> Within a few weeks of starting a Xanax prescription in 2015, Dr. Christy Huff’s body was racked by an anxiety she couldn’t explain. The cardiologist had been prescribed 0.25 milligrams of Xanax by her primary-care doctor for trouble sleeping, but no one had warned her about the risks.
She did some research and realized she was experiencing withdrawals between doses. Her heart was racing, her body shook, and she struggled to breathe and swallow. She lost 15 pounds. “I looked like a skeleton,” she wrote in a 2016 blog post.
Her doctor prescribed her more Xanax: 0.5 milligrams up to three times daily. It didn’t help. She sought to get off the drug instead, and a psychiatrist helped her cross over to Valium, a longer-acting benzodiazepine considered easier to wean off of.
She was bedridden for months as she “micro-tapered” off Valium, filing down pills little by little using a scale. She documented 79 different withdrawal symptoms in tweets, from akathisia—an inability to stop moving her arms and legs—to dizziness. Walking felt like moving stone, because her muscles went into spasms, she wrote. She struggled to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer.
It took her more than three years to stop. After that, she still had tremors—“buzzing like I’m plugged into an electrical socket”—a pounding heart and anxiety in the mornings. She joined a nonprofit group, the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, as a volunteer medical director, contributing to research and seeking to highlight the harms of the drugs.
Huff, who had graduated at the top of her class as a physician, was outraged that she and other doctors were untrained about the potential ill effects of benzodiazepine use and “some of the most serious risks are not mentioned in the FDA Label—specifically that patients can suffer disabling neurological damage from benzodiazepines, which in some cases may be permanent,” she wrote in 2019.
In late 2023, she took a common “beta blocker” drug, which blocks adrenaline, and was besieged by adverse effects, including muscular atrophy and anxiety “bursting from my chest.” She surmised that “prior damage from benzodiazepines came into play.” Last March, she killed herself. Her husband later found a note she had written on her phone.
“If I end up taking my life or dying of natural causes, I consider this to be a murder,” she wrote, blaming damage from prescription drugs. “My body has been completely destroyed. I would never leave my family and beautiful daughter if I had another option.”
> Within a few weeks of starting a Xanax prescription in 2015, Dr. Christy Huff’s body was racked by an anxiety she couldn’t explain. The cardiologist had been prescribed 0.25 milligrams of Xanax by her primary-care doctor for trouble sleeping, but no one had warned her about the risks.
She did some research and realized she was experiencing withdrawals between doses. Her heart was racing, her body shook, and she struggled to breathe and swallow. She lost 15 pounds. “I looked like a skeleton,” she wrote in a 2016 blog post.
Her doctor prescribed her more Xanax: 0.5 milligrams up to three times daily. It didn’t help. She sought to get off the drug instead, and a psychiatrist helped her cross over to Valium, a longer-acting benzodiazepine considered easier to wean off of.
She was bedridden for months as she “micro-tapered” off Valium, filing down pills little by little using a scale. She documented 79 different withdrawal symptoms in tweets, from akathisia—an inability to stop moving her arms and legs—to dizziness. Walking felt like moving stone, because her muscles went into spasms, she wrote. She struggled to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer.
It took her more than three years to stop. After that, she still had tremors—“buzzing like I’m plugged into an electrical socket”—a pounding heart and anxiety in the mornings. She joined a nonprofit group, the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, as a volunteer medical director, contributing to research and seeking to highlight the harms of the drugs.
Huff, who had graduated at the top of her class as a physician, was outraged that she and other doctors were untrained about the potential ill effects of benzodiazepine use and “some of the most serious risks are not mentioned in the FDA Label—specifically that patients can suffer disabling neurological damage from benzodiazepines, which in some cases may be permanent,” she wrote in 2019.
In late 2023, she took a common “beta blocker” drug, which blocks adrenaline, and was besieged by adverse effects, including muscular atrophy and anxiety “bursting from my chest.” She surmised that “prior damage from benzodiazepines came into play.” Last March, she killed herself. Her husband later found a note she had written on her phone.
“If I end up taking my life or dying of natural causes, I consider this to be a murder,” she wrote, blaming damage from prescription drugs. “My body has been completely destroyed. I would never leave my family and beautiful daughter if I had another option.”