“There is no doubt that you see cognitive impairment in patients who have been on benzodiazepines for long periods of time,” says Hamish McAllister-Williams, professor of affective disorders at the University of Newcastle. Last year researchers at addiction clinics in the Netherlands found that 20 per cent of long-term benzodiazepine patients had significant cognitive problems ranging from their ability to quickly process information, to their attention span. In recent years, a spate of new studies has highlighted the problem with taking benzodiazepines for an extended period of time. A Facebook group called Beating Benzos is full of others with similar stories.įor while benzodiazepines are not meant to be taken for more than 28 days at a time – no clinical trial has ever studied them for longer than this – they are extremely addictive because they can lead to long lasting changes in the brain’s reward system, causing people to become increasingly dependent on them.

Lori Pemberton, a college professor in the US, said she developed increasing issues with memory loss and concentration issues after being prescribed the drugs for more than 30 years. Haslam is just one of many people all over the world who reached out to The Telegraph describing their experiences of cognitive problems after taking benzodiazepines for years or even decades. Brain scans have shown that I suffer with fluid on the brain and brain atrophy. “All these years on, I still experience daily chronic headaches, brain fog, intense fatigue and neuropathic pain. “Being prescribed benzodiazepines for 10 years left me with brain damage,” he says. Today, nearly 40 years on, he has no recollections at all of that decade.īut amnesia is far from his only problem. Drugs like Valium (diazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Ativan (lorazepam) rapidly became household names.Īs father to a young family, working two jobs to make ends meet while studying for his accountancy exams, Barry Haslam was prescribed steadily increasing doses of Ativan by his GP after suffering a mental health breakdown.Īfter 10 years, Haslam quit the drug after experiencing increasing cognitive side effects, and being told by his wife that his personality had changed. In the 1970s and 1980s, vast numbers of people in the UK began taking benzodiazepines, a group of drugs more commonly known as tranquillisers, for stress, anxiety and insomnia.

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