Posted by Alan on December 28, 2002, at 22:41:33
In reply to Re: The Truth About Clonazepam » john7219, posted by Aadika on December 28, 2002, at 22:06:59
The vast majority of competently diagnosed, perscribed, and managed patients undergoing bzd therapy are helped far more than they are hurt. That's the basic criteria on which the manipulation of bodily systems are determined to have an acceptable cost/benefit ratio.
The term "medical dependency" refers to a situation in which the drug continues to exert a beneficial or even indispensable effect, but there is an acknowledgement that the user is not functional without the drug and cannot abruptly stop taking it.
Tolerance is not required for medical dependency, but it may occur. Most often it occurs to some extent in early use and then the effect of the drgug stabilizes. If tolerance were to continue developing indefinitely, any beneficial effect would rather quickly be outweighed by toxicity. Undoubtedly there are situations where this has happened with many types of drugs, not merely psychotropics, but all it really proves is that there are careless and incompetent doctors just as there are careless and incompetent practitioners of every profession, trade, vocation, etc. It doesn't prove anything special about psychotropics.
The distinctions exist because they reflect the way reality naturally sorts into groups of similar experiences. They're not hard to understand. They're simply inconvenient to certain points of view.
Alan
poster:Alan
thread:133201
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021223/msgs/133602.html