Heather Ashton obituary

Psychopharmacologist who started a clinic for people addicted to tranquillisers and wrote a manual on how to quit them safely

One day in the early 1980s a distressed patient went to see the doctor Heather Ashton at her pharmacology clinic in the Royal Victoria hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The patient had been given the tranquilliser Ativan (lorazepam) to relax her muscles before an operation and now feared she was addicted to the drug. Ashton listened to her patient and many others like her, studied their problems scientifically, and concluded that addiction to benzodiazepine tranquillisers was a serious problem, associated with severe withdrawal symptoms. The manual she went on to write on how to quit benzodiazepines safely now provides the basis for practice all over the world.

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