A PENSIONER has told of her hell with psychoactive drugs for 40 years which drove her to make repeated suicide attempts while supporting a call for the Scottish Government to review their use.
Aberdonian Fiona French has launched a petition calling for ministers to recognise the issue with benzodizepines saying she has lost 40 years of her life to nitrazepam, a drug prescribed for myoclonic epilepsy and given to her for depression.
The 61-year-old has made a video detailing her ordeal in the hope that it will persuade the powers-that-be to reconsider how the drugs are prescribed.
"Action needs to be taken in Scotland. Little or no action has been taken in the UK over the past 30 years," she says.
She says that within two months of being diagnosed the tranquiliser nitrazepam in 1975 she lost a quarter of her body weight and tried to commit suicide.
"The next ten years were just absolutely terrible. I couldn't really function," she said. "I spent a great deal of time in bed, or I was an in-patient in hospital or attending day hospitals taking various typed of anti-depressants. I don't know whether they did any good or not.
"After ten years of living right that, I tried to commit suicide quite a few times, I came to the conclusion that it was something I would have to live with."
After taking retirement in 2012, a new GP suggesting tapering off the nitrazepam - but that led to a two year ordeal which saw her become bedridden through withdrawal symptoms.
She said the first six months in coming off the drug "were crazy" and she became sexually aroused all the time.
She could not watch TV, read, use a computer or listen to the radio.
"I couldn't stand noise, or bright lights, I couldn't do anything I just lay in bed. My nerves were screaming out at me as if they were all in heightened alert.
At her worst ebb, she described terrible head pressure, nerve pain and squeezing sensations in her brain.
"Sometimes I felt i was having a stroke," she said.
No she says she not longer feels depressed and thinks positively.
A Scottish Government spokesman insisted it took the issue of addiction to prescribed medicines very seriously, including treatment and support.
It added: “In keeping with good clinical practice, clinicians should be providing on-going support and advice to patients prescribed medicines that are known to be addictive or with other long term effects. Where patients are concerned about the effects their medicines are having on their general wellbeing they should discuss this with their GP as soon as possible and alternative treatments that may be available.
“NHS Scotland has published guidance on polypharmacy which includes the recommendation that the use of benzodiazepines be reduced wherever possible. However, it’s important that decisions of this kind are for clinicians to make in discussion with their patients within the context of the patient’s long term recovery.”
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