Part 2
The New Drug Addicts—Anybody You Know?
MARY (not her real name) became increasingly tense after her husband divorced her and her daughter dropped out of college. “I was so upset I began drinking martinis at lunch,” she confessed. “When I caught myself drinking during the morning coffee break as well, I went to see Jack, my doctor and friend, who prescribed Valium. He said it would help me control the stress.”
Mary did not become an alcoholic, but, instead, she became addicted to tranquilizers, “a fact neither Jack nor I realized,” she said. She passed out one afternoon after accidentally combining too many tranquilizers and sleeping pills. “In my drug-induced stupor I’d left food cooking on the stove,” she recalls, adding, “I was minutes away from a serious fire when my son came home.”
An unusual case? Not at all. The National Institute of Drug Abuse estimates that some two million women are addicted to prescription drugs in the United States alone. In the 12-month period ending in April 1977, there were an estimated 880 Valium-connected deaths in the U.S. In most of these cases the victims had combined Valium with alcohol or another drug.
Consider Darvon. This popular painkiller can also be a person killer. In the U.S., in 1978 alone, an estimated 1,200 persons died from misuse of this drug.
While women have the highest incidence of prescription-drug abuse, men are by no means immune. A growing number of American business executives are overusing pills as well, often in combination with alcohol.
In some cases doctors have prescribed tranquilizers to help hard-drinking businessmen to get off the bottle. But, as one doctor reports, “at least 95 percent of them fell back onto alcohol within a year. But that’s not the bad thing. Fully one-third were then hooked on Valium as well.”
There are a number of legitimate medical uses for tranquilizers such as Valium, for instance in treating muscle disorders and epilepsy. But why are so many people getting hooked on tranquilizers?
In some cases the drugs are being misprescribed for ordinary stress. Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Public Citizens Research Group of Washington, D.C., puts it this way: “At the moment there are ten times more prescriptions written for minor tranquilizers than are justified.” Studies indicate that many doctors feel there is simply not enough time to deal with the root causes of anxiety during office visits, so they reach for the prescription pad instead.
Tranquilizer manufacturers have recently agreed to begin carrying a straightforward warning on their labels that the pills should not be used to combat “the stress of everyday life.” Patients will lie to doctors, borrow pills from friends, or visit several doctors to get the medication they crave. The ultimate responsibility to avoid drug abuse lies with the user.
How can you avoid trouble with tranquilizers? Here are some suggestions—