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One Woman's Triumph and Fight For Change
Addiction by PrescriptionJoan E. Gadsby

In 1966, Joan Gadsby’s four-year-old son died of a brain tumour. In response, her family physician prescribed a “chemical cocktail” of tranquillizers, sleeping pills and anti-depressants – an act that initiated Gadsby’s slow descent into an abyss of unrecognized addiction. Over the next 20 years, Gadsby’s career, her family relationships, her financial security and her health were all threatened. She was on various occasions arrested, restrained, and sedated as a result of the paradoxical side effects of the drugs. It was only after she unintentionally overdosed in 1990 that she found out the insidious effects of the drugs, stopped taking them and went through the “hell” of withdrawal – alone.

Gadsby has emerged from her addiction to become a health and wellness consultant to corporations, governments, healthcare organizations. She is a tireless advocate for systemic change and accountability of prescribed sedative/hypnotic drugs. She interviewed thousands – from consumers to doctors to pharmaceutical representatives and government officials as she conducted extensive international research – in her quest to expose the shocking truth of the depth and breadth of addiction by prescription which affects hundreds of thousands of men and women worldwide who become “accidental addicts.”