Drugs that instantly relieve anxiety can feel like a godsend, but using the pills long-term may come with serious consequences.
When Rachel Ziegler was 22, her doctor prescribed 0.5 mg of Xanax once a day to treat generalized anxiety and panic attacks. “I don’t recall ever discussing a potential stopping point,” says Ziegler, who works as a chemistry-lab technician at the University of Illinois, “but I do remember asking her if I would become addicted.” Ziegler says her doctor minimized the risk, telling her, “Oh, you’ll be okay. You’d have to take it like three times a day for three months to get addicted.
Women are twice as likely as men to have an anxiety disorder and thus also twice as likely to be prescribed benzodiazepines, according to a 2019 report inBetween 1996 and 2013, benzodiazepine prescriptions increased by 67 percent, from 8.1 million to 13.
Drug packaging states physiological dependence can occur even when they’re taken as prescribed, but it doesn’t explain dependence is widespread among users who take the drugs for longer than two to four weeks, according to a 2018 article in theAnd many do: Between 2005 and 2015, the number of people using benzos for six or more months increased by 50 percent, according to thereport.
The best way out of this burgeoning crisis is a simple one: “We should really look at limiting the number of patients on chronic benzodiazepines,” says Stephen Delisi, M.D., of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, a national nonprofit addiction treatment provider. Dr. Compton agrees. “Part of the problem in our health-care system is that doctors spend 10 or 11 minutes with each patient. That’s not a good way to treat anxiety,” he says. “There’s a tendency to want to use medication for everything.
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