"It is more difficult to withdraw people from BDZs than it is heroin,
it just seems that the dependency is so ingrained and
the withdrawal symptoms you get are so intolerable that
people have a great deal of problem coming off.

The other aspect is that with heroin,
usually the withdrawal is over within a week or so,
with BDZs, a proportion of patients go on to long term withdrawal &
they have very unpleasant symptoms for month after month,
& I get letters from people saying you can go on for two years or more.
Some of the tranquilliser groups can document people
who still have symptoms ten years after stopping."