Xanax Quotes

In short? It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax. In fact, I should probably charge money to all the normal people to simply not go to your social functions and ruin them

Xanax can be addictive. Opioids can be fatal. There are medications intended for only eight weeks of use, yet people take them for years. And what is all this about?…. Money.

Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac. Daxil. Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions are spent purchasing them. You don't even need a specific trauma, just 'general depression' is enough, or anxiety, as if sadness is as treatable as the common cold.

I frowned at him. "Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?" "You're thinking of religion," he replied. "Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft.

October had roared in as if Mother Nature was pissed off at the world, and maybe in need of a Xanax to boot.

All things considered, the last six months have been a goddamn Victorian tragedy. Today my husband, Victor, handed me a letter informing me that another friend had unexpectedly died. You might think that this would push me over the edge into an irreversible downward spiral of Xanax and Regina Spektor songs, but no. It’s not. I’m fucking done with sadness, and I don’t know what’s up the ass of the universe lately but I’ve HAD IT. I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.

I have what’s called an addiction to Ativan, and Xanax. Which is preferable to admitting to an aversion to planes.

The bartender appeared and asked what I wanted. I didn’t know or care. A bottle of Xanax. A loaded gun. I ordered a vodka tonic.

I don’t know exactly what the Xanax did to me. All I can remember is how relaxed and not-uptight I felt. I did not care about anything. Everything was nice, very nice.

But I’ve been drinking. Last time I mixed alcohol and Xanax, I went completely crazy.

JOHNNA: What pills does she take? BEVERLY: Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn’t forget Dilaudid.

That’s the great thing about hanging out with bloggers. They already know that you’re broken, and most of them are, too, so they just nod and make you go take Xanax and go to bed. They’re very supportive. Also they probably wanted me to leave so they could talk about me.

I had to put this slim volume back into my bookshelf and drink a J&B on the rocks, followed by two Xanax, to recover from the effort.

It's music as wallpaper, utilitarian, music as Prozac or Xanax to control how you feel. Music as aerosol room freshener.

Rafael even got me more Dramamine pills, plus a few off-brand options for motion sickness with a hotel-branded sticky note that says, Sorry it’s not Xanax, but you can still hold my hand.

Understand that this is how it works with people like me. Self-pity is the sun around which we orbit, the great gravitational force that rules those of us for whom Things Didn’t Quite Turn Out. If we’re lucky, purpose (vengeance, absolution, cookies, not in that order) can keep us from falling in, from burning up, but we’re fooling ourselves if we ever think we’re going to break free. But that’s why God created Xanax.

The truly talented people in this world don’t talk about the shit they do, they just do it. The average and completely useless, which accounts for most people, spend so much time talking about their lofty plans and goals that they never get further than that, and call me crazy, but there’s nothing worse than hearing self-righteous, talentless people blabbing on about the positive, wonderful things they think they’re going to do with their lives. They’re pathetic. They need to just sit down and take a Xanax.

You stop talking to me; I try hard to stop loving you. The task is so difficult. You are the one who will tell me, "Girl, you need a fucking bottle of Xanax," who will hang up on my manic calls, and who will say you can't truly give two fucks because you have no soul. But you do have a soul, and when I look at you from just the right angle, I can see it sweat.

Worst of all, I couldn’t find my Xanax or my Ambien. I shook out the sheets; I dug through the piles. Finally, I left without them. Have you ever heard the thing about pillheads—that if you really want to see their addictions, just take their pills away? Yeah, this was gonna be bad.

We caught up for a while until my Xanax began to kick in, and I eventually leaned my head on his shoulder and dozed off. When I woke up, we were already landing. “I wasn’t sure you were breathing there for a while.” I stretched in my seat. “I was really out.” “I know. I tried to wake you to join the mile-high club, but you didn’t budge. Got as far as slipping off your panties, but after that you were like dead wood.

Thank you for the taco casserole. It worked even better than my stool softeners. Thoughts and prayers are great, but Ativan and pot are better. Thank you for the flowers. I hope they die before I do. All your phone messages about how not knowing exactly what’s going on with me has stressed you out really helped me put things in perspective. Xanax is white, Zofran is blue, steroids make me feel like throttling you.

Anastasia was another trap house, but was for pills—Xanax, Ecstasy, Speed, Tylenol one through four with codeine,

seemed pretty hypocritical for society to pop Xanax and Oxy like Smarties while sanctimoniously looking down on a man who appreciated the benefits of bourbon.

Xanax never goes out of style);

You may not be the happiest wife, Arion, but I’m told this is why God invented Saks and Xanax.

So, I'm in Dallas--- I am on methadone, a quart of vodka a day, cocaine, and Xanax.

it’s a bit Single White Female, isn’t it? If you ask me, she’s a couple of Xanax away from re-enacting the shower scene in Psycho.

I was actually on methadone,Xanax, cocaine and a full quart of vodka a day.

Acute anxiety led him to the verge of suicide (no Xanax in those days). He even asked his wife to hide the knives, guns, and ropes in the house, for fear that he might kill himself.

SLEEP-AID ENEMIES: Ambien, Restoril, Lunesta, and Xanax. • Friendly substitutes: My favorite combination of sleep aids is in Schiff Melatonin Ultra, or buy time-release melatonin and take 3 to 6 mg before bed.

More often that not, it's just the thought of them that calms my nerves. I once told a claustrophobic patient to carry a single Xanax in her purse every time she boards a plane, its mere presence strong enough to elicit a mental reaction, a physical response. She probably wouldn't even need to take it, I told her; just knowing there was an escape within reach would be enough to ease the suffocating weight from her chest.

I hate when a man feels I’m obligated to disclose my marital status to somebody I don’t even know. Even this bullshit about status itself as if married and spinster are the only two choices for defining myself. Or because I’m a woman I’m supposed to have a status at all. Hey big boy, here’s my status. Hi, before I tell you my name here’s my status. Maybe I should just say I’m a lesbian and throw the problem back in their faces for them to define it. Xanax for anxiety. Valium for sleep. Prozac for depression. Phenergan for nausea. Tylenol for headaches. Mylanta for bloating. Midol for cramps. I mean, Jesus Christ, menopause come already. Isn’t there some fast-track for a hot flash? It’s not like I’m ever going to breed, so why keep the damn store door open?

doubling back to the cupboard, returning with a small, clear baggie. “If you’re struggling, I have something stronger than Xanax. Will completely knock you out.” He held up the baggie and shook it; it was filled with oblong tablets of a light mossy-green hue.

Maybe, one day, I would want to go back and finish my PhD, but today, I knew that I had come to the end of the line. One too many panic attacks, my first ever prescription for Xanax, and a dissertation topic that seemed perpetually out of reach had done me in. Screw academia.

You miss the idea of him. There you go. Was that so hard? “That goes away, too,” says your friend. Through the magic of the biological imperative, his brain has been reprogrammed. He has been forced to gloss over his own romantic carnage so that he might once again start down that road of procreation. He has nineteen layers of skin; you have three-fourths of a layer. They’re all like this, the recovered. Sometimes you want to hop across the table, curl up in their laps, and beg to be made one of them. How does it work? Hypnosis? A chip in the neck? A radioactive spider with Xanax venom?

.,,women are numbed enough to endure rough sex acts through extreme humiliation. When alcohol isn’t enough and the pain spirals into addiction, porn stars are sent to local doctors in conspiracy with the porn industry to receive prescriptions for Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and other anti-anxiety drugs to help them cope with the trauma.

I’m probably getting too familiar with him, but there’s something about him that makes me feel like I would tell him anything. He asks these incredibly direct questions, things that some of my closest friends have never even thought to ask, and I’m inexplicably compelled to share all these deeply personal thoughts. He’s like human Xanax or something.

In the mid-1980s, the medical world wrestled with how to use the new opiates that pharmaceutical companies were developing to treat pain. David Procter was an early and aggressive adopter. He prescribed opiates for neck, leg, and lower back pain, arthritis, and lower lumbar spine pain. He combined them with benzodiazepines—anxiety relievers, of which Valium and Xanax, Procter’s favorite, are the best known. In Portsmouth, people had anxiety and they had pain. Appalachia had a long history of using benzodiazepines—dating to the release of Valium in the early 1960s. Little old ladies used it. In this part of the country, anything that relieved pain was welcome. But opiates and benzos together also led quickly to addiction.

Corporations found out that without a healthy culture, people are not natural Marxists but natural couch potatoes. With no extended family, no effective church, and no healthy local community to support their lives, people don’t form revolutionary cells: they buy a case of beer or renew their Xanax prescription and spend their non-working hours watching NFL games and the Lifetime network and various types of pornography.

So we wouldn't run out of things to talk about over lunch, I tried to read a trendy new short-story collection called Wok that I bought at Barnes & Noble last night and whose young author was recently profiled in the Fast Track section of New York magazine, but every story started off with the line "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie" and I had to put this slim volume back into my bookshelf and drink a J&B on the rocks, followed by two Xanax, to recover from the effort.

AND before you make some snide remark, based on my general temperament, that I must be “riding the cotton pony” or suffering from a “red-letter day,” need I remind you that I am dead, deceased, and rendered eternally prepubescent and therefore immune to the mindless reproductive biological imperatives that, no doubt, shape every living, breathing moment of your crummy living, breathing life. Even now I can hear my mom saying, “Madison, you’re dead, so just calm down.” Increasingly, I’m not sure to which I was more addicted: hope or Xanax.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

It was only nine o'clock, and I was already exhausted.The first half of the day with Bridezilla hadn't helped, but bu two, I think Nonna had slipped her a Xanax (who knows where she got it,although I suspect collusion with Sam Nguyen), and by the time we climbed into the limo at three, Sienna was channeling Grace Kelly in a big way. The mass was fine, if you like that kinda thing. The photo session was a nightmare, since the flower girl and rng bearer kept kicking each other with their new, hard shoes, and the photographer didn't quite get that, no, I wasn't going to push my hair back so we could see my pretty face, so get over it.

Preacher was pacing. “What took you so long?” he asked. Jack looked at his watch. “We’re right on time, Preach.” Paige stood up from the table. “Jack, I’d like you to pour John a shot.” “No, baby. I want to be alert.” “John, you’re way beyond alert. And I don’t think I can take another minute. Do as I say!” Jack went behind the bar. “My man, when a woman is having a baby, you do everything she says, and you do it fast.” He brought down a bottle. “Just a little something to take the edge off.” “I don’t know,” Preacher said. “Preach, you’re six-four and weigh at least two-fifty. A shot isn’t going to do nearly enough good. Mel should probably have you on Xanax.

He continued. “It has some severe side effects, tardive dyskinesia being the worst. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by uncontrollable grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking…” “You’ve seen those people,” the Flying Nun gravely added. She held a contorted hand up to her face, cocked her head, then shut one eye. “You obviously don’t get seasick,” I said. “Because a couple of hours of that is a day at the beach by comparison.” “Tardive dyskinesia can last forever,” he said. “Forever?” I said weakly. “The likelihood of tardive dyskinesia is about four percent,” he said. “It increases to ten percent for older women.” I blew out really hard. “Oh, man.” “I spoke to your doctor. He wrote you a prescription for a scopolamine patch for motion sickness, and Xanax for anxiety.” Xanax, I had! Bee’s battalion of doctors had always sent me home with Xanax or some sleeping pill. (Have I mentioned? I don’t sleep.) I never took them, because the one time I did, they left me nauseous and not feeling like myself. (I know, that should have been a selling point. What can I say?

THE SPEED OF TIME VARIED, fast or slow, depending on the depth of my sleep. I became very sensitive to the taste of the water from the tap. Sometimes it was cloudy and tasted of soft minerals. Other times it was gassy and tasted like somebody’s bad breath. My favorite days were the ones that barely registered. I’d catch myself not breathing, slumped on the sofa, staring at an eddy of dust tumbling across the hardwood floor in the draft, and I’d remember that I was alive for a second, then fade back out. Achieving that state took heavy dosages of Seroquel or lithium combined with Xanax, and Ambien or trazodone, and I didn’t want to overuse those prescriptions. There was a fine mathematics for how to mete out sedation. The goal for most days was to get to a point where I could drift off easily, and come to without being startled. My thoughts were banal. My pulse was casual. Only the coffee made my heart work a bit harder. Caffeine was my exercise. It catalyzed my anxiety so that I could crash and sleep again. The movies I cycled through the most were The Fugitive, Frantic, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and Burglar. I loved Harrison Ford and Whoopi Goldberg.

Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac. Paxil. Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions more are spent purchasing them. You don’t even need a specific trauma; just “general depression” or “anxiety,” as if sadness were as treatable as the common cold. I knew depression was real, and in many cases required medical attention. I also knew we overused the word. Much of what we called “depression” was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for. I knew people whose unbearable source of misery was their weight, their baldness, their lack of advancement in a workplace, or their inability to find the perfect mate, even if they themselves did not behave like one. To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can’t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied—before working some more. I knew. I had done all that. There was a stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without eliminating sleep altogether. I piled on accomplishments. I made money. I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it, the emptier I began to feel, like pumping air faster and faster into a torn tire.

I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it’s a life/death sort of issue. Because when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids. This belief that it’s not okay to be inadequate sometimes is the source of the growing Feedback Loop from Hell that is coming to dominate our culture.

The first time I had a pap smear done, I was so traumatized, I now take prescription Xanax to avoid having panic attacks when I get pap smears done now. And I'm only 24. How many more am I going to have to have for the rest of my life? What am I going to do when I want to have children and every doctor wants to shove his/her fingers and tools inside me?

when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids.

high on Xanax they put up with his bullshit, and

As I make my way to my seat, one flight attendant offers me a cup of water and another one offers me a Xanax.

I believe that today we're facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it's okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it's a life/death sort of issue. Because when we believe that it's not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids.

But even drugged to the gills, I remained filled with dread about the impending book tour, so I went also to a young but highly regarded Stanford-trained psychologist who specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. “First thing we’ve got to do,” she said in one of my early sessions with her, “is to get you off these drugs.” A few sessions later, she offered to take my Xanax from me and lock it in a drawer in her desk. She opened the drawer to show me the bottles deposited there by some of her other patients, holding one up and shaking it for effect. The drugs, she said, were a crutch that prevented me from truly experiencing and thereby confronting my anxiety; if I didn’t expose myself to the raw experience of anxiety, I would never learn that I could cope with it on my own.

Friends advised me on the power of Xanax and raved about their amazing therapists. Doctors told me they’d never prescribed so many antidepressants in their lives. But that wasn’t for me. Never has been.

My final drink was the stale last half of a two-dollar bottle of red wine I’d hoped might taste more like a ten-dollar bottle, guzzled and gulped through chopped cork fragments left behind by a paring knife when the corkscrew failed to get the job done. I had rules that guaranteed I would never get into trouble with drinking. If I broke a rule, I had to stop drinking for a week to prove there was no problem. Finding myself drinking the bottle I had recorked after dinner violated both the half-bottle-of-wine-per-night rule and the no-alcohol-after-Xanax rule as well as the not-being-pathetic-and-desperate rule. All the trouble that followed that night could have been avoided if I had just taken an extra milligram of Xanax and stayed in bed where I belonged or if I hadn’t had so many stupid rules.

The bitter taste of her own medicine, like a Xanax without water, and it's not going down well.

Benzodiazepine medicines such as Ativan, Xanax, and Valium can reduce anxiety and help people fall asleep. They are dangerously addictive, however, and can lead to early dementia when used for as little as several months.

If you met my family, you'd prescribe Xanax for all of them, but then what? We'd be boring.

It’s called Ambien, Xanax, and some cough syrup mixed with Sprite,

order to get her mind right and prepare to pop a Xanax.

Jenny likes her Xanax in the morning, her Chardonnay in the afternoon, and a vodka or three in the evening.

I’m not the kind of person who likes holding grudges. They make me nauseous, irritable, and anxious to the point of needing a Xanax.

the girls on the track team do their thang, when I spot ass.  See, when ya boy spots ass, I be on it.  I leave Dre and Twan, my teammates, and head over to see what the face looks like that's connected to this ass. Oh yea, I’m Rashard Peterson, number 06, quarterback for UMA.  This is my last year and I’ll have my Bachelors in Business Management.  I do my thang with Twan and Dre in these streets too.   If you want some weed, I got you, but that's pretty much all I’ll touch.  I never keep enough on me to get a charge. The most I’ll have on me is a blunt and shit, that's for recreational use. Ya boy ain’t dumb by a long shot. That's why I got this degree in the works, so I can open up different businesses.   Anyway, if you want pills then holla at Twan; my boy got opioids, tabs, Xanax

I’m going to need you to stay calm.” “What I need is a bottle of Xanax,” Christina huffed. “You’ll be fine.” Melissa glanced at the clock. As expected, Jonathan rushed out of the bedroom, grabbing the mug she was holding out for him, and

Just that quickly she’d had an anxiety attack. Something she hadn’t dealt with in months. Swallowing two good Xanax pills at the moment would’ve been just what the doctor ordered. She

These are the kinds of presidents that democracies elect: unexceptional, cautious, and kind of whiney. Walker only does two interesting things: take Xanax and end his presidency. A real sovereign couldn't be taken down by some measly legislator. Underwood

If only everyone could act that way, there would be a lot less need for Xanax.

used to use drugs to help me in different situations – Adderall for work, Xanax for sleep, painkillers for pain, you know – but now it’s gotten to the point where I’ll just do anything and everything I can get my hands on at any given moment simply for the sake of getting fucked up and forgetting what a shitty life I live. I know some people would say that I don’t have it that bad but that’s just what some people would say I guess. People say retarded shit, you know? I didn’t start fucking with drugs like coke or molly or heroin until I started chilling with people who fucked with them and I liked them a little I guess, but I still think prescription shit is my favorite. Plus the high is consistent. I use Adderall, Xanax, marijuana, cigarettes and usually some type of painkiller – Promethazine-Codeine syrup and Percocet are my favorites – on a daily basis.

Here are the rules for five-star babysitting of the Craig’s List high order: 1) Be firm, but willing to compromise; a half-hour of G.I Joe or Pokemon after bedtime in exchange for a couple hours of peace and quiet is more priceless than Van Gogh. Compromise. If you give them something they want, they’ll end up tucked in before the boyfriend sends you a sext message. 2) If compromise isn’t an option, go for Valium—or at least Xanax. Most moms have it in the medicine cabinet. And if you mix it with milk, you’ll still be good for happy hour. 3) When all else fails, go for broke: cry. Crying, for a nineyear- old, is tantamount to getting whacked with a wooden spoon until cookies give you PTSD. But the biggest rule, the one that breaking will definitely earn you a pink slip; the one you’d have to be a supreme knucklehead or complete noob to break—the one thing in all of the sitting profession that is the golden rule is: do not lose the kid. That’s kind of the big one.

mama who I got away from when I was in New York I was finally away raw eighteen all hell has broken loose inside me don't go to bed before six a.m each night the whole year feel like I'm going crazy, I am crazy, I can't tell anybody, any school counselor, what the inside of my head feels like, it'll be Prozac Xanax it'll be back home failure not let me out again you got one ticket to ride, kid, don't blow it, the last thing I want is to be back in that house. If I get back in that house I'm never gonna be let out I'm gonna be some famous loser trapped fighting with her folks forever til they die. Everything feels like a TV program.

Katya, a petite Russian blonde with a Smurfette voice and the energy of a Pomeranian puppy, was at the front door in ten minutes with a Xanax and a worried look on her face. “Do

She couldn’t remain here, in 1812. Emme didn’t think she could live in a world where women were still viewed as property. Where a woman’s only options were marriage or prostitution, as she had already seen firsthand. She couldn’t bring a child into a world where the threat of disease constantly loomed. Not to mention living in a time without iTunes, indoor plumbing and Xanax. She shuddered at the thought.

No one in my usual circle of acquaintances would have made it this far without a Xanax and an emergency call to their therapist.

Listen, it was the fucking Millennials that got persuaded by the boomers to carry out their traditional war every hundred years or so. The Millennials started a civil war but the Gen Z were supposed to stop them. Ever since the internet got cut off Gen Z were on withdrawal as if they were on Xanax. It was ridiculous.

Reece, good to see you.” Leo turned to me and paused, his smile disappearing in an instant. “Okay, why is there a dead man walking in the kitchen? It’s my turn to see a ghost now, huh? Is it too early to drink? I need a drink and maybe some Xanax or my therapist. Maybe all three. At once.” Leo pulled out his phone. “That’s it. I’m going to call my therapist and tell her I’m having hallucinations.

The Xanax was a gesture from my doctor when I had a series of anxiety attacks after the divorce. Sometimes just knowing you have it lowers the anxiety, she'd said. Just knowing I had pills did not, in fact, lower my anxiety, but I carried them with me anyway, in case the theory started working.

By now I had taken to sauteing my Xanax for culinary variety

Most vertebrates and all of our fellow mammals have similar chemical and neurological mechanisms that transmit and control pain. Under stress or trauma, they display physiological reactions identical to ours - increased heartbeat and perspiration, higher cortisone levels in the blood, a release of endorphins, serotonin, and other natural opiates. Their bodies respond to anesthesia just as our bodies do, and of course they display vocalizations, defensive behavior, and bodily contortions similar to ours. We may add to this physical evidence the fact that veterinarians today routinely prescribe exactly the same antidepressant drugs to dogs, cats, pigs, horses and other animals, including Prozac, Ritalin, Xanax, and beta-blockers, and these drugs have exactly the same soothing effects on them as on us.

America, meanwhile, offered traffickers a base of consumers whose brain reward systems were conditioned by lengthy exposure to potent dope. A drug of toxic effect was overlaid on a population whose lives had already been upended by pain pills, then heroin, then fentanyl. By now, many were using any drug that was available—Xanax, cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana, as well—and in combination.

Then the underworld got wise to fentanyl. Heroin vanished. Many students, in Lipinski’s words, “made the jump”—went directly to fentanyl from alcohol, pot, and Xanax. “When they find that drug, you cannot rip it out of their hands,” she told me. “It’s everywhere. They can get fentanyl faster than I can get a pizza. Dealers come to you. Even if you’re grounded at home, they’ll deliver it to your window.” It became impossible to get those kids back. Since 2014, Northshore has graduated more than sixty kids. By 2019 twenty-three of them had died—a 30 percent death rate. “Every autopsy is fentanyl,” Lipinski told me.

The links between faith and decreased anxiety can even be seen at the neurological level. For example, scientists have shown how belief calms activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—a part of the brain associated with what we might call “alarm bell” experiences. When we feel annoyed or threatened, certain patterns of activity in the ACC intensify. These are the same patterns that ramp up in those suffering from anxiety disorders, and they’re also ones that are reduced by alcohol and medications like Valium and Xanax.

I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounds intellectually lazy on the surface, but I promise you, it’s a life/death sort of issue. Because when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids.

And I remained mad, despite the Xanax and the baking and probably half the box of wine. I still am, hours later. It’s an irrational, all-encompassing anger. I’m mad at everything and nothing. I’m mad at life.

After she popped a Xanax and posted an inspirational quote on her IG feed, of course. It would confirm the breakup, but also allow her to control the narrative. Something about growth and loving herself, maybe?

If I wasn’t a xanax turtle, I was anxious and depressed. Oh, man. Oh, man. That little benzo warmed my soul and made me flutter in the sky.

The more xanax and oxycodone I took, the more comfortable I was in the present, which increased my future uncomfortability because—if you put pennies into a bank, compound interest increases the value of a penny over time, but if you put comfortable situations into a piggy bank, you’ll get closer to your last breath.

The GPS chimes his arrival at 1414 Marigold Drive. He circles around and parks the rental car across the street. He collects his notebook and tablet from the passenger side. He pops out two Xanax and swallows them dry.

Natural Ways to Help Anxiety Don’t start something you may not be able to stop. After the pandemic, anxiety disorders more than doubled in children and teenagers.[1] Prescriptions for antianxiety medications, such as benzodiazepines like alprazolam (Xanax) and clonazepam (Klonopin) dramatically increased. The problem is that they are addictive, and once you start them they are often very hard to stop. Here are 11 strategies to consider before going on antianxiety medications. 1. Check for hypoglycemia, anemia, and hyperthyroidism. 2. Try an elimination diet for three weeks. (See day 257 for more detail.) 3. Practice meditation and hypnosis daily (research shows they can both calm stress and anxiety). 4. Try heart rate variability (HRV) training (anxiety is linked to low levels of HRV, but you can hack your way to a healthier HRV with biofeedback apps such as Welltory). See day 202 for more information. 5. Practice diaphragmatic breathing—deep breathing from your belly—when you feel anxious. 6. Eliminate the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). See days 22, 116–117. 7. Incorporate a calming exercise, such as yoga or qi gong, into your week. 8. Take 200–400 mg of L-Theanine per day. 9. Take 500–1,500 mg of GABA per day. 10. Take 100–500 mg of magnesium glycinate, citrate, or malate with 30 mg of vitamin B6 per day. 11. Schedule neurofeedback to help retrain your brain. Anxiety disorders are very painful, but too often people reach for marijuana, alcohol, or prescribed benzodiazepines, which can be of short-term benefit but cause long-term problems with addiction and memory issues. If the above interventions are ineffective or only partly effective with my patients, I’ll try other nutraceuticals or medications targeted to a specific type of anxiety (take the test at brainhealthassessment.com).

Fuck it, I think, as I open the Uber app. A little white pill, my Xanax-shaped parachute, finds its way down my throat as I hit 'confirm ride'. Then it's out the door into the night that's as restless as my mind.

And then there are the new companions, the chemical comrades who've stormed the fortress of my psyche. Oxy's, muscle relaxers—the whole pharmaceutical circus has come to town. They're all invited—Xanax, Phenibut—each providing a different brand of forgetfulness, each adding their own flavors to this twisted recipe.

Ultraprocessed foods are like cheap, over-the-counter, omnipresent Xanax. But, as with pills, once the effect wears off, the stress is still there. So a person must then take another pill or eat more junk. Side effects? Weight gain, heart disease, stroke, cancer, high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, type-2 diabetes, fatigue, depression, osteoarthritis, pain, early death, etc.

My surefire, crowd pleasing, thank you card recipe. 1) Select a card that is very you. My cards are floral and bright, most commonly with gold envelopes and I seal each with a glitter heart sticker or a piece of sparkly washi tape. If you see great cards in a store, buy them on the spot it's OK to hoard thank you cards. 2) Begin with your salutation, for example: to my dearest Isabel. 3) Next, write about something you enjoy about the person or about an experience you had together that you were thankful for. You want something that is specific to the receiver and could in no way be mistaken for a stock phrase. “I had such a fantastic time with you at dinner. It's always a treat to laugh with you, and get your opinions on writing, politics, and what kind of handbag I should consider.” But don't say thank you yet, we're getting to that. This third step is all about recreating and memorializing a special moment you shared. 4) Now we are at the actual thanks part. Find something to directly thank your subject for. “Thank you for making it to Soho five months pregnant. Five months, I can't believe it!” “I appreciate that you came out to see me even though your ankles were killing you.” Or, if you are thanking someone for something tangible, a gift let's say, “Thank you for the gorgeous floral notebooks. You know how much I love writing, and notebooks, and florals. You basically nailed it.“ 5) Now tell her how you really feel. Be vulnerable. “You are a part of my heart and every time I see you I feel immediately at peace and ease. There's something about you that makes me feel safe.” 6) Now let's lighten it up shall we? “I look forward to all of the swanky nights we'll be having forever because you are a forever friend. #bust #sorrynotsorry #whydopeopleusehashtags #theyarenotlanguage 7) Sign it like you mean it. “All of my love, T Money. Use this template to get started and just get started now. I once worried that I was writing too many thank you cards and that people would be annoyed with me. Let me tell you this. No one has ever complained about getting too many thank you notes from someone if the sentiment is authentic. I now keep blank cards with me wherever I go, much like one might keep emergency Xanax. You never know when you're going to need the sweet relief of gratitude.

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I always believed that love was supposed to bring you pleasure, not pain,” I say. “So, if you don’t feel completely happy, it isn’t real.”
 “Oh, come on, Luce. We’re fed all the Disney bullshit and rom-com ideals. Love isn’t a Xanax. It’s a process that can be hard, and dirty, and demanding. It doesn’t fall from the sky, you have to work on it. And I’m not saying that anyone should stay in a toxic relationship, but you shouldn’t run away because of the slightest inconvenience, either.

Because when we believe that it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes, then we unconsciously start blaming ourselves. We start to feel as though something is inherently wrong with us, which drives us to all sorts of overcompensation, like buying forty pairs of shoes or downing Xanax with a vodka chaser on a Tuesday night or shooting up a school bus full of kids. This belief that it’s not okay to be inadequate sometimes is the source of the growing Feedback Loop from Hell that is coming to dominate our culture.

My mother looked like she was trying to decide between booze or Xanax. I understood her dilemma. Her thankless job was to be the voice of reason and maturity in a family of oddballs. My father keeps his head down and wills himself to be invisible, occasionally barking for more hot gravy at the dinner table. My sister Valerie is married to a very sweet man who seems to be incompetent at everything other than keeping her pregnant. And then there’s me and Grandma with Superhero Derangement Syndrome.

In the beginning I think we’d both believed it to be a passing fling. That it would burn out once we’d gotten it out of our systems. Instead we’d become more deeply entwined. Popping each other like Xanax to get through the night. But this kind of drug was so much more addictive. Perhaps it had been a fling when it started. But it had never been temporary. Whatever this was, it wouldn’t be ending any time soon.