose dependence has now been clearly demonstrated in both animal studies and human studies, and is a recognized clinical disadvantage of benzodiazepines. Severe withdrawal syndromes can occur from these low doses of benzodiazepines even after gradual dose reduction. An estimated 30–45% of chronic low-dose benzodiazepine users are dependent and it has been recommended that benzodiazepines even at low dosage be prescribed for a maximum of 7–14 days to avoid dependence. As a result strict regulations for the prescription of benzodiazepines due to this risk of low-dose dependence.

Some controversy remains, however, in the medical literature as to the exact nature of low-dose dependence and the difficulty in getting patients to discontinue their benzodiazepines, with some papers attributing the problem to predominantly drug-seeking behavior and drug craving, whereas other papers having found the opposite, attributing the problem to a problem of physical dependence with drug-seeking and craving not being typical of low-dose benzodiazepine users.

Read more about this topic:  Benzodiazepine Dependence

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
    Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

    Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.
    Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)