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Part 1: TORN TO SHREDS -- The unheralded epidemic of disease and death wrought by anti-anxiety drugs

“I’ve lost everything”



Part 1: “I’ve lost everything” Part 2: A double whammy “Now that I’m dependent on these benzos I’ve lost everything I’ve had in my life.” So says George, a young man who was prescribed Ativan and Klonopin for anxiety.

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Six years ago, George had a bright future ahead of him. A senior at university, majoring in communications, he reveled in getting up in front of three hundred of his fellow students to give a speech. He worked out at the gym every day, and enjoyed an active social life. But George hit a bit of a rough patch. His girlfriend broke up with him, and he felt nervous about his upcoming final examinations, so a doctor prescribed the antidepressant Paxil. George asked his doctor if there were any possible side effects of the drug. “All he told me is I might get weight gain and my libido might be decreased a little bit, but I was young so I didn’t have to worry about that.” George ended up taking Paxil for six years. During that period he worked for a time as a manager at a Walgreen’s before returning to school to retrain for a career in IT. But the drug destroyed his sex drive, and made him listless and apathetic, so George asked his doctor to taper him off. The results were disastrous. He developed anxiety, tremors, and akathesia, or the inability to sit still. After pacing around his backyard for two days straight, he began to hallucinate and ended up in a psychiatric ward, where he was prescribed the anti-anxiety drug Ativan. After two weeks George was released and went off Ativan cold turkey. Unfortunately, the feelings of anxiety returned, worse than ever, along with thoughts of suicide. George went to another doctor who prescribed another anti-anxiety drug, Klonopin. “I can give you low dose,” the doctor reassured George. “You can just take it daily, and when you don’t need it, that’s fine – you can just stop.” And that is how George became one of the millions of people who have gotten addicted to anti-anxiety drugs. Since then his life has changed in ways he could scarcely have imagined.


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Patrick D Hahn -- Bio and Archives

Patrick D Hahn is the author of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence (Samizdat Health Writer’s Cooperative) and Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes? (Palgrave MacMillan). Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.



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