Prescribing Benzodiazepines for Patients With Substance Use Disorders

Because this piece does not have an abstract, we have provided for your benefit the first 3 sentences of the full text.

Sir: A review of physician prescribing practices for Medicaid beneficiaries in New Hampshire by Clark and colleagues1 uncovered a disturbing trend showing that patients with cooccurring substance use disorders (SUDs) received larger doses of benzodiazepines and had higher rates of benzodiazepine use than those without SUDs. They noted that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) guidelines² recommend caution when prescribing benzodiazepines to persons with SUDs, and the authors rightly recommended that prescribing physicians reassess their use of these medications.