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W. Wolfgang Fleischhacker, MD
Hillside Hospital Long Island Jewish Medical Center Glen Oaks, NY

Christian Barnas, MD
Innsbruck University Clinics Austria

JAMA. 1988;260(4):478.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Rinaldi et al¹ have to be congratulated on raising an important issue in their article on the classification and standardization of substance abuse terminology. One of the problems with many current psychiatric classification systems is that they lack validation. Since we suppose that validation is the next logical step in the Task Force's concept, we would like to point out one of the potential pitfalls of their definitions.

Severe withdrawal phenomena have been described after abrupt cessation of therapeutic doses of benzodiazepines following long-term intake.² This syndrome has been named low-dose dependence.³ It is usually discovered serendipitously, when patients abruptly stop taking their benzodiazepines. Many of these patients have been using the medication for years, without ever trying to stop and without developing tolerance to the drug's therapeutic effects.⁴ We feel that these patients fail to meet the dependence criteria of most classification . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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