Abstract
In 1987 the Committee on Safety of Medicines issued a statement warning doctors of a fatal interaction between chlormethiazole and alcohol. This combination was reported to be responsible for 50 deaths a year. As a consequence it was recommended that chlormethiazole should only be used under close hospital supervision. This, in turn, has generated a shift away from its use in the Community detoxification process which, in our opinion, is detrimental to patients. In this article we attempt to redress the balance which currently discriminates the use of chlormethiazole in the community, challenging the statistics quoted for fatalities and highlighting the beneficial characteristics that make the use of this agent ideal in the community. We conclude that with close clinical supervision of clients by a specialist nurse working as part of a hospital team, chlormethiazole may safely be used in detoxification programmes in the community.
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