My Relationship with Anxiety and Benzodiazepines

I wanted to unpack my experience with them in the wake of most of the nation watching the Netflix documentary called “Take Your Pills,” and I wanted to share my experience that is not unique. Still, I deemed it worthy of sharing so others may know they are not alone with benzo’s addiction.

My first dose of benzodiazepine was like someone opened my brain and sunshine and whipped away decades worth of worry and dread…I knew immediately that this would be a problem, which started my ten-year battle with benzo’s addiction.

I can remember how normal it became that I never left the house without my benzos in my pocket and the extent I would go through to make sure I kept the math correct on my scripts so I wouldn’t raise any red flags with my doctor so I wouldn’t lose my scripts. I struggled with everyday math my whole educational career, but when it came to keeping tabs on my benzo scripts, It was like a “beautiful mind.” I like to call this “script math,” and I was the Einstein of these rudimentary calculations.

Anxiety ran my life. I spent most of this time with heavy clouds of dread hanging over my head. I often spent my days either so disassociated from my body or lost in a fog that I even struggled with what experiences were real or manifested in my fear-riddled mind. It is tough to explain without experiencing it yourself, but I lived in prison inside my head. Benzos became the fix, but like any easy fix, the fix was very short-lived. Benzodiazepines unravelled my whole world. The lengths I would go through to ensure I have them to function is astounding, knowing that I have lots of time free from benzos’ hold on me. I even became comfortable with the notion that these tiny little pills would undoubtedly end my life. Still, living without them became scarier than the initial reason I was even on them. This is the vicious circle of this drug, and once you are in it, it is a complex spiral to escape.

I promise there is a way out of this, and I don’t think that suffering in silence and taking our meds is the answer to conquering this pharmaceutical epidemic. There is help; there are resources out there to help us. Anxiety and mental health struggles can make you lonely. Still, you are not alone, and the more we normalize talking about these subjects, the closer we get to taking on mental health issues and moving the momentum towards the better when it comes to these issues.