How to get rid of sleeping pills and anxiolytics? Since February 1, pharmacies have been offering a weaning program for these drugs which cause a certain habituation. However, they are only effective in the short term. This program is largely supported by the mutual.
They fight anxiety, stress or insomnia, but these drugs called benzodiazepines have perverse effects such as addiction. “On a mental level, if I don’t have my medicine, it’s over. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I mightn’t do things that I might do because I’m tired. It’s a vicious circle, it’s a gear, and at the end, we are completely caught in it”, confides Maxime, a student.
To help dependent patients like Maxime, pharmacists offer a new withdrawal service. For this, they gradually decrease your usual medication and repackage it in new capsules. “To do this, I took 15 tablets so that I might make 30 capsules. I broke them, and powdered them once more, and I added an excipient to be able to make the total powder I need for the 30 capsules”explains Noémie Plumier, pharmacy assistant.
Over the weeks, step by step, the dosage is reduced. Weaning period: between 50 and 360 days.
“The big advantage is that this plan is reimbursed by the mutual. The patient only has to advance his box of medication. Everything is covered by social security”indicates Nicolas Echement, the spokesman of the Belgian pharmaceutical association.
For Guy Delrée, a general practitioner, weaning is a good thing, because benzodiazepines cause drowsiness and sometimes accidents. “When you’re older, that’s when you have to get up at night to go urinate, and the falls of the elderly due to these drugs, it’s frequent. We have problems with bills because of these drugs”, he points out.
150,000 euros are released by the federal state, enough to allow the care of several hundred patients. Pharmacists are hoping for a start, because in Belgium it is estimated that 12% of the population consumes this type of medicine.
