Opioid Addiction Medications Should Not Be Withheld From Patients Taking Benzodiazepines or CNS Depressants Opioid addiction medications – buprenorphine and methadone – should not be withheld from patients taking benzodiazepines or other drugs that depress the central nervous system (CNS), advises FDA. The combined use of these drugs increases the risk of serious side effects; however, the harm caused by untreated opioid addiction usually outweighs these risks. Careful medication management by health care providers can reduce these risks, notes a safety alert. FDA is requiring this information to be added to the buprenorphine and methadone drug labels along with detailed recommendations for minimizing the use of medication-assisted treatmentdrugs and benzodiazepines together. Health care providers should take several actions and precautions and should develop a treatment plan when buprenorphine or methadone is used in combination with benzodiazepines or other CNS depressants. Additional information may be found in an FDA Drug Safety
Communication announcement at www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm575307.htm.
More FDA edicts that are intended to “protect the addicts” ?
Filed under: General Problems
When a person has been successfully treated with opioids with or without benzodiazepines WHY change? All this stupidity to protect those who chose to use drugs for recreation rather than pain control makes me very angry! Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock knows the difference! Why anyone would choose a non-life of pain because of scare tactics is beyond me! The only ones being affected by all the new “guidelines” and laws are people in physical pain! It’s not changing the habits of addicts, who by the way can’t afford all the wonderful things being made “available” to them and even when used only switch one addiction for another!!
More and more it seems the guidelines and laws are being made to protect the addicts
I did not make a decision year’s ago to need benzos. They were prescribed to me for a condition.I never have had an issue with them. After an accident in the early 2000’s . I also started taking successful pain medications with no problems. Fast forward to my doctor retiring in January 2017 and my new pain management pushing taibone and cervical injections along with a lower back ablation . Same Doctor started complain about my benzos and me combining them with pain pills. I decided since the injections helped my spine issues some to slowly taper ( with the help of my doctor)all last year off my pain meds of 17 year’s and discharged my self in November from pain management. The visits and pills were becoming too expensive for too low of a dose to really help anyway. Along with the costs of monthly doctor vists and pills and the regulations I did not want to be lumped in with the strict rules now being made because of drug seekers and addicts to see the doctor. For all the year’s previous I had never been treated like the way they treat pain patients and I was not going to start.
With all the talk last year and on going this year with benzos I slowly have been weaning myself off my benzos with the help of my doctor. It is so sad to think that for 16-year’s these medications were prescribed to help several conditions my doctors saw fit to use to help me feel better. And they did help me .
But now I don’t trust the doctors or the medications. You never know which one they’ ll regulate right out from under you.
So does this all mean I should of never been talking these drugs to begin with? If so why can’t I be compensated? Or at least heard?
Addiction vs severe intractable pain. I know what I’d choose.