Overprescribed and Overlooked: A Preventable Tragedy

Seven years ago, my best friend died of a Xanax overdose. Everything before her death happened so fast, but everything afterward moved in slow motion. I remember when I got the call from her boyfriend. He was in tears. “Ina’s dead,” he said. My stomach dropped. It wasn’t real; it couldn’t be. “No, Rick. No, she’s not.” “Yes, Scheri, she died last night. I’m so sorry.”

She died the night before, likely in her sleep. I knew she had been very depressed at the time. You never would’ve guessed on the outside, because she was the most bubbly and excitable human. But her last message to me was telling me how horrible a place she was in mentally. I told her I could come right over if she needed me. She never responded, but I remember telling her family it couldn’t have been possible that she died that night. She had read my text message early that morning! When they told me that was because the detective had opened her phone with her dead fingerprint as he examined her body, I almost threw up.

I’ll never forget cleaning out her house. She called it Lil Casa (Lil for short), as she lived in a small two-bedroom house with her roommate downtown. It was a cute place, and she threw fantastic parties there in the summer. Some nights, I would come over, and we’d smoke a joint, raid her fridge, sit on the floor of her bedroom, and chow down on leftovers while watching “Modern Family” and giggling about some girly nonsense. When I met her family at the house to clear it out after she died, her mom gave me some of her things she couldn’t bear to keep: a bright blue pillow that said “Love You More” on one side, “Love You Most” on the other; a pretty turquoise vase with big, pink fake flowers inside; a red Longchamp bag; a black jacket she and I both loved.

She always called me her “soul sista” (which was the most white-girl thing ever) and said I was her ride-or-die. We wanted to travel together and explore and share our positive energy with everyone we met. When she died, I couldn’t stop thinking we had so much left to do.

I believed I was the cause of her death. I was the one who told her how easy it was to get ahold of a Xanax prescription. At the time that I told her that, I had no idea that she’d had a history with pills. I didn’t know that mixing alcohol and Xanax was so terribly dangerous, and I didn’t know it was something people commonly did recreationally.

About nine months before her death, I had gone to a women’s health doctor at a prestigious clinic nearby because I had been struggling with hormonal issues. My PMS was awful; I would get so anxious and depressed, but only for a week out of the month. I told the doctor I had no desire for any antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication for symptoms that only happened for one week out of the month, but she insisted on sending me home with a bottle of Xanax. “If you’re going to drink while taking them, only have, like, one glass of wine, okay?” I’ll never forget her giggle as she said it. She spoke about this medication like it was candy. Like it couldn’t kill you if you mixed too much of it with alcohol. I could not have been less prepared for what happened next.

When I told Ina that the doctor had given me Xanax without me even wanting it, she seemed fascinated. A week later, she got herself a prescription of her own. It was as easy for her to get ahold of as it was for me. She told me she didn’t really need it for anxiety at the time, but wanted some for fun once in a while. Over the next few months, she told me she would take it often just to get through the workday. Her work had become overwhelming, and she was constantly unbearably anxious. Soon, she was taking it while drinking and blacking out more often than not. She needed to numb the pain and fear.

I should have told someone what was happening, but it all happened so fast. With how cavalier the doctor had been about drinking while taking it, I wasn’t sure how serious the problem was. My roommate in college had had a Xanax prescription too; she often drank while taking her medication. She seemed to have been fine. I did not know how dangerous what Ina was doing was. Ironically, a week before she passed, her roommate and I had a plan to sit her down and talk to her about it. We were starting to get worried. We never got the chance.

When you lose someone close to you, death comes so near. It feels like you could just leave this earth so easily too if you wanted. On bad days, ridden with guilt and grief, I really couldn’t handle what had happened. I couldn’t focus, I cried constantly, and everything became dull and gray. I could not understand how my friend was gone and had left me behind.

So I got a prescription for antidepressants and Adderall. It was so easy. I’d taken Adderall in college every now and then too; it was super easy to get a prescription from the doctor and then use it to study like crazy for exams. I knew it would help me at work too. I also knew it wouldn’t pull me out of the depression entirely, and I needed help with that, so I made sure to get a prescription for some antidepressants as well. In college, kids would tell you, it’s so easy to get these prescriptions: just fill the forms out the right way, answer their questions the way someone who needs the medication would, and the doctor will hand them over. Want Adderall? Say you’re disorganized, you lose things often, you can’t stay focused, you fidget. Want antidepressants? Say you’re hopeless and miserable and can’t deal with day-to-day tasks. Do NOT say you’re suicidal; that might mean they won’t give it to you.

It was scary easy. I knew more people who were on these medications than who weren’t. And you could keep asking for higher and higher dosages by saying you didn’t feel the effects. You could even go to a different doctor and pretend you didn’t already have a prescription and get prescribed even more medication. How were they not tracking the amount of medicine they doled out? The danger was insane. We were playing with fire, and we had no idea.

The years after my friend passed away were bleak. The antidepressants did nothing to help. I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t taking vitamins, eating a healthy and balanced diet, sleeping enough, or in therapy regularly. I didn’t journal, meditate, or even breathe properly most of the time. I drank with my friends constantly, often while on the medication. This sent me into an even worse spiral. When I ran out, I went to another doctor or psychiatrist and simply asked for more. I remember only one doctor telling me that if I started exercising, it might help me rely less on medication. When I told her I didn’t have time to exercise (which is the most common excuse for not exercising), she prescribed the higher dose I asked for.

Multiple times during this period, I found myself at such low points that I wanted to take my own life. I’d been very depressed in the past, but it wasn’t until I took antidepressants that I ever got low enough to want to act on it. It’s hard to believe that the medication didn’t have something to do with it. At every low point, I was only prescribed more or another brand of medication. I gained significant weight, my head was constantly cloudy, and my family couldn’t recognize me. I couldn’t recognize myself.

After five years of floundering and barely making it through each depressive episode, only to be numbed further, something clicked. The medication wasn’t helping me; it was making me much worse.

I made the decision to stop the medication, and I spent all of my free time finding healthy, non-prescription strategies to manage my depression. I started weekly therapy; I researched and began taking vitamin supplements to boost my energy and balance my mood. I began to exercise very regularly. Over time, my symptoms of depression began to dissipate. And if they did return, they were far less overwhelming, and I could handle them. I never again got to the types of lows I had while on the medication.

Mental health in America is approached in a way that is bizarre and horrifying. In the past five years, each year around 14,000 people have died from prescription medication overdoses. This epidemic is unique to the United States. In Europe, the rates are nearly half of what we see in the United States. In India, they are 85% lower than in the United States. In many other countries, doctors will not prescribe medication for mental health issues until patients have tried holistic approaches first and those truly have not worked. My family is from India, and while visiting once, I ran out of my antidepressants. I saw several doctors, and it was extremely difficult to get a new prescription because in India, they genuinely don’t believe that antidepressants are safe to prescribe. When I did finally get a script, it was for half the dosage I was on, and only for the remaining days I was in the country.

Many (not all) patients could resolve a lot of their issues by changing their lifestyle in positive ways. The problem with using medication as a band-aid approach to mental health issues is that it means young people and people with addictions or deep trauma can easily get ahold of dangerous medication, leading to deaths that are almost entirely preventable. My friend’s death was entirely preventable. We need more regulation of psychiatric medication in America. It should not be as easy as it is to get ahold of medication that, if not properly taken (which is more socially common than you think), could kill you.