What you should know about benzos before you take them

published on March 30, 2025 by Prapti Bamaniya in CBC Radio

Within 10 minutes of disclosing his sleepless nights to his family doctor, Georges Marcoux had a little white pill in his hand.

His doctor in Shediac, N.B., prescribed him a sleeping pill, Oxazepam, which gave him relief for a few weeks.

“I got the prescription, and that’s it. Nobody was asking questions. I was not asking questions.”

But 35 years later, Marcoux realized he had been taking the same pill to help him sleep every night.

After seeing a story in the paper about a study correlating long-term benzodiazepine use to risk of cognitive impairment, he knew it was time to quit.

These pills, part of a class of drugs called benzodiazepines, have been around since 1955. Their use and misuse are portrayed in songs, movies and most recently in the TV series White Lotus and The Pitt…