Shalini Ramachandran

These symptoms could become extreme.

One woman Shalini talked to, a mother of five, was prescribed another common benzo, Xanax, for mild insomnia.

The mom said that after two years of taking the drug, she'd started having memory loss and panic attacks like never before.

So she tried to quit.

Studies show that somewhere between 15 and 44 percent of chronic benzo users experience moderate to severe withdrawal symptoms, and about 10 to 15 percent have symptoms that continue long after they taper off the drugs.

For some, the pain is so bad that they take their own lives.

Shalini reported on one woman, a doctor, who spent more than three years trying to stop taking Xanax and later Valium.

In March 2024, she killed herself.

Her husband later found a note on her phone that read, quote, My body has been completely destroyed.

I would never leave my family and beautiful daughter if I had another option.

How much did the patients you spoke to typically know about this going in?

In 2020, the FDA required drug makers to add a warning on benzodiazepines about the serious risks of abuse, dependence, and withdrawals.

It also called for proper guidelines for doctors to help patients taper off the drugs.

Still, more than 86 million benzo prescriptions were written just last year in the U.S.

Globally, benzos are a multi-billion dollar industry.

North America is its largest market.

Shalini and Betsy put their findings about long-term benzo use in a story that they published earlier this year.

That was the plan, was to publish one story.

But there was a whole other class of widely prescribed psych drugs that they hadn't even begun to look into.

Benzodiazepines and antidepressants are some of the most prescribed psychiatric medications in America.