Thinking of my mother today and wishing benzos had never entered into our lives.

Were you given them by a psychiatrist, in what year, and for what reason if may be so bold as to ask?

A neurologist prescribed them for myoclonic jerks in 1975, within a few months I was very unwell and deemed to have a psychiatric disorder, thereafter I was a patient with a psychiatric disorder and that lasted for decades. The real reason for my being unwell was never noticed.

I did attempt to come off benzos in the 1980s when the alarm bells started ringing about this class of drugs, was offered no tapering advice, became increasingly unwell yet again and went back onto them.