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BENZO-INDUCED FATAL SEIZURES? (outdated) » Squiggles

Posted by Iago Camboa on August 27, 2002, at 6:19:14

In reply to Re: about withdrawal 'syndromes' (a parenthesis) » Squiggles, posted by Squiggles on August 15, 2002, at 9:08:40

Dear Squiggles (and Dear Babblers),

Please forgive me for this so tardy response, but I must say two words about the last paragraph (some 50 words) of this most remarkable and instructive post of yours. It is NOT TEDIOUS at all, it felt to me (and I'm sure to many others) like a bomb, namely your last words which I quote here again for everybody to see them well (before, alas, I will send them to the trash-can, so help me God and Good Common Sense...). Those words read:

"Indeed, the BOOKS I MENTION, warn of SEIZURE, and sometimes FATAL SEIZURE". [Capitalization added for emphasis]

But just before I comment on those 'delicious' words, allow me to kindly disagree with the following:

"one thing is certain - after long term use, getting off [benzos], is very difficult, at least without the aid of another drug or professional assistance"

It is not certain at all! I myself got off Valium 10mg/day after 5 years daily intake 'cold turkey' (overnight) without any difficulties and without the aid of any drugs or any professional assistance whatsoever (which I would deem ridiculous, inappropriate and laughable).
But please pay attention here: if one person suffers from grave anxiety and decides in earnest to suppress their benzo(s) and begins to let their anxiety untreated, they may have a very hard time indeed (though this I would call 'stupidity syndrome' rather than 'benzo withdrawal syndrome' -- the 'stupidity' here is their doctor's or else due to the 'anti-benzo propaganda' itself -- not their own, of course).
I myself was induced by the ubiquitous 'anti-benzo propaganda' in believing (and posting it here a few months ago) that some (mild) 'tremors in the inferior limbs' I felt after I got off Valium and began taking Xanax were due to 'Valium withdrawal'; no, they were not!; it only happens Xanax/alprazolam competes with the same liver enzymes as two ADs I was taking at the time in higher doses, which doses were almost doubled in my bloodstream (due to added elimination time) and provoked the tremors; as soon as I reduced the ADs doses to just 1/2 the tremors vanished for good. Valium 10mg/day withdrawal effects after 5 years daily intake (and 20mg/day during only the last month I used it) were nil times nil: no withdrawal I could notice: neither much nor little, nothing!

Now about the 'seizures' and the 'sometimes' 'fatal seizures' attributed to benzos (I'm assuming those are indeed attributed to benzos because you are not speaking either of ghosts or of witches...). Look, there are perhaps over 300,000,000 people all over the world who take benzos every day; even if seizures did occur in the frequency of one in a thousand, that would mean 300,000 seizures a day and not less than 30,000 or 3,000 FATAL SEIZURES A DAY according to whether we admit 10% or 1% of seizures are fatal.
Do you really think the authors of the books you mention believe in these numbers? Does FDA know about this permanent and diabolic 'holocaust'? How can it be that 'benzophobics' (with the zeal all of us know they have) don't use these numbers to enhance their propaganda in a decisive way, I mean to obtain the outlawing of benzos once and for all to the worsening of all mankind's health and well-being (which seems to be their reason of existence)? Worse still, you yourself don't believe them either, otherwise you wouldn't have told us that 'I don't think that one should abstain from using benzos'... I'm glad to acknowledge here your intellectual honesty: a true benzophobic would never have uttered such a sentence!
I'd risk the guess those numbers can be divided by 1,000 and be still excessive... I mean, one fatal seizure in one hundred million benzo users (winning any American lottery at the first trial would be far easier...) would yet be incompatible with the fact that I never heard in the media of one single case of a death that can be attributed to a benzo with certainty and without any reasonable doubt to the contrary. And I've been living in Europe and not in (Taliban) Afghanistan nor in Somalia and read papers, magazines (including American ones) and watch oftentimes the telly (including American TV)...

Here I spent a few minutes reading a detailed insert of a well-known and much used benzo (and thank God on the increase, at least in Europe) namely 'Xanax XR'. Even though they speak lengthily of all side effects and of all manner of withdrawal symptoms, they strangely never mention any fatal seizures at all either actually 'occurred' or simply 'reported' by others or 'referred' in the literature. Perhaps here your two reference books know better than the manufacturers of the 'controverted' medicine??
You would do to all Babblers here a great service if you kindly transcribed for us the actual numbers provided by the two books you recommend regarding the total amount of fatal seizures induced by benzos some 40 years since to date. Unless the said books have no statistics about so crucial a matter and their 'warnings' about 'fatal seizures' provoked by benzos are nothing more than 'hunches' (grotesque hunches, IMHO)?...

It really hurts me to have been just myself who had to convey to you the foregoing perhaps somewhat unpleasant comments...

Yours truly,
Iago


> p.s. i should like to add that i have strong disagreement on some beliefs of the Benzo group, and agree with some others, based on my personal experience. I don't want to take up too much time here on the debate as it is long and now, after so much discussion and battle, tedious.
>
> I don't think that one should abstain from using benzos - but one thing is certain - after long term use, getting off, is very difficult, at least without the aid of another drug or professional assistance. Indeed, the books i mention, warn of seizure, and sometimes fatal seizure.
>
> Squiggles
>


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poster:Iago Camboa thread:116248
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020821/msgs/117896.html