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It appears that our research article on benzodiazepines and BIND has gained a bit of attention lately. The article published in the open access journal PLOS ONE on June 29, 2023 is titled "Long-term consequences of benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction: A survey." This article formally introduces BIND to the medical community, in addition to highlighting some of the more persistent symptoms and adverse life effects of benzodiazepines.
The last few days have been interesting, to say the least. Despite my experience as a podcaster and support site founder, I'm still pretty naïve when it comes to online marketing and promotion. I only returned to social media for Easing Anxiety a few months ago. Thus, I am learning this as I go along and have found this journey educational and enlightening.
Recent Media Attention
On Thursday, several online news agencies picked up our research immediately such as Medical Express and Mirage News, which got a buzz going. Then that evening, Christopher Lane published an article on our research in Psychology Today. This is the second article that Chris has written related to our work on the Benzodiazepine Survey of 2018-2019. Chris was amazing to work with and I thank him for his attention to the benzodiazepine issues that plague so many individuals.
After that, the dominoes started to fall. The New York Post quickly followed, as did Yahoo! Finance and WebMD. BioSpace, Worldhealth.net, Newswise, Study Finds, MarketWatch, and many others also published articles on the study.
Here at Easing Anxiety, we produced a few blog posts on the paper. One initially announced the paper, another introduced the BIND Research Roundtable video, and another commented on the Psychology Today article. And on Saturday, "Medicating Normal" held a Live Facebook Event with my colleague Dr. Christy Huff, dedicated to the paper and its findings.
After that, the story seemed to get a second wind and even became a topic of discussion on some popular podcasts and other related outlets. One of these articles has now garnered over one million views on Twitter. In fact, Elon Musk even replied to the tweeted article with an exclamation mark "!". Not the most verbose of replies, but I'm just glad he, and others, have seen it.
What's Next?
What's next in this PR parade? Will the attention ease up with the U.S. holiday and all, or will it regain steam on Wednesday? I have no idea. All I know is that this is the most attention benzodiazepine issues have received in a while, and that's a good thing.
Thank you to everyone who helped us raise awareness. This has been a team effort, and what an amazing team we have. If anyone knows of another contact or outlet that may help us get the word out, please let us know.
Take care of yourself and we'll talk real soon,
D :)
You guys are doing great work!!! Can people volunteer for future surveys?
Keep the momentum up!
I did have a thought. I visited a lot of social media sites that features the article. Based on the comments, there were a couple camps of people whose replies I found troubling.
1) a lot of people still believe that people who take these pills are your classic addicts who abuse the drugs and deserve what they have coming to them. There were comments from a lot of people who took benzos who said they never had problems because they didn’t abuse them. As some of us know, BIND doesn’t really discriminate between abuse and taking them as prescribed.
2) There is a camp that is unaware that benzos are prescribed for myriad reasons,…