Areas › Worry and anxiety › Panic and the body
The speed is why these work and also what they cost. Relief that lands within the half hour is the most teachable kind there is, and what it teaches is to reach for it sooner next time.
How fast a drug comes on drives that learning more than how long it hangs around afterwards. Better to name it out loud with someone than leave them to discover it: this is a rescue, and rescues are for the times you truly cannot get through otherwise, not for the ordinary bad evening. Agreeing in advance what counts as one of those times spares everybody the argument later on.
Qur’an and Sunnah
truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). There is another place to take the surge, and it costs nothing to keep returning there.
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment, a week of carrying out health-related safety behaviours left people more anxious about their health rather than less. Precautionary acts aimed at the body appear to feed the alarm they were meant to settle. That study used checking and precautions rather than medication, so applying it to a fast-acting drug is an argument by extension and not something the trial tested.
Olatunji BO, Etzel EN, Tomarken AJ, Ciesielski BG, Deacon B. (2011). The effects of safety behaviors on health anxiety: an experimental investigation.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Anything that ends discomfort quickly gets reached for again, and reached for earlier.
When not to
Someone already on one regularly should not read this as a reason to stop by themselves.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The strengthened warning on this class covers misuse, addiction, physical dependence and withdrawal. The part most people miss is that dependence builds with ordinary correct use over weeks, with nobody doing anything wrong.
Within this class the choice is mostly about how long the drug lasts rather than how well it works. They all pull on the same receptor, so the real question is what pattern of cover the person in front of you needs.
Drug names ending in pam or lam are almost always benzodiazepines. It is a quick way to pick the class out of somebody's medication list.