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KMID : 0378019840270020057
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New Medical Journal
1984 Volume.27 No. 2 p.57 ~ p.64
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Abuse of Benzodiazepines in Headache Patients
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Abstract
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Benzodiazepines are widely prescribed anxiolytic and sedative hypnotic agents and now the most common groups of drugs being abused by self-administration.
The authors described a study designed to gain some understanding of how to treat patient of benzodiazepine abuse who had suffered for a long time with headache. Forty-three benzodiazepine abusers of headache patients who had been visited to the Department of Neuropsychiatry of National Medical Center during a year from Jan. 1, 1982 to Dec. 31, 1982. were investigated upon clinical feature of benzodiazepine abuse.
Of the whole patients suffered for a long time with primary or psychogenic headache rate of benzodiazepine abuse was 23.4%. Thirty three percent of drug abuser was diagnosed as major affective disorder. Female patients were more frequently indulged in benzodiazepine abuse than male patients(2.6X). Most of them were housewives(53.5%) and in 5th decade (37.2%). Their personality was compulsive in 25.6%. There was not a unique remedy of benzodiazepines which had been preferable to abusing. The availability of drugs might be great care in abuse.
The dosage was various and inconsistent in range. Most of headache patients had administered the abusing drugs intermittently and irregularly at moderately high doses.
Additionally, antipyretic analgesics, cerebral metabolic stimulants, and diuretics were abused concomitantly.
Only twenty five percent of abused patients believed the fact that they were in their habituation potential of benzodiazepines.
Tolerance to benzodiazepines seemed to develop in relatively long times with psychological dependence rather than physical one.
After the withdrawal of drugs, insomnia, headache, anxiety, anorexia, tremor had developed in more than half of the patients. Most of them had been treated with supportive therapy, gradual discontinuation of benzodiazepines, and additional administration of phenothiazine derivatives with tricyclic antidepressants. Psychiatric treatment should be continued for a long time to alleviate and resolve benzodiazepine abusing potential.
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