Anxiety Disorder Drugs…Worse than the Condition Itself?

The condition of anxiety disorder is becoming more and more common throughout the world. When you think about the high levels of stress that most people experience on a daily basis, it should come as no surprise that anxiety levels are creeping higher and higher as the years go on.

If you go to your own doctor and tell them that you are experiencing anxiety, you are likely to be prescribed anxiety disorder drugs. Unfortunately, these drugs come with a variety of side effects that are almost as bad, if not worse, than the condition itself. In addition, they often need to be ramped up to higher and higher doses as they lose their effectiveness over time.

One common drug that is prescribed is called a benzodiazepine. This includes medications like Ativan and Xanax. They treat generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social phobia anxiety disorder. However, they do have some pretty serious adverse reactions such as increased aggressiveness, hallucinations, depression and even psychotic symptoms. Some of the side effects are long-term including certain phobias, chronic depression and even tinnitus (ringing in the ear).

Another common medication that may be prescribed is called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, commonly known as an SSRI. You will hear these referred to as Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Paxil or Celexa typically. These medications are used to treat a variety of disorders including obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder. Depending on the medication, they come with a variety of side effects as well including sexual dysfunction, nausea, headaches, sleep disturbances and tremors.

While anxiety disorder drugs have their place in situations where the person is not able to function in their life, they should be a short-term fix while the patient finds a long-term solution. Unfortunately, many people in the on these drugs for many years and are unable to function without them.

There are natural treatment approaches that can be tried for anxiety disorder such as more exercise, dietary changes, yoga, meditation, deep breathing and even herbal remedies such as St. John’s Wort. For the anxiety patient, these sort of treatment approaches should be tried prior to taking medication if at all possible.