Addiction to medicines
Almost half a million people in the Netherlands take sedatives or tranquillizers every day, especially the so-called benzodiazepines. Women in particular are high users. One out of six women use sedatives or tranquillizers. Their use is twice as high as that of men and they also use those pills for considerably longer.
On average medicines are used for twelve to twenty years. One of the causes of this is that general practitioners prescribe tranquillizers and sedatives sooner to women who consult the general practitioner more often and sooner for psychosocial problems.
Psychological and physical dependence
The pills help you to cope with your life and its problems despite you having been explicitly recommended not to use the medicines for longer than two, and a maximum of six, weeks.
The benzodiazepines (Diazepam, Oxazepam) and barbiturates which are components in tranquillizers and sedatives, have a highly addictive effect. Before you know it you have become a medicine addict. Your body needs increasingly more to reach the same effect. With regard to benzodiazepines the effect occurs in a short time and before you know it you have become dependent on benzodiazepines due to the emptiness of your existence or on the contrary due to the desire for organised peace and quiet in a busy programme.
The dependence is of a psychological and physical nature and the years go by in a reassuring, dazed haze. This is without any unpleasant feelings but also without colour and feeling.
From chronic use to medicine addiction
Each year almost 200 people die by an accident due to the effect of tranquillizers whereby 20,000 other people are injured. The substance exacerbates the disorder due to chronic use and causes complaints such as anxiety, tension and sleeplessness. Stopping after long-term use can produce severe withdrawal symptoms; often the direct reason to start taking pills again.
Medical and therapeutic guidance by SolutionS
A benzodiazepine is a symptom controller; the substance does nothing about the cause of the stress, the restlessness, the emptiness or the sleep problems. When you have the courage to stop in order to get rid of your numbness, you will go through a very difficult time. Feelings which were suppressed for many years during the medicine addiction often emerge again in combination with withdrawal systems.
SolutionS helps you through this process with proper medical and therapeutic guidance. Negative emotions should not immediately be swallowed away with a pill. During the treatment you learn how to deal with this. In the after-care process the treatment of medicine addiction is continued both medically as well as therapeutically and the colour will gradually return to your life.