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How Is Xanax A Legitimate Medicine For Treating Anxiety?
I have seen so many people get addicted to xanax, and i am just questioning its legitimacy. Yes i will agree that it helps with anxiety in the short term, but it does it fix the problem, it just covers it up temporarily. Since it must be taken everyday in anxious people, addiction is high, and when the person decides to quite the medication, the anxiety is still there, and some have to deal with addiction.
Not to mention the abuse and illegal distrubution of this medication. A person selling the pills on the street can literally make hundreds of thousands of dollars. More money is in the illegal sale than the legal sale of the drug.
In my mind the risks and high abuse potential of the drug for outweighs the benfits, so im sitting here wondering. Why is this drug FDA approved and distributed everywhere?
Comments
Why stop at Xanax? There are tons of medications out there that people abuse, and it will never stop. That does not eliminate the efficacy of the drugs when taken properly.
Yes, it can be addictive. So can OTC sleeping pills. Just because some people are stupid, criminal, or lack self-control, the rest should not suffer. A little self-accountability is needed in all things and I personally do not need the government telling me how.
Why is pot, a completely natural drug, not physically addictive, illegal? Who knows. Who says the government makes sense.
Xanax (and everything else in the benzodiazepine family) really does help anxiety, not just mask the problem. It may just so happen that someone must keep taking it on a regular basis, which also happens with painkillers (say, someone who’s in constant pain). Those are both highly addictive forms of medicine, but must be prescribed. The problem is that doctors pass them out to people like candy, and to those who don’t really need them.
It has been proven that benzo’s are more addictive than heroin, so being on them for a prolonged period of time and them abruptly stopping will cause anxiety to worsen, which is why it’s better to wean of of it. But just because it’s so addictive doesn’t mean the FDA should have never approved it, it is highly effective against panicking, as well as sleep disorders.
it is legitimate. and i agree with you there is a lot of abuse of drugs out there. it is a shame. i am a recovering addict myself.
NO, i think that although in with short term usage it may be VERY effective, but after awhile the bad outweighs the good.
You see panic attacks are a psychological issue. Xanax will ease the panic attacks by allowing the victim a way out, that in itself lessens the panic attack. Other patients and I know, that knowing that there is a way to stop the panic attack , just having that thought, can totally free us from an attack even without having to take the pill. So using a placebo pill may also work (as it has done for me, when i was taking a placebo without my knowledge)
If a person on the pill stops, he will feel vulnerable again,and hence re-trigger the panic attacks.
Panic attacks can be defeated solely with mental strength and therapy. Xanax only futher complicates matters by being an addictive drug, that preys on a patient’s fear of panic attacks.
Xanax is fine for those who only occasionally need it, and I’m sure that’s the primary rationalization. Some can manage anxiety with therapy and/or other drugs, like Paxil (an antidepressant that can also be used for anxiety). Most people can reduce their symptoms with therapy, even if it can’t entirely be managed that way. However, those are all more expensive than Xanax in the short run.
Sure, Xanex can be dangerous, but it is also cheap. And with rare exception, health care in the US is all about cheap. It is the same short view thinking that has gotten us into trouble in lots of other areas.
Any drug can be misused. When used properly, Xanax or similar drugs are not only safe but are far and away the most remarkably effective drugs for treating anxiety.
You’re absolutely right that often the drug doesn’t fix the problem and just covers it up. In those cases, though, often the patient is calm enough to actually do therapy and deal with the problem, and can then stop the drug after a period of weeks. You don’t get addicted in weeks. In other cases, a couple of weeks on a benzodiazepine may just break a cycle of panic attacks that will never come back, or that won’t come back for years. Using antidepressants to treat panic – when they are much less effective and have extremely unpleasant side effects – is arguably an illegitimate non-treatment of the problem, when the only rationale is to prevent the possible addiction of someone with a non-addictive personality to whom you don’t plan to prescribe the medication for a long period of time anyway.
Taken for years, there is certainly dependence and withdrawal. To be fair, detox centers take all of 8 days to clean up a benzo addict. But many people do spend months weaning off gradually to be more comfortable, and still fail at it. That’s a problem. But other people are treated for a lifetime with high doses of benzodiazepines with no obvious ill effects. I’ve heard many psychiatrists argue there is no downside to this until they become geriatric patients and have cognitive impairment from use of these drugs.
The short answer is that the drugs have been shown to be safe and effective in all the phased clinical trials. Medical science trumps personal opinion; this is the Science section you’re posting in, after all.
The abuse by kids does trouble me, because I’ve seen it in my kids and their friends. But hundreds of thousands of dollars? No. Not unless you’re breaking into drug warehouses – while the drugs are sold for more on the street than at the pharmacy, we’re talking more like $1/tablet on the street vs. $0.25/tablet at the pharmacy. Someone stealing them might make hundreds of dollars, and might wind up in jail – they’d be better off selling marijuana in terms of risk/profit.
But we can’t choose which drugs to approve based solely on the potential for abuse or illegal distribution. Morphine can be abused, but is clinically very important. The same is true of benzodiazepines.
The answer is to use the drugs properly, not to make a straw-man argument that the drugs are “illegitimate” because they can be used improperly.
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