Jun 5, 2008
COMMENT:
Lessons learned by an accidental addict
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Medical doctors are essential members of every human community. Physicians and the services they provide are so familiar to most of us that we easily take them for granted. What we are apt to forget is that doctors are human beings too, who are subject to the same human weaknesses as the rest of us. We often forget this fact because we tend to look upon doctors (and others who provide valued public services) as authority figures. This is especially the case among members of the baby boomer and older generations.
It is right and proper that we show due respect to people who do so much good for others. But each one of us must never forget that we retain ultimate responsibility for our own physical and mental health. We cannot do without doctors but we cannot delegate that responsibility to them.
The death earlier this year of Australian actor, Heath Ledger, from an accidental overdose of prescription medications underlines the danger of anything less than a very proactive approach to one’s own welfare. I myself, over the past year, have received a very stark and convincing lesson in the truth of these statements.
I am now in my 50s and I am happy to say that for nearly all of my life I have enjoyed good health. I believe that I inherited “good genes” from both of my parents and I had the good fortune to be taught healthy habits by them. As a teenager, I acquired the habit of doing lots of walking — at one time I was walking four miles each way every day to and from school. (A few years later I briefly took up the sport of race-walking, winning several races against very strong competitors.)
While I count my good health as an unqualified blessing, it did have one down side to it: I did not learn enough over the years about the truth of the principles with which I began this article. In recent years I have had routine annual physicals, but they became so routine that I never thought much about the doctor who was conducting them. I just assumed that he was a good guy who knew what he was doing and would always be there for me when I needed him. For years, the only medication I required was something to keep my cholesterol under control. I never learned much about medications in general, and I assumed that whatever the doctor told me I needed, I should take.
How naive, I hear some of you saying already! You are absolutely right. I was naive. It has taken a year of medication hell for me to be cured of my naivety.
In late 2006, I began to feel ill. I will spare you all the unpleasant details — it is enough only to say that I was bad enough to need a couple of trips to the Danbury Hospital emergency room. After many tests, which eliminated all other possibilities, I was finally diagnosed as suffering from some combination of anxiety and depression. This diagnosis did not come from the doctor with whom I thought I had established a good relationship — he was hostile and uncaring almost from the very beginning. After referring me to see a specialist, he effectively washed his hands of me and wanted nothing more to do with the matter. After a couple of months of this treatment, I switched to a different primary care doctor, a man whose attitude is as different from the other’s as night is from day. He remains my doctor today.
Before the switch of doctors, I saw the specialist a few times. He, although unable to find anything wrong with me, prescribed a couple of medications for my symptoms. The first was prescribed carefully and, although it produced some unpleasant side effects, helped me considerably. The second prescription was made during the course of a one minute phone conversation that I had with the specialist.
Being in a hurry, he took no time to explain anything about how to use the medication, and I was obliged to decipher for myself the rather misleading directions that appeared on the prescription bottle. (Remember, I was still very naive about medications at this point; I failed to demand a clear and complete explanation.) This is how I came to discover the horrors of benzodiazepines.
If you Google “Xanax,” you will quickly find out that it is a highly addictive medication which produces unpleasant side effects and severe withdrawal symptoms. Used in the right way, however, it is quite effective for the control of panic attacks and certain other anxiety disorders.
To cut a long story short, I quickly became addicted to Xanax. It took almost a whole year for me to break the addiction, working diligently with my new doctor.
I hasten to add here that I have never in my life been a drug abuser. Although I do not approve of the self-defeating drug policies of the U.S. federal government, I have long believed that people who voluntarily put dangerous chemicals into their bodies for non-medical reasons are just plain stupid. It was with something like horror that I realized that I myself had become an addict. It did not make me feel much better to know that my addiction was at least partly caused by the carelessness of a doctor.
My new primary physician quickly got my anxiety and depression problems under control. However even he bears some responsibility for the time it has taken to break the benzo-diazepine addiction. He was unaware of an unfavorable interaction between these drugs and another medication that I had been prescribed: that lack of awareness delayed his efforts to wean me off the Xanax by about four months.
(Note to any fellow-sufferers of benzodiazepine addiction who may be reading this: the Ashton manual, available at benzo.org.uk/, contains the best advice for fighting the addiction that you will find anywhere.)
Lessons learned:
- While you are healthy, make sure that you have a good doctor. By good, I mean one who is technically competent AND caring. There are many who do not meet both criteria. Looking for a good doctor after you get sick is the very worst time to do it.
- Verify independently everything your doctor tells you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t trust what he or she says; just do your own research to confirm it. In the age of the Internet, there’s no excuse for not doing this.
- Doctors prescribe medications like a gunfighter shooting from the hip. Don’t take any new medication until you are comfortable that you understand fully its pros and cons.
- Don’t expect sympathy from your nearest and dearest if you get addicted to something, even if it’s not your fault. There is still much ignorance and prejudice about addictive illnesses among intelligent people who, in the 21st century, ought to know better.
These lessons will seem like mere common sense to many people. If you are one of them, I commend your common sense. I am an intelligent person who learned these simple facts the hard way. There must be many others like myself who would benefit greatly from an opportunity to learn them the easy way. If this article helps just one person to do so, it will have been worth my while to write it.
Trust but verify.
The writer is a Ridgefield resident.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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