Long-Term Use of Benzodiazepines, Stimulants and Lithium is Not Evidence-Based

To study whether three widely differing drug classes, benzodiazepines and similar agents, stimulants and lithium, showed similar patterns of long-term usage.

I constructed usage curves over a ten-year period, from 2007 to 2017, based on data from Statistics Denmark.

In 2007, a total of 478,097 patients deemed a prescription for a benzodiazepine or similar agent, 13,225 for lithium and 8,800 for a stimulant, corresponding to 8.8%, 0.24% and 0.16%, respectively, of the Danish population of 5,427,459 people. Only 6,2102, 5,339 and 983 of these were first-time users (13.0%, 40.4% and 11.2%, respectively). The percentage of current users who redeemed a prescription for the same or a similar drug in each of the following years fell most quickly for benzodiazepines and similar agents and most slowly for lithium, and after ten years, it was 18%, 40% and 29%, respectively.For first-time users, the drop in usage was much quicker. The percentage of first-time users who redeemed a prescription for the same or a similar drug in each of the following years fell to 12%, 59% and 49%, respectively, already after only two years.

We should focus on helping patients withdraw slowly and safely from the drugs they are on instead of telling them that they need to stay on them.