I started having pretty bad panic attacks while in stressful situations about 3 years ago. It got to the point where I could have lost my job so I went to my Primary and they gave me Xanax to be taken as needed (before public speaking for example). It worked great but then I start having panic attacks in non stressfull situations, seemingly for no reason. I went back to my primary and they prescribed me a SSRI and took me off the xanax saying it was "addictive". I looked up the side effects for the SSRI and they were worse than anything I saw on benzo...including non being able to have sex and "brain zaps". I threw that script in the trash and went to a Psycologist who basically told me that Primary Docs just look to cover their butts and what hey tried to give me would have done no good. He put me on 1 mg of Klonopin 3 times per day and gave me some xanax to take as needed. That was well over a year ago and my life has change for teh better. Not a single panic attack. Not "addicted" (though I'm sure I would have withdraw if I tried to stop takingg it cold turkey but that is the case with most drugs and would just be stupid) but on nearly every site I read all these horror stories about how bad benzos are. Normally when you dig deeper into these tales, it turns out the people were ABUSING the benzos, taking out illegal drugs with them, binge drinking, etc... I guess my point here is that people should not be afraid to take benzos to deal with anxiety. They are by far the best med for this situation and if used as prescribed (including tapering off slowly under a docs supervision if needed), completely safe.

Thoughts. Good stories to tell about benzos? Please save the horror stories for a different thread.