Was my husband prescribed the wrong medicine?

In the early eighties my husband was prescribed diazepam for tension headaches.  He is still taking these, but his doctor recently asked him to reduce his 15mg daily to 10mg.  We both found this extremely difficult, my husband was left with sleepless nights and feeling extremely edgy and 'delicate'.  For the past twenty years my hubby has been out of work due to the way he felt 'ill' and unable to deal with day to day things.  I feel that the doctor who prescribed valium, as it was then, in the first place was wrong to do this just for tension headaches, and that all the doctors since who have carried on the prescribing of the diazepam have also been negligent to a certain extent. We are trying to reduce the diazepam still but it is so very hard.  Please give advice if you can.     Thank you

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

Being out of work for twenty years is serious business, and means that there is more than a simple headache as cause.  If possible, your husband should decrease his dose but do it while getting some counseling about what is going on...then being edgy becomes an opening to understanding.