Jessica Mendoza

I'm an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

And now there are people who've been on them for decades and are experiencing the repercussions.

There was actually an executive who I spoke to who was telling me, well, you know, the worst years of my life was when I was on benzodiazepine withdrawal.

And I said, what's that?

I had never heard of this thing.

And he said, well, I was just routinely prescribed Ativan because I had insomnia.

And that started the worst years of my life.

We all know somebody who's taken it, and I didn't realize that there are these potentially really debilitating effects.

He even went to one of these very swanky rehab facilities, and they weren't able to help him.

And he said he could barely function.

He was calling his wife, saying that he couldn't survive.

You know, I went to Betsy and I was like, Betsy, have you heard about these?

She was like, yeah, I was looking into these a few years ago too.

So that's kind of how it all started.

They are highly effective at calming you down, which is why they are so prescribed.

And they're highly effective at preventing sort of life-threatening seizures or alcohol withdrawal.

And, you know, even for certain chronic anxiety disorders, they're considered to be effective.

To no more than like two to four weeks, really.

Two to four weeks.

Some of them suffer from something called akathisia, which is the inability to stop moving.