Names have been changed.
Jenna woke up on her kitchen floor.
Dimly, the California teacher remembered bending over the sink, trying to swallow water.
According to the clock, that had been more than an hour ago.
She fumbled for her phone but couldn’t think clearly enough to text for help.
“Then I began seeing stuff that wasn’t there, creepy-crawly things.
I didn’t know what was happening, but I worried I might be dying.”
The previous morning Jenna, then 33, had inexplicably woken up shaking.
“Somehow I made it to school.
There, things got worse.
Her twitching intensified, and she grew increasingly confused.
Then she passed out.
Once Jenna regained consciousness, she hauled herself to her sofa.
Over the next two days she couldn’t eat or drink, and her mind drifted in and out.
“My mom dragged me to the car and got me to the emergency room,” Jenna says.
“Almost immediately, I stopped shaking and felt totally normal,” Jenna says.
“It was as though nothing had ever happened.
Nobody there told me, but I put it together: I’d been in withdrawal.
I was dependent on Xanax.”
After discussing her problem, “he decided I was anxious,” she says.
“I had a busier life than some, but I didn’t think I was especially anxious.
He told me there was this great drug I could take.
He prescribed a milligram per day of the generic form.”
At first, she loved it.
“It was amazing,” she says.
“I could sleep anywhere, on the spot.”
A tranquilizer, Xanax has many close cousins, including familiar names Valium, Klonopin and Ativan.
Benzos activate the brain’s GABA receptors, inhibiting neuron activity and leaving you more relaxed and often sleepier.
Consumed daily in high doses, even for a month, Xanax can lead to physical dependence.
The drug can be particularly dangerous when taken in combination with other substances.
“Remember Heath Ledger?”
Even when used as prescribed, Xanax can become habit-forming, Dr. Birndorf says.
If that happens and you abruptly stop taking the drug, you might go into withdrawal.
This can lead to muscle twitches, depression, anxiety and, in its severest form, seizures.
“They may believe that taking Xanax to relieve those feelings is beneficial.
But it doesn’t address whatever was causing their stress to begin with.”
Once a doctor prescribes the drug, follow-up care may be lacking, as Kim in Pennsylvania discovered.
This time, he put her on it daily.
The drug soothed her panic but made her so drowsy that she began to oversleep and miss classes.
Her GPA dropped, and she took to avoiding her friends.
After a month, the anxiety returned in between doses.
“I was taking it religiously, but the feelings were three times as strong,” she says.
Kim discussed her situation with the doctor.
He suggested increasing the dosage, but she refused.
She’d become concerned about her reaction to the drug.
I’d dry heave and cry until it kicked in.”
She had popped her pill and was lying there waiting for it to take hold, except nothing happened.
She felt so scared and shaky that she took another.
And then, in a half hour, one morefollowed by a fourth one 30 minutes later.
Within minutes of downing the last pill, her legs began shaking violently.
The toes on her left foot curled up, and her tongue stiffened.
“The next thing I remember is the paramedics running in,” she says.
“I’d had a seizure.”
The debilitating pangs of interdose withdrawal had been awful enough.
Now, Kim started to worry about how she would ever get off the drug.
“While most doctorsshouldknow how to taper properly, not everyone does,” Dr. Birndorf says.
Few women are more aware of that than Emily, who lives in Indiana.
She was prescribed generic Xanax at age 25, a few months after she’d had a baby.
She was filled with anxiety, often irrational.
“I worried that someone would feed her something she might choke on,” she recalls.
Emily was taken off alprazolam and put on the generic form of Klonopin, which is slower-acting.
Her anxiety attacks persisted.
“Every day was a struggle,” she says.
After several months, she started looking for other doctors to get her off the pills.
Tapering is a stepladder approach that involves slowly decreasing your dose by tiny increments.
She’s still going through the process, with bouts of anxiety when she cuts a dose.
“But at least now I know why,” she says.
“And I’m getting better.”
She hopes to be off benzos altogether within the year.
Now living with her fiance, Kim is also working with a nurse-practitioner to taper off benzos.
She has reenrolled in school but at times still struggles to get by.
About a year after her trip to the ER, she married and discovered that she was pregnant.
Because of her pregnancy, she chose to taper faster than usually recommended.
“I had some withdrawal symptomsshakiness and feeling scared all the time,” she says.
“But it was a compromise I had to make for the sake of my baby.”
She had a healthy girl.
Jenna has cofounded an online support group; it now has more than 500 members.
“What I hate is how Xanax has become known as such a cool pill,” she says.
Additional reporting by Jacquelyn Simone
Photo Credit: Claire Benoist
