Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Librium and Valium were both minor tranquilizers. They both did pretty much the same thing. What Arthur’s team at McAdams had to do was convince the world—both doctors and patients—that actually the drugs were different. The way to do this was to pitch them for different ailments. If Librium was the cure for “anxiety,” Valium should be prescribed for “psychic tension.” If Librium could help alcoholics stay off the bottle, then Valium could prevent muscle spasms. Why not use it in sports medicine? Soon, doctors were prescribing Roche’s tranquilizers for such a comical range of conditions that one physician, writing about Valium in a medical journal, asked, “When do we not use this drug?” To Arthur and his colleagues, this was what made Valium such an easy product to sell. As Win Gerson remarked, “One of the great attributes of Valium is that it could be used by almost every specialty.”