Jon Sistaga investigates with ‘Another approach’ the consumption of pills as anxiolytics or antidepressants in Spain. To do this, he visits a therapy room in a detoxification clinic and speaks with María Álvarez Riedweg, medical director of the Hipócrates Institute, about benzodiazepine addiction.
In Spain, five million Spaniards consume some pill every day. The normalization of the medicalization of daily life has established itself in most homes, underestimating the consequences that it can cause in the long term. In ‘Another Approach’, for example, Jon Sistiaga discovered the story of Belén de la Hoz, a young woman who at the age of 14 already started taking pills and who ended up hooked on them along with alcohol.
The danger of the medicalization of life: Belén de la Hoz suffered from addiction to prescription pills at the age of 14
In the public sphere, Andrea Levywho suffers from fibromyalgia, explained the addiction he became to benzodiazepines as a result of fatigue, tiredness, insomnia, stress or anxiety. A cocktail that often caused her to be medicated in interventions and subsequently suffer public ridicule.
Andrea Levy suffered the ‘B side’ of benzodiazepines: “In politics there are minimums of respect that were not met with me”
María Álvarez Riedweg points out the importance of this addiction, which has a withdrawal syndrome much worse than that of other substances. “Cocaine gets you high and you’re in a low afterwards. You need something to get you high. On the other hand, sedative substances like benzos stop the brain and when you take them away, it rebounds. It’s an anxiety that makes you die,” he explained.
The “silenced discomfort” that leads Spaniards to consume pills
2024-05-15 23:00:13
#Withdrawal #pills #worse #withdrawal #substances
