Mental health experts say the military's prescription drug problem is exacerbated by a U.S. Central Command policy that dates to October 2001 and provides deploying troops with up to a 180-day supply of prescription drugs under its Central Nervous System formulary: http://www.pec.ha.osd.mil/files/Centcom%20CNS%20Meds%20restrictions%2012082011_v2a.pdf
That formulary includes Xanax, Valium and three other benzodiazepines to treat anxiety: Ativan, Klonopin and Restoril.
Finally, the military is giving some legitimate treatment to solve PTSD problems rather than just killing the soldiers off with pills or using them as anesthetics until they can shove them back into society.
If you look just at the percentage who have have actual combat exposure rather than all military, the percentage using drugs skyrockets.
Benzodiazepines are only useful in sporadic stress episodes, or as a stop-gap while waiting for a long-term SRI or SSRI to kick-in.
Any idiot who would deny seroquel across the board to people with flashbacks on the basis of its conflict with alcohol (as if PTSD requires people to drink) needs to be removed from the medical field.
Seroquel saved my life, literally. I was getting maybe thirteen hours of sleep a month prior to.
Here’s a thought: find something else for alcoholics, or keep them in-patient.
In here is the real path to a simple, non-drug answer which is growing big in military circles, thanks to Colonel Monaco. Pass it around...www.copingstrategiescd.com free to hear and learn!
Benzo addiction is the last thing you ever want to be addicted to.
Do not **** with your central nervous system at all. Learned that the hard way, the very hard way.
My troubles lasted about 2 years total.
I have a friend who has been addicted to Xanax taking multiple doses of Xanbar, which is a large dose, every single day for almost twelve years now.
He cannot quit, he is a slave to a chemical until he dies. He has no legal perscription, thus his addiction forces him to committ a serious felony often in order to possess what he must have or he will likely die from withdrawl.
His addiction is so fierce that he suffers withdrawl even while he is on large doses of the chemical.
Do NOT ever take any benzos on a regular daily basis. It only takes about a few weeks of doing so to sufficiently suppress the CNS in such a way that quitting causes CNS rebound effect, which is the worst damn thing ever.
Most "ordinary" (are there any??) people simply cannot imagine how addictive these chemicals are!
I have a friend, a real man, a man who simply loves the Lord, but who was introduced to Ativan (lorazepam) by the VA because of depression. He sat at my table and cried out with the deepest kind of heart-rending lostness at being entrapped by this cycle, and no one else to tell it to.
I gave him a copy that I had of Robwert Whitaker's book "Anatomy Of An Epidemic" which describes the overspreading shadow on our country of the ill-termed "psychotropic" drugs that have flooded our land.
This helped him to understand that his predicament can be alleviated, but only with great personal effort and drug-induced grief in the process. He is now struggling with scaling down from lorazepam, under close cooperation by one of the few MDs in the whole country who has gone through this himself.
I know a pastor, who was on Xanax for some time, was finally able to be weaned off it for a couple of years. But now, under heavy burdens, was not able to bear them, and has had to go back on Xanax to stay sane. His congregation has almost evaporated, they not knowing of the condition and consequences. He's lost 30 pounds in the last 2 months, barely filling out his clothes.
I also personally know another one of the subjects described in the "Anatomy Of An Epidemic" who at one time totally lost muscular coordination, and now, after some years of withdrawal, will never berestored to full control of his ability to speak fluently or use his hands to eat or drink a cup of coffee without shaking.
More to be said, by no time right now. Tell those who are affected -- users, relatives, friends -- to begin searching the web on this for starters. Get Whitaker's book, for follow-on, but try to find a doctor who has come to the point of reality in assessing the awful danger of these benzodiazepines and the like kind of psyche and physically damaging substances.