Bitter Blue: Tranquillizers, Drugs, Dependency

Jeremy Reed Peter Owen, £15.99, pp 136 ISBN 0 7206 0892 9

Achallenge worthy of the Krypton Factor: write a review of an unreadable book. I'd rather do the assault course in a frock. Of course I have read the book—I just haven't Read it. I tried, but Bitter Blue is such an intensely personal account of benzodiazepine addiction and withdrawal that I felt uncomfortably voyeuristic as soon as I got past the preface.

When still a fresh-but-spotty-faced student in Sheffield, I heard our professor of medicine explaining the intricacies of benzodiazepine treatment to us in his soft, clipped Edinburgh tones, in front of a patient.

“So you see, …