UnTouchableMedicines and treatments
Being handed a prescription and a leaflet you cannot follow is its own kind of lonely. Here is what each of these is, in plain words, and the people who have talked publicly about taking it.
This is a plain description of what the medicine is, not medical advice, and not a recommendation for or against it. The stories below are what people have said about their own lives. They are not evidence that this medicine helps or harms anyone, and nothing here is a substitute for your GP or your clinical team.
Written in our own words from the NHS, the BNF or the electronic Medicines Compendium. We never take medicine information from a company that sells treatment.
All medicines and treatments
Nitrazepam (Mogadon)
Prescription medicine
Nitrazepam is a benzodiazepine. Mogadon is the brand name it has been sold under in the UK for decades. It is a prescription-only sleeping tablet, licensed only for short-term use, and only when insomnia is severe enough to be disabling or genuinely distressing. Its UK licence says a course should be kept as short as possible and that it should be stopped gradually rather than suddenly, because stopping abruptly can bring the sleeplessness back worse than before, along with anxiety and other withdrawal effects. The body adjusts to benzodiazepines quickly, so the same course can become less effective over time, and physical dependence can develop even in someone who took it for a short while exactly as prescribed. The NHS now says GPs rarely prescribe sleeping pills at all.
1 storyPeople can become dependent on this