“My Road to Hell was Paved with Xanax”
In Salon, Ashley Zlatopolsky writes about how receiving a common benzodiazepine from a doctor for anxiety led to a severe, problematic addiction.
"I guess you know you have a problem when you’re snorting crushed Xanax up your nose through a plastic tampon applicator before going grocery shopping because you can’t stay sober long enough to grab some more cereal at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday," writes Zlatopolsky. "Not like you can afford the cereal anyway — your bank statement reads '$0.00' in bold letters, which is also how exciting your life is on a scale of 0-10."
My road to hell was paved with Xanax (and Klonopin, and Ativan, and Halcion) (Salon, April 5, 2015)
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8 thoughts on ““My Road to Hell was Paved with Xanax””
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If you look at the comments, you’ll see what denial is all about.
The “I don’t abuse it so that’ll never happen to me” folks are pretty well represented.
I’m of course referring to the comments under the original article.
The top comment is from someone who admits to taking Xanax for 20+ years and they say they are still not addicted. They call the drug a “life saver”. All the Xanax is saving them from now is the withdrawal. Lets see what happens when they don’t have access to their precious Xanax and see how unaddicted they are.
I can’t imagine how bad the memory is of people that have been taking benzos that long. Recent studies have been revealing the memory damaging effects of these drugs.
They can also cause complete anterograde amnesia in some people – you are completely unable to form long-term memories turning into Henry Molaison. It happened to me, fortunately only for a few days when they drugged me in a “hospital” – of course none of these geniuses noticed that. combined with the fact that these drugs can also cause aggression you can end up murdering someone and not even remembering it. It’s amazing that these things are prescribed like candy.
Sadly many of them will end up exactly where the author ended and be all surprised.
Not everyone ‘abuses’ benzodiazepines…legions of us take them as prescribed and then experience *HELL ON EARTH* when we try to quit.
It’s not for the fainthearted…
Exactly what I was thinking. One need not go so far as to snort the stuff for horrendous consequences to ensue.
Of course, and that’s how I became addicted to them- through prescribed use. but look at the ignoramuses in the comments. Unreal!