Incidentally, Buspirone happens to be one of those drugs that need to be tailed down slowly before they are stopped.

This has nothing to do with addiction. Prednisolone and other oral steroids need to be tailed down too, so we’re not just talking about psychiatric drugs only.

The anxiety caused by Buspirone was even worse because patients on this drug could not get their supply from private pharmacies.

As for Diazepam and the like, you’re right, very often it’s the doctor’s fault that the patient becomes addicted. They are only licensed for short periods and the doctor is expected to prescribe drugs which will help correct the imbalance of chemicals in the brain.

However, make no mistake about this, depression and anxiety are real illnesses which require real medication. True, sometimes they are triggered by life events and the patient is unable to overcome the situation, but others develop such conditions spontaneously. It’s not fair to lump everyone in one sack and say that these are people who are unable to face their problems.

I am referring specifically to psychotropic drugs deliberately abused frequently by the drug culture for recreational purposes. Diazepam and other benzodiazepines are anxiolytics that do not fall in that category.

Unfortunately they are very habit forming and doctors are always trying to dissuade anxious persons from resorting to them for long periods. These genuinely anxious patients often move from doctor to doctor who wouldn’t know that they have already become dependent on it.

I don’t know if you are joking when you say that ‘there have never been any cases of abuse’ because people are admitted into hospital, with an overdose of the controlled drugs you mention, almost daily. These patients have a different profile from those that people are used to, they are mostly middle aged women and young ladies with or without a previous history of depression.

There have also been a number of cases where professionals have abused of drugs found in hospital and transfers from places of work have resulted due to this.

The system is controlled to a certain extent but far from foolproof. Off the cuff, one of the worries I would have is increased pressure and manipulation of the elderly to get a prescription for the use of some other person.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

“According to a report … by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers jumped 65 percent from 1999 to 2006. One-third of new addicts report that their first drug experience was with prescription drugs.”

[Daphne – The most common form of abuse of prescription psychotropic drugs is doctors keeping their patients permanently on what should be a short-term course of, say, diazepam. The result is many people hooked on diazepam for years, and others who cannot get through life without anti-anxiety pills. Did you notice the panic when supplies of Buspirone ran out at the hospital pharmacy, which is the only dispensing outlet for this anxiety drug? People were emailing me telling me that they were literally terrified because their supply was running out. The government had to airlift in special emergency supplies. http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/buspirone-oral-route/description/drg-20062457 Keeping people hooked on psychotropic drugs because of the problems of normal adult life is the creation of an army of ‘legal’ addicts. They remain addicts all the same, and the situation is worrying.]

I do not think that you are commenting “as a doctor” (that is what you wrote). Had that been true you would not be surprised that I, a real doctor, would prefer that mind-altering drugs should be used only under strict supervision by trained qualified people and not also by junkies pretending to be self-treating themselves when they are only after “kicks”.

Powerful useful psychotropic medicines ceased to be available by medical prescription for justified therapeutic use because of the rampant abuse of those useful medicines by hedonist junkies. That is where the blame should be laid, not at the door of the medical profession, the law-givers with a social conscience, the police and the law courts.

[Daphne – Doctors played a huge part in this, Dr Saliba, with GPs writing out repeat prescriptions because it was easier for them to do this than to handle the withdrawal symptoms of the diazepam addicts they had created. And those diazepam addicts were and probably still are not hedonist junkies but just average men and women with the usual life problems.]

Although I have so far escaped the excruciating pain of cancer myself, my family has not escaped.

What I find excruciatingly and needlessly painful is the horrible truth that even as a qualified doctor I was prevented from alleviating the wracking cough and pain of my dying wife with traditional heroin-cocaine official medicine because I could no longer obtain them across the pharmacy counter as a result of the selfish hedonist abuse of those precious medicines by junkies.

Now perhaps you may understand that it is not the medical profession that is denying you relief from pain but it is the egoist pleasure seeking drug culture that is doing it.

It certainly has improved my life when dealing with my arthritis.

I would never take any doctor prescribed opiate based painkillers when cannabis works so much better and with much less side-effects when coping with this disease, in my case anyways.

All controlled drugs are addictive like cannabis yet they have their benefits if used properly.

The level of control over such drugs is so good that never have there been any cases of abuse (as far as I know). Every part of the transport and storage is recorded with a specific pharmacist being personally in charge. The system is (almost) foolproof.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/boarding-schools-bad-leaders-politicians-bullies-bumblers?CMP=fb_gu

QUEUES….