THE B.N.F.

BRITISH NATIONAL FORMULARY

 
SMALL-DOSE STEP-DOWN

 

ADDICTION WITHDRAWAL

MANAGEMENT PROCEDURE

 
PROVES TO BE ABSOLUTE

PHARMACEUTICAL P.R. BULL

**** - DONE TO AVOID LOSING

HIGHLY PROFITABLE EASY

ADDICTIVE DRUG SALES !

Physicians and G.Ps everywhere are increasingly worried about the escalating INVOLUNTARY ADDICTION of millions of patients to the drugs which Doctors' training in palliative medicine is inflicting on N.H.S. public across the U.K.

To cope with this problem, many G.Ps turn to the "Prescription Bible" - "The British National Formulary" - to implement its recommended Small-Dose Step-Down Addiction Withdrawal Management Procedure.

This can be very effective and entails cutting the patients' addictive drug doses by 2.5 to 5% every 7 to 14 days or more, in order to give them a reasonably comfortable gradient reduction routine with little or no "cold turkey" withdrawal symptoms or side-effects.

BUT, there is a major barrier to applying this life improving rescue.

"INVOLUNTARY ADDICTION" IS A MAJOR SOURCE OF PHARMA-CEUTICAL TURNOVER AND EASY PROFIT, WHICH DOESN'T EVEN NEED EXPENSIVE PROMOTION, BECAUSE THE ADDICTED VICTIMS LITERALLY BEG FOR ANY MISSING DOSES WITHIN A FEW HOURS - THE ADDICTION ITSELF CREATING THEIR DEMAND, DAY AFTER DAY.

As a result, pharmaceutical production companies have no desire what-

so-ever to lose this massive easy turnover and profit which has been built up over years, mainly by psycho-pharm prescribing strategies.

So, what do pharmaceutical manufacturers do to preserve their profits ?

They very simply take every possible step to AVOID MAKING AVAILABLE THE SMALL DOSES WHICH ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE LIFE SAVING STEP-DOWN WITHDRAWAL PROCEDURE.

This means that any G.P. or other physician or dispenser who wants to help a patient / victim suffering the side effects of involuntary addiction, must attempt to do so by chopping into smaller doses the manufacturers "recommended" dose sizes.

However, whilst for example a 100mg tablet can usually be cut into four 25mg pieces, going smaller is nearly impossible.   Furthermore, if the manufacturer's recommended dose is in capsule form, one might with care be able to do something to halve a powder capsule, but dividing up a liquid capsule is truly impossible !

AS A CONSEQUENCE, MOST MEMBERS OF THE ABPI (THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY) HAVE - FOR THE MOST SELFISH AND RUTHLESS REASONS - DELIBERATELY MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR BOTH N.H.S. AND PRIVATE PATIENTS EVER TO RECOVER FROM THEIR ADDICTIONS.

. . . . and they have cleverly done it by actually "DOING NOTHING" - something for which they consider they cannot really be blamed !

So they will say: "We make recommended doses to Royal Pharmaceutical Society standards", and "we don't really get asked for other sizes".  So why go to the trouble of making them, stocking them and distributing them - all of which is extra trouble and expense for our already over-burdened N.H.S.

BUT, the N.H.S. is over-burdened BECAUSE OF INVOLUNTARY ADDICTION, and, in order to eradicate it, we need a range of smaller doses of all addictive and dependency forming pharmaceutical drugs.

To achieve this, it only requires Ministers to rule that the production of any "recommended" doses of any addictive drug is accompanied by parallel production, stocking, distribution and dispensing of the following short range of smaller sizes at prices to the N.H.S. no higher than the manufacturers' "recommended" sizes.  Small range: 0.5%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 5%, 10% and 50%.

A helpful manufacturer would make life easier for dispensers by also offering 20%, 30% and 40% doses.

 

Obviously pharmaceutical producers and their allies would fight this sort of essential legislation in every overt and covert way possible, but the millions and millions of patients returned to normal relaxed abstinent living and the £BILLIONS the N.H.S. would save the U.K. taxpayers, are much stronger and far more humane arguments than lost dividends and threats to move pharma production out of Britain - as the ABPI threatened only 18 months ago.

SUBSTANCE ADDICTION of all types is the greatest threat which our country faces as we move out of Europe and into Brexit style existence.

Food addiction driven obesity plus tobacco addiction are the two main causes of cancer, and addiction to alcohol, smuggled drugs and (the biggest threat) addiction to prescription drugs, all incapacitate and reduce our productive population and impose ever increasing loads on the rest of the economy.

It therefore requires that Ministers and Officials DO NOT give-in to big-pharma demands, as did last year's Health Secretary when he launched legislation for "Transforming Children's and Young People's Mental Health Provision", which will deliver up to 18 million pupils and students in the age range 5 to 25 - into involuntary addiction, with no scientifically provable benefit, likely for life, at Taxpayer expense, and for Psycho-Pharm profit !

Nice one Jeremy !  If he condemns his children and ours to very likely be drug addicts, solely because the ABPI "demands with threats" that the N.H.S. spends £20 BILLION MORE every year on prescribing psychiatric drugs.

That's an EXTRA £55 MILLION a day - all to be paid for by U.K. Taxpayers, on top of the £15 MILLION a day they ALREADY pay solely for addictive prescription drugs for already involuntarily addicted mainly elderly patients !

Pharmaceutical Directors probably toast Jeremy's health in champagne at Board Meetings, and in light of the thousands of extra Psychiatrists his successor has been instructed to appoint in schools, colleges, universities and all G.P. surgeries, Mr Hunt will probably soon receive a Knighthood, as well as an Honorary Doctorate of Psychiatry.

However, the latter is unlikely to handle the former Secretary of State for Health's apparent condition of early onset Dementia, demonstrated by his confusion and irrationality !

After all, psychiatric "Mental Health Provision" and its virtual "Government by Addiction" will do nearly as much damage to Britain every year, as did Nazi Hitler in each year of the Second World War, but unfortunately, we no longer have Winston Churchill and his condemnations of Psychiatrists to ward off their vastly damaging animal researched theories and practices !

Tobacco and Alcohol producers centuries ago made addictive smoking and addictive drinking an accepted commonplace everyday social activity, something which the pharmaceutical industry have envied for decades.

Today, the over-arching plan of much of the Pharmaceutical production industry is to make three times a day addictive drug taking - in the guise of "Mental Health Provision" - as normal as breakfast, lunch, tea and coffee, BUT paid for by Taxpayers rather than by the addicts - because psychiatrists and palliative drug prescribing G.Ps tell everyone that "additive drugs are good for you" - even better than tobacco and booze !

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This Report Researched and Prepared by

S.A.F.E.

the U.K.

Society for an Addiction Free Existence

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THERE ARE TWO WAYS THE N.H.S. CAN SOLVE ITS FINANCIAL PROBLEMS:

1) BY GOING ON & ON DEMANDING EVEN MORE

 MONEY FROM OVERLOADED U.K. TAXPAYERS -

IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO BALANCE N.H.S. BOOKS

OR,

2) BY STOPPING THE CURRENT N.H.S. PAYMENT

 

OF TEN MILLION £POUNDS EVERY SINGLE DAY

 

TO PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES - 

 

FOR TOTALLY UNNECESSARILLY PRESCRIBED

ADDICTIVE PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS !

Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, has naively helped con the Royal Family, the Prime Minister and her Cabinet into a greedy psycho-pharm plan for making the U.K a country increasingly addicted to medical drugs - which government psychiatrists, along with pharmaceutical companies, have persuaded him is what the Mental Health service "has to do" to beat the increasingly numerous "Mental Disorders" invented by psychiatrists !

If you think this is NOT true, THEN PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY (excluding all the physically ill patients beneficially prescribed non-addictive pharmaceutical products) the United Kingdom has around 5 million drug addicts, OF WHICH 4 MILLION ARE LEGALLY ADDICTED TO MULTI-DAILY SUPPLIES OF PRESCRIBED MEDICAL DRUGS.

Most of them N.H.S. "Mental Health" Patients who have no problem other than their involuntarily induced medical addiction, which costs the overloaded U.K. Taxpayers TEN MILLION £POUNDS A DAY - EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR !

Since the 1900s, when the Carnegie Institute and John D. Rockefeller took over U.S. doctor's training from the American Medical Association, the educating of G.P's around the world has been more and more orientated towards palliative diagnosing and prescribing, as a means of selling more and more pharmaceutical drugs.

("Palliative Medicine" is the practice of alleviating symptoms, instead of spending extra time and money on seeking the cause of an illness, and normally means prescribing addictive drugs or other pharmaceuticals for relief or continuing symptom "management, instead of testing for, diagnosing and eliminating the cause. It forms the main operational basis for the U.K's National Health Service - especially for psychiatric patients with so-called "Mental Disorders".)

However, if you believe that psychiatric prescribing is all about curing mental disorders and that INVOLUNTARY ADDICTION has nothing to do with boosting pharmaceutical turnover, profits, dividends and bonuses, you probably won't want to read any further - because it's not nice to discover just how much and how often you have been conned by clever sales propaganda and expert Political, Press and Public Relations agencies.

They tell us that alcoholics get into that state because they "abuse" the booze, whilst psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies and even the "Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs" tell us that drug addicts get into that condition because they "misuse" various substances.

But they don't tell you that it is totally impossible to become a drug addict without "using" a drug, so that the creation of addicts requires that they are first GIVEN (or conned with false information and "introductory discounts" into buying) an addictive supply.

The Drug Barons know this, so their Pushers pose as friends, and, with outrageous mis-information tempt individuals into "trying" (at a discount or for free) "helpful" samples to "see what probably suits them best", etc.

Psychiatric Pushers go one better.  They write - FREE OF CHARGE - a 7 Day 3 Times a Day prescription for Valium, or for another of the benzos or for another addictive drug, and with those 21 doses, make absolutely sure that that at least 50% of their patients will involuntarily become addicts for life.

And anyone who says that addiction is accidental is either a fool or is one of the psychiatric or G.P. Pushers trained in Carnegie / Rockefeller palliative medicine.

Make no mistake - an addict is a VICTIM of psycho-pharmaceutical greed, DELIBERATELY brought to that condition to provide easy sales and many years of easy profit paid for by BRITISH TAXPAYERS.

Only honest, well informed, intelligent government can solve this, but unfortunately Ministers are also greedy - for tax revenue - and conned by the so-called complexities of pharmaceutics, fall short of taking the legislative steps necessary to stamp out the legalised involuntary addiction in our N.H.S. patient population which is right now costing British Taxpayers £10 MILLION A DAY = £3.65 BILLION A YEAR - EVERY YEAR - AND RISING !

The simple and successful answer is government legislated Small-Dose Step-Down Withdrawal Management to Lifelong Abstinence which costs a fraction of current continuous prescribing of "recommended" doses, and so can be paid for out of the savings that such withdrawal creates.   You might like to ring (01342) 811099 for details.

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This Blog Researched and Published by

S.A.F.E.

the

Society for an Addiction Free Existence

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"WRONG TARGET" Mr HEALTH MINISTER !

THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE CAN NEVER

IMPROVE WHILST YOU GO ON MISSING THE

REAL REASONS FOR ITS FAILINGS.

You are either stupid, a criminal, or a misguided amateur, and most observers believe the latter, because you and other Ministers have been so beautifully and professionally conned by the world's P.R. and marketing propaganda experts.

Cost of premises, ambulances, nursing staff, doctors, surgeons, furnishings, beds, equipment, utilities, management and administration, etc., have all been blamed for the N.H.S. “needing” more money. But you have only to carefully examine the two wealthiest industries in the world – and why they are so profitable – to recognise the source of our economy's medical financing problems.

The nationwide addictive habit known as “boozing” overloads our A&E Services with dirty, smelly, noisy and undeserving clients every weekend of the year, whilst the increasing prescribing, throughout every year, of Billions of doses of addictive substances to millions of patients, daily drains the Department of Health purse to the point where other vital N.H.S. services have to be robbed in order to pay the pharmaceutical companies for their over-prescribed products !

The real and true problem is: “ADDICTION”, and far from being an “accident”, an unfortunate “side-effect”, a result of “MIS-use” or “AB-use”, its widening growth and usage is part of a deliberate marketing plot calculated to make U.K. Taxpayers pay for the inevitable transgressions of those millions of citizens greedily manipulated by profitable psycho-pharm policies into LASTING ADDICTION.

You can never become addicted to a drug which you never ever take. Simply because it is the consuming of a drug which creates dependency on that drug.

And nobody creates more noise, more loud demand, more crime and more havoc than drug addicts desperate for their next dose !   Especially when the group of professional advisers, who wrote those addicts' original addictive prescriptions, is also the same lying group advising the Government on drug and alcohol addiction.

And look how beautifully simple their scheming is.

Some years ago, with the help of also manipulated ex U.S. President Nixon, they convinced the world to “Make War On Drugs”, and sold the idea to politicians around the world that addiction to illicit heroin is a crime, whilst even stronger more devastating addiction to prescription methadone is a valuable addiction “management” tool we should all be happy to pay for out of our taxes.

Look at that again - and think about it.

They have convinced governments the world over that addiction to a smuggled drug such as heroin is a vicious crime to be attacked in every way possible, BUT that addiction to the same drug, or some substitute such as methadone - WHEN PRESCRIBED BY A PSYCHIATRIST OR OTHER PHYSICIAN – is a valuable “treatment” for exactly the same condition. i.e. lasting life debilitating, costly and similar criminality prompting drug addiction.

And even though every single one of the near 200,000 N.H.S. supplied methadone drug addicts costs the British Taxpayer in excess of £47,000 per year for life (an ever-escalating annual total currently at over £9.4 BILLION) the psycho-pharm fraternity has our naively non-medical politicians falsely convinced that “because psychiatrists pretend addiction is basically incurable” the only way to handle the addiction problem is to make it “legal” – as long as it is prescribed pharmaceutical addiction paid for by the U.K. Taxpayer!

But it doesn't end there.

Sitting in nursing homes, care homes and in their own homes, we additionally have some three million mainly elderly citizens involuntarily addicted to three times a day doses of prescription drugs such as Valium and the other benzodiazepines, the “C” drugs and the “Z” drugs, etc.   All paid for by British Taxpayers.

And for what condition are these millions of patients receiving this multi-daily, expensive and continuous so-called addictive “treatment” ?

FOR NOTHING OTHER THAN MEDICALLY INDUCED DRUG ADDICTION !

This is how it works.

It doesn't matter what the reason is why a 7 day, 3 times a day, prescription is originally written for a patient.  Anxiety, bereavement, loss, shock, depression, etc.  It only matters that - when taken - 21 doses of one of the benzos or other addictive medical drugs will turn a majority of the individuals in our population into an involuntary prescription drug addict.

This means that that addict is daily taking an addictive substance which has two main properties:

1) It quickly relieves the patient's current craving for that drug, and,

2) A few hours later, it re-creates that same irresistible craving for that substance by triggering the same “cold turkey” withdrawal symptoms.

This is the prime example of a “vicious circle”, and the main unique sales proposition which the ruthless marketing of addictive products depends on to create and maintain irresistible demand – whether those products are illicit or legal.

Whatever the diagnostic justification for the addicts' original prescriptions, it is obvious that, when investigated, in 95+% of involuntary addiction cases, that reason no longer exists, and that the only problem the patient presently has is his or her residual and apparently inescapable addiction to a medical drug !

Which the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain both very quietly admit in their joint B.N.F. “drug prescription bible” - can all be cured - if only they were to provide the essential “step-down” small dose units on which such cures depend.

However, because the psycho-pharms never want to lose this easy addiction driven business, rather than promoting such cures, they resist them.

And because these involuntarily addicted dependants' supplies are paid for by our taxpayers, and because they are long-term daily re-addicted and confused drug addicts, these often vegetative patients apathetically fail to campaign for and demand the cures which could so easily be implemented - given the political will to do so.

BUT GOVERNMENT SHOULD DEMAND THEM.

Not only because countless £Billions of Taxpayer contributed funds are being deliberately diverted to totally unnecessary addictive drug supply, but also because that addiction acts like an ever expanding, heavier and heavier ball and chain which slows and reduces the U.K's productivity and international influence.

Dementia can be prevented and avoided. Depression and other drug “managed” and “treated” so-called mental disorders can all be cured.

But no profit-focussed addictive pharmaceutical drug producer or their prestige focussed psychiatric drug pushers are going to let such turnover reducing activities occur, if they can avoid it. It is therefore going to take tough legislation to force the pharmaceutical producers who create addiction, to also start producing the cures.

Which once again puts out political amateurs up against the highly experienced political lobbying experts who have been winning these battles for decades.  Amateurs who must stay within the bounds of decency, fairness, justice and law and Experts who do not all have those words in their dictionary.

SO IT'S GOING TO TAKE A WHILE - IF COMMERCIAL GREED

EVER ALLOWS US TO EVEN GET STARTED !

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S.A.F.E.

the

SOCIETY for an ADDITION FREE EXISTENCE

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The Real Problem With The N.H.S.

IS

THAT WE HAVE A SEVERELY BIASED

SYSTEM OF PALLIATIVE MEDICINE

DESIGNED TO RELIEVE SYMPTOMS -

INSTEAD OF CURING THEIR CAUSES!

As, when and if you “manage or treat” sickness, illness and all other forms of poor health INSTEAD OF CURING THEM - patients are seldom healed and discharged, the number of patients increases every year and the spending on prescription drugs goes up every year, so that the amount of money available for other parts of the Health Service inevitably goes down.

Less money for recruiting and training nursing staff, surgical staff, doctors and registrars, etc.  Less money for ambulances and their drivers.   Less money for vital equipment and beds.  Less money for A&E Services and staffs.  Less money for hospital premises, etc.

BUT, more and more spending on drugs intended only to relieve rather than cure, and particularly, more and more spending on “managing” the increasing numbers of invented psychiatric “disorders”, such as ADHD, where we have 800,000 U.K. children on 3 times a day Ritalin which, if at only £1.00 a dose is £876 MILLION every year.

Plus another £2.7375 BILLION more spending on our nearly 2.5 MILLION involuntarily addicted older citizens.  Patients originally psychiatrically “diagnosed” with some temporary mental disorder such as anxiety or depression – but now suffering ONLY from the drug addiction created by palliatively prescribing addictive Valium, other benzodiazepines and other addictive psychotropic drugs.

This because they were never properly tested for the real causes of their original problem, such as allergies, dietary deficiencies and excesses, undiagnosed physical injuries or poisonings and suppressive behaviour directed at them from their environment and the people in it.

Mental disorders, mainly psychiatrically diagnosed, receive the largest slice of the N.H.S. Budget at £11.2 BILLION per year and rising.

All because huge numbers of our citizens across the age ranges have been enrolled into multi-daily irresistible addiction by psychiatrists, General Practitioners and other physicians who have been trained by “the 1908 Carnegie / Rockefeller palliative medical disease management system”, set up with the deliberate intention of basing so-called “treatment” as exclusively as possible on prescription and over-the-counter medication. 

 

How was this achieved ?

First, by handing out research grants only to those American teaching hospitals, medical colleges and universities which restricted their tuition to the palliative treatment of symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs, and avoided any validation of other forms of recognised medical procedures, as well as any long and expensive diagnostic investigations.

And next, by extending this grant system beyond American Medical Association training influence into other national medical training systems in Europe, the British Commonwealth, South America, Asia, Africa and all other countries.

But, HOW do they sell addiction to so many National Health Services and their patients ?

To understand the answer to this question, one must first understand – beyond a shadow of doubt – that it is impossible to become addicted to a drug which one never ever takes.

Because, it is the taking of an addictive drug which ALONE creates addiction !

So the name of the game - if one wants to supply addictive drugs to anybody - is to get them, IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE, to take a few sample doses.   The pushers supplying the illegal products of the Drug Barons do this by giving away a couple of free samples to get their prospective clients hooked to the point where they “must have” some more – on a pay-as-you-go basis of course.

Pharmaceutical producers and distributors have a much easier time.  They have an honest, hard-working, dedicated-to-healing army of doctors, physicians and General Practitioners which pharmaceutical industry grants trained in palliative treatment prescribing, as a basis for their everyday practice.

In addition, they have a National Health Service ready to fund the free supply of the producer's addictive pharmaceutical drugs to anyone in the U.K., and every excuse to encourage their army of physicians to take the quickest and easiest route when handling an increasing patient workload in their surgeries.

i.e. a quick writing of a 7 day, 3 times a day prescription for an addictive drug - which the pharmaceutical supplier and Department of Health says is OK !

And that's it !

For a majority of patients given 21 doses of an addictive drug, that is enough to get them addicted, and for that patient it all appears free and above board, until side effects start to kick in and, especially, when they start to suffer “cold turkey” withdrawal effects if they try escape those side effects by stopping using the drug.

At this point, the only reasonably comfortable way out of their involuntary addiction is via a managed small-dose step-down procedure, reducing doses by no more than 2.5 to 5% every 7 to 21 days.

BUT, UNFORTUNATELY, PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCERS DON'T SUPPLY THE SMALL STEP-DOWN DOSES REQUIRED TO HELP PATIENTS COMFORTABLY WITHDRAW FROM ADDICTION TO THAT SUPPLIER'S PRODUCTS.

Understandable really, when a pharmaceutical supplier and his psychiatric pushers have put so much effort into developing a patient into an addicted consumer for which they get paid without delay or argument by the N.H.S. (i.e. U.K Taxpayers).

Commercially understandable, but no more ethical, honest or responsible than any corporate decision to utilise addiction based distribution as a marketing strategy.

The way to salvage the N.H.S. is for the Government to come down heavily on addictive drug production and prescription and, in any event, to enforce production of small step-down dosages of such drugs as a condition for permitting their continuing production.

This should be co-ordinated with the establishment of a new N.H.S. department which might well be named “Addiction Withdrawal Advisory Services and Help” (AWASH), whose operatives would likely take some 20 years to clean up the current level of involuntary addiction, but whose costs would be more than funded by the savings in N.H.S. payments for addictive drug supplies.

In fact, the only way for the Government to fail to satisfactorily handle our millions of involuntary drug addicts, would be to consult with and / or take advice from the psycho-pharm fraternity !

N.B.

“Say NO to Drugs”

is still the very best way to avoid drug addiction.

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This is a report from

S.A.F.E.

the

SOCIETY for an ADDICTION FREE EXISTENCE.

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How To Rid Yourself Of Drug Addiction: Part ONE:

CHOOSING THE RIGHT WAY

TO HANDLE YOUR HABIT AND

TO SUIT YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES.

Although, in order to maximise sales of their own addictive products, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies have been telling government, for over 80 years, that substance addiction is basically incurable, the fact remains that since the 1930s, around the world, millions of drink and drug addicts are known to have successfully escaped from the addiction trap by one of three main ways.

To fully appreciate the above statement, it is necessary to recognise that psycho-pharmaceutical so-called “treatment” in the form of OST (Opioid Substitution Therapy) is NOT a cure for addiction !  It is merely a system of moving a drug addict from an illegal supply of drugs to a legal supply, in the vain hope of taking the addict out of a life of crime by giving him free supplies, paid for by the U.K. taxpayer, and costing the N.H.S. £8.46 BILLION EVERY YEAR !

However the famous and authoritative “BIG ISSUE in the North” August 1999 report titled: “Drugs at the Sharp End” provided adequate proof that OST methadone and buprenorphine “treatments” seldom if ever work to procure crime reduction or lasting relaxed abstinence, and some time later the National Treatment Agency (now Public Health England) admitted that OST worked long-term in only 3% of cases – interestingly the same success rate as natural withdrawal with advancing age.

THE THREE MAIN WAYS TO WITHDRAW AND THUS START CURING ONESELF OF SUBSTANCE ADDICTION ARE:

12 STEPS:

The system of mutual support established in 1935 by a group of alcoholic American business men and professionals, plagued with drinking problems sufficiently serious to be ruining their businesses and their family life.

Known originally as “A.A.” (Alcoholics Anonymous) 12 Steps has since expanded to successfully encompass those suffering from Heroin and Cocaine addictions, and all these forms of “anonymous” groups can now be found in most towns and cities around the western world and, in addition, many residential rehabilitation centres deliver 12 Steps on a professional basis over a period of weeks or months before sending a “cleaner” but usually not yet fully cured addict out to continue at his or her local 12 Steps group.

It is reported that some 20 to 30% of 12 Steps practitioners succeed, usually in a period of nine to 36 months or longer, during which time they will successfully and with guts and mutually supported determination, stop using and “one day at a time” fight the effects of “cold-turkey”, or gradually reduce their addictive consumption.

Although 12 Step Groups are basically free of cost, 12 Step Residential Rehabs charge fees dependent mainly upon the quality of the accommodation, service and meals, etc. As a consequence, professionals and business men tend initially to go to a rehab, whilst those of lesser financial means tend to rely solely upon their local group activities.

Whilst reliance on a “higher power” is included in most 12 Steps programmes, no further technical physical or mental steps are indicated, so that the high possibility of reverting to drug usage caused by the presence of metabolites and toxic drug residues in the body, along also with irrational drug influenced decisions in the mind, are in no way dealt with. 

SMALL DOSE STEP DOWN WITHDRAWAL:

This is the system of very gradual dose size reduction recommended by the authors of the “British National Formulary”, published jointly by the “British Medical Association” and the “Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain”.

A system which unquestionably works – particularly for involuntarily addicted patients on prescription drugs whose dosing can be professionally controlled over the often long period of time required to ensure the patient's comfort during the whole withdrawal process, which can be from three to nine months or even longer.

Unfortunately, the different additive and / or hypnotic drugs necessitating this type of withdrawal come in a variety of dosage formats – tablets, pills, capsules and liquids – and all in different manufacturer recommended dose sizes.

In the early stages of small step down withdrawal, the necessary size of the smaller doses can be achieved by cutting large tablets or pills into halves, quarters or even eighths of their original size, but for elderly patients this can be totally impractical beyond quarters and, of course, is not possible at all with most forms of capsule, especially when liquid filled.

Because for patient comfort, the optimum amount of step-down should not exceed 2.5 to 5% of the current dosage, the range of small doses which need to be available can go all the way down to 1% 2.5%, 5%, and 10% of the producer's normally manufactured and recommended dose sizes and, because in many instances, they claim that smaller sizes are more difficult or costly to manufacture, producers endeavour as far as possible to avoid providing and stocking them on a regular basis.

However, in addition, producers are well aware that a patient using 1,095 doses a year of their benzodiazepine or other 3 times a day drug medication will be a lost profitable consumer if they are encouraged to successfully withdraw.  One can therefore from a commercial viewpoint understand a lack of enthusiasm or degree of reluctance on the part of their marketing people to even contemplate offering the above indicated smaller doses.

And, again in addition, regular and easy availability of such small doses would allow General Practitioners to initially prescribe smaller doses, and thus avoid more of the involuntary addiction they know larger doses can so easily create.

Here again, those pharmacists who describe and offer small dose step down withdrawal principles make no comment on the eradication of metabolites and toxic drug residues from the withdrawn addict's body. Nor do their psychiatric colleagues offer any way of correcting irrational computations and weird decisions made during drug overwhelmed events or drug deprived and desperate cold turkey periods.

Thus leaving the withdrawn addict wide open to a resumption of his or her former addiction.

SUPPORTED IMMEDIATE DRUG-FREE WITHDRAWAL:

In some eastern countries, a drug addict (but not a severe alcoholic) is withdrawn simply by locking him or her in a room long enough to suffer through all the grossly uncomfortable “cold turkey” effects of unsupported withdrawal.

Those eastern “service providers” know that whilst deprived drug addicts may well FEEL they are dying, this is never actually the case, and that confronting “cold turkey withdrawal” head-on is considered to be the best way to ensure they will never again choose to use such drugs.

On the other hand, "sympathetic" pharmaceutical drugs marketing departments say they hate to see addicts suffering, when they have available another “helpful” drug which can see the addict through all those nasty “cold turkey” miseries, which, if the addict accepts that, will most likely leave him or her with a new addiction to the pharmaceutical drug prescribed to “help” them through their withdrawal.

So a totally “drug-free”, but nevertheless “supported” withdrawal has since 1966 been used to help the addict to far more comfortably confront the rigours of so-called “cold turkey”, without the possibility of generating a new addiction.

A system of simple locational and body “assists” or exercises applied by a trained staff member at any and all times of the day and night as required, coupled with sufficient water based supplement drinking and minimum eating of mainly green salad vegetables, will in 3 days to 3 weeks see the individual through a withdrawal struggle no more severe than the feelings associated with a dose of influenza.  But whilst 'flu can kill, drug-free withdrawal doesn't.

The period of withdrawal varies according to how long the addict has been using drugs, according to which drugs and which dose sizes have been used, and how often they have been used, and a majority don't take longer than 3 to 10 days.

The product of supported immediate drug-free withdrawal is an individual who is no longer using drugs, but who may still need to be stabilised in the here and now, which can be achieved with further “Assists”, a form of mental and emotional “First-Aid”.

On the physical level, he or she will also need to get rid of the metabolites, hormones and toxic drug residues, etc., stored or lodged in the fatty tissues of the body which, can under hot weather conditions, hard physical work, prolonged exercise or other sweating, be broken down and be released back into the blood-stream thus restimulating an addictive demand for the drug(s).

On the emotional level, the withdrawn addict's mind also needs to have “flushed out” the irrational decisions and weird concepts picked up during drug controlled events and / or during desperate drug deprived cold-turkey periods.

This however starts us into Part Two of “How To Rid Yourself Of Drug Addiction”, which is better dealt with in a separate post.

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Founded in 1975.

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