Australian Designer Aurelio Costarella was prescribed benzodiazepines by his doctor for anxiety. Aurelio, in an ABC interview, recalls his doctor’s advice and prescribing:
I went from one benzo to two benzos, to three benzos and you know, twice daily, three times daily, and I didn’t question it because I felt that I was being looked after. You shouldn’t be on a benzodiazepine for longer than two to four weeks. Well, I was on three benzodiazepines for three to four years.
Despite believing he was safe, Aurelio Costarella was harmed by prescribed benzodiazepines. He described his “hellish battle” stopping benzodiazepines in a Perth Now interview:
The suicidal thoughts I’ve had over this last year are worse than when I was going through my darkest days with depression and anxiety.
I get paranoid and feel hypersensitive to light and noise so even a trip to the supermarket is a nightmare for me. I tend to run in, grab what I need and get out as fast as I can.
In October of 2020, Aurelio shared on his Twitter that he was in his 32nd consecutive month of Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Syndrome.
P.S. Important also to note I sought help desperately from the medical community after my cold turkey. Frankly, it’s too painful for me to write about the *help* from the medical community I received.
Thank you to the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition. I was first prescribed a benzodiazepine concurrently with a medicine known to cause anxiety with no warnings of physical dependence or the dangers of cold turkey. I was subsequently put on/taken off of various powerful prescription meds along with benzodiazepines for approximately eight months. I cold turkeyed all meds out of sheer frustration of only becoming more and more so horribly ill following my doctor’s orders combined with my doctor becoming verbally abusive to me. My cold turkey was a tsunami of symptoms and I nearly died. Physical torture. Mental torture included severe depression, severe anxiety, and cruelty from others. Luckily, I never lost touch with reality throughout it all. Aside from being spared hallucinating or losing touch with reality otherwise, I experienced more than 50 symptoms including akathisia, numerous seizures, deathly low blood pressure, and severe trouble with breathing. I never reinstated. I was nonfunctional in the basement of Hell for 18 months after cold turkey. I suffer to this day extremely traumatized by it all with lasting tinnitus, severe insomnia, and a very sad acute awareness of how cruel some people can be.