In anxiety relating to personality disorders or psychosis diazepam can exacerbate symptoms including violence

In anxiety relating to personality disorders or psychosis, diazepam can exacerbate symptoms, including violence. The stereotypes of the lonely ageing housewife in her suburban home, or the struggling young mum in a housing estate were already well-established. “The drug that tames tigers – what will it do for nervous women?” was how one newspaper heralded its launch. The Rolling Stones dubbed Valium “mother’s little helper” in 1966.There is no doubt the drug was mis-prescribed during these years Valium was given to too many people and for too long. By 1976, one in 20 prescriptions written in Britain was for Valium, the majority for women. Lots would have bottles in their handbags and just hand them round.

We were all worried about something or other and doctors would just hand them out.”Ninety per cent of Valium was prescribed by GPs, gynaecologists and (disturbingly) paediatricians rather than mental health professionals, which extended its reach. With benzos you could take bucketloads.”Which everybody proceeded to do, including GPs, who frequently wrote out prescriptions for themselves. This wasn’t, after all, the pill-phobic generation of today: many of those faithfully popping their three a day had been born before the NHS, and prescription drugs came coated with a holy-water gloss.”I was taking three 10mg doses a day,” says Virginia Ironside “All my friends were chucking them back. Its main application was in treating anxiety and anxious insomnia, two of the most common causes of visits to GPs. Valium was amazing because it worked and yet seemed to have no side-effects. It was also impossible for people to overdose from it, accidentally or intentionally.

Barbiturates, the only previous alternative, were fraught in both respects (both Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe died of barbiturate overdoses).”These drugs were like magic,” says Dr Ross Taylor, a GP for nearly 40 years and now leader of the prescribing advisory group for the Royal College of General Practitioners. “After barbiturates, everyone was focused on finding drugs that could deal with the huge problem of minor anxiety disorders but were less dangerous in terms of overdose. No one would wish to downplay the suffering of people like Barry Haslam, whose lives have been ravaged by an unwitting benzodiazepine addiction, but the truth is that their numbers are small in comparison to those who have been quietly helped along their way by these drugs.In 1963, when Valium was first prescribed, it was hailed as a wonderdrug. Like many people, she takes a milligram now and again if tormented thoughts are keeping her awake “It saves an enormous amount of grief. I can’t see any way I’d have got through it otherwise.”Virginia Ironside, 59, The Independent’s agony aunt, has taken diazepam on and off for 30 years, at some points in high doses and for lengthy periods Nowadays she keeps one in her handbag “for emergencies”. “I started coping for the first time – I slept for the first time – and I got us back to Britain.” It was only then that he discovered the tablets were Valium “It saved me really. When doctors at the hospital pressed a bottle of pills into his hand he didn’t even look at the label – he just took the prescribed dose, and suddenly things became manageable.