Niall McCrae November 21, 2023 READ

BY THE 1970s benzodiazepines had become ‘the opium of the masses’. This was according to Malcolm Lader of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, best known for his book Psychiatry on Trial (1977), documenting abuse of psychiatric labelling and treatment in the Soviet Union. His clinical research, including brain scans, indicated neurological damage in people taking benzodiazepines for protracted periods (as was increasingly common due to prescribers’ neglect and the ordeals of withdrawal).