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Please know that there is no condemnation here at all. We just do the best we can and that includes when drugs work for our issues. I, too, do not feel like I was "addicted" in the sense of craving a drug or taking more than prescribed. I was just alerted to the dangers of taking psych drugs, particularly benzos, regularly. It is just like when pain killers became an evil, but they are not when they are needed. I have a friend who is a Stage 4 cancer survivor and I remember when she had fentanyl patches daily and oxycontin for break through pain. She has been off any pain meds for 5 yrs now. I know those were crucial in her ability to go through her cancer and treatments. All these drugs have a purpose and just because there is the potential for abuse and overuse and side effects does not mean they don't have a good therapeutic effect in the right circumstances.
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But the CDC and doctors never tire of trying to get you off of them and pushing newer drugs that sometimes do one more harm than good. For years, I couldn’t get an anxiety drug that worked and didn’t even know about the benzo drugs. I took what I was prescribed; sometimes the side effects were so bad I couldn’t take them and other times I didn’t know what they were doing to me physically, only knew they weren’t effective for my anxiety. In time I found a doctor who prescribed 1 mg clonazepam for me 3 times a day which actually worked and he tried different sleeping medication on me until the ambien worked. Come to find out that a lot of these newer drugs can damage your heart and after I repeatedly flatlined first in the doctor’s office who sent me to the E.R. where I continued to flatline, each time restarting and then flatlining again which caused me to be airlifted to the nearest cardiac hospital where I was taken off all my medication and placed in cardiac intensive care for 3 days while they slowly started me on my medications again but not the psychiatric drugs. Then after I was implanted with a pacemaker and was scheduled for a watchman implantation, the cardiac hospital told me that I should never take that type of drug again and said I could take the clonazepam and opioids I was prescribed because they didn’t have that effect on the heart. I am probably one of those uncommon cases but if you read the warning labels on most of the newer psychiatric drugs, the side effects listed will usually include tachycardia (rapidly beating heart) and bradycardia (heart hardly beating) that can damage your heart if the medication causing it is continued. And that’s my story.