The drug was first prescribed to me after I experienced a panic attack.
I had thought that I was dying.
My children were two and six years old.
PILL FRIENDSXanax worked like magic: “ease spreading through me pleasantly until I felt normal again,” McPhee writes.
We were at homemy husband had gone for the day and the babysitter was late.
I started sweating and had this urge to run, to get outside.
There she was in the lobby.
FAMILY TIESThe author (right) with her daughter Livia in October, 2023.
She took the children.
On the street, the noises were loud, the light galactic.
I think it was summer.
I was walking but had no idea where I was going.
Fear crawled over me like ants.
A good friend appeared out of nowhere.
He smiled and then stopped and asked what was wrong.
I fell against him and told him I was dying.
He reassured me, instructed me to breathe, then hailed a cab to take me to my doctor.
I loved my doctor, an old man with a tremor.
He did an EKG, asked some questions.
I started to feel normal.
Eventually he explained that Id had a panic attack, and that they run themselves out.
A month or two passed.
I was in the subway when the space started to close in on me.
The ground felt like glass.
I fled because I didnt want to die down there in front of all those strangers.
The pill worked like magic, ease spreading through me pleasantly until I felt normal again.
We are an anxious nation, an anxious world.
Look at the news and it is there for everyone to see.
Years ago, at a party with a new friend, I was admiring her calm happiness.
Im drugged, she said matter-of-factly and with a joyous smile.
But this is nothing new.
Other elixirs for inner turmoil tumbledown to us from sources as old as myths.
Mandrake, hellebore, hyoscyamus, opium poppy, ergot fungi, peyote, cannabis.
Telemachus took nepenthe, Juliet some kind of nightshade, Anna Karenina laudanum.
Each era has its own reasons for anxiety.
Most nights Id bite half a tablet2 a.m., wide-eyed, my brain electric.
Some nights half a tablet wouldnt work, so Id take another bite.
I never took a lot of Xanax.
The dose was so small that doctors rarely saw anything amiss.
Doctors I saw over the years, theyd say, Well, Martha, you also need to sleep.
Its a small dose youre taking of Xanax.
Most nights Id bite half a tablet2 a.m., wide-eyed, my brain electric.
Some nights half a tablet wouldnt work, so Id take another bite.
I never needed more than 1.5 tablets.
The cost, after insurance, was $2.37.
In the mornings, Id wake up feeling rested.
Id have my coffee and start the day.
For years, I didnt think much about this.
It was my pattern, how I managed my sleep.
If doctors werent concerned, then why should I be?
In my household, my kids, my husbandthey knew that Xanax was my thing.
(I did not tell my sisters.
Sisters can be like mirrors.
Read the studies, she said.)
Sometimes when my husband couldnt sleep, hed take one.
Like me, he is a writer, a poet, vulnerable to the pressures of the creative life.
Once he took my Xanax for several nights, depleting my supply.
I worried the doctor would think I was overindulging.
But when I asked her for a refill sooner than usual, she didnt bat an eye.
This is not a story about how doctors are bad and pills are evil.
I believe in medicine, and there is a good place for Xanax when used properly.
But I didnt use it properly.
In the 1800s bromides came about, an alternative to alcohol and opium used for centuries.
Red Devils (or simply Reds) was the street name for Seconal.
In the mid-1900s, benzodiazepines were created by Leo Sternbach for the firm Hoffmann-La Roche.
Valium would become the pharmaceutical industrys first $100 million product and the Western worlds most widely prescribed drug.
By 1966 it was the protagonist of the Rolling Stones song Mothers Little Helper.
By the time I started taking it, in 2006, millions of other Americans were doing the same.
Prescriptions for alprazolam peaked in 2014 with 28 million filled.
It is not a sleep aid and was not approved for treating insomnia by the Food and Drug Administration.
Its addictive properties can be difficult to notice but can draw you up short.
I applied for more.
Somehow from somewhere, they retrieved the medications I took regularly.
There was only one.
A few weeks later I received a letter informing me that I had been denied.
I was too high a risk.
Xanax was the culprit.
But even this didnt cause alarm; I recalled the doctors mantra: you better sleep, Martha.
Around 2018, my daughter started asking me for Xanax to help her sleep.
She was a stressed-out high school student applying for college.
On occasion, she nabbed a few from my totem canister.
At first, I hid them.
Then I realized I needed to set a good example, so I quit cold turkey.
I had a rough go for several days.
I felt like a live wire.
But I was determined.
Eventually, my body adjusted.
I did not throw the canister away.
Rather, I gave it to my husband for safekeepingjust in case.
The year 2020 rolled around, and by April I was having a nibble again.
A bite of Xanax would put me back to sleep.
I only took the Xanax at night, but started needing more.
There were the usual money worries, work worries, my tendency to venture to fix everything.
The anxiety came out in my tone.
In the lines of my face.
I attributed this to family historythe long line of anxious people that I descend from.
I became a shrunken shriveled stick twig, weighing not more than a hundred pounds.
I screamed at my husband.
In Italian there is one word that captures it all:sciupata.
I was sciupata: damaged, spoiled, ruined, run-down, worn out, wasted, squandered.
Sometimes Id wonder if my body could keep going like this; it didnt feel like it could.
In 2023, a new doctor for me, a new life for us all.
This doctor didnt mince words: You cannot keep this up.
She raised the risk of dementia from long-term use.
It took a few months for me to gather the courage to quit again.
(I do not recommend this.
It can be dangerous.)
It was like I was on speed.
The fallout lasted a few weeks.
I tried meditation, picked up yoga again, practiced breathing.
But it was hard.
When I told my doctor that I had stopped taking Xanax, she became emotional.
Do you know how hard that is?
I kept the remaining tablets for about three weeks.
Dont write that in your article, my friend Kate said about flushing them.
She is a clinical psychologist at the University of Chicago.
That is not the safe way of disposing of medicine.
It gets in the water, contaminates it.
For a while I was mad.
I wanted to blame Xanax for everythingmy elevated A1C, high bad cholesterol, frail bones.
But blaming never accomplishes much.
I could have better informed myself about Xanax.
All the information anyone needs is available on the internet.
Instead I turned a blind eye on myself.
Eventually, I felt all right.
All the anxiety I suffered for so long was artificial.
My natural state is several decibels lower.
I am not as volatile, not as easily provoked, not quite as sad or mad or anxious.
My children and husband noticed.
I was more relaxed, more playful, but I still had trouble sleeping.
Managing sleep is a practice; it takes discipline and self-controlless wine and sugar, more breathing.
FAMILY TIESThe author (right) with her daughter Livia in October, 2023.
The predicament of the individual mirrors the predicament of the culture.
Fourteen months after going cold turkey, I returned to my new GP for an annual physical.
When I told her that I had stopped taking Xanax, she became emotional.
she asked a few times.
Do you know how hard that is?
She had to pause for a breath, which caused tears to prick in my own eyes.
My doctor, she asked, Do you mind if I share your story with my patients?
I have so many who need to hear this.
I wont mention your name.
