LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The New York City Department of Health reports that benzodiazepines were tied to more than 30 percent of all the city's overdose deaths in 2009, or 3.3 out of 10.9. Most of those overdoses involved multiple drugs, of which benzodiazepine was just one.

The most popular anti-anxiety drug in the benzodiazepine, Xanax was America's 11th-most prescribed pill in 2010, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

In response, psychiatrists at the Seven Counties Services network of mental health clinics in Louisville, Kentucky, took the unusual step of halting all Xanax prescriptions. The self-imposed ban has now been in effect for a year.

Dr. Scott Hedges says that while benzodiazepines are fast-acting when it comes to remedying acute panic attacks, they are not meant to be long-term treatments. Hedges focuses on more traditional behavioral therapies.

"The problem is, in terms of longer term treatment, there are really much better treatments that have better outcomes than the use of that short-term medication," Hedges said.

Indeed, some Xanax abusers say their panic attacks and anxiety seem more intense after long-term use of the drug. 

A recovering Xanax abuser who did not want to reveal his identity says that after he started taking the pill he noticed the effects of benzodiazepine were wearing off too quickly and that he had to increase his dosage. 

"It doesn't take long before that doesn't do anything for you and you have to double it or triple it," he said.

He also abused other illegal drugs at the same time, as many who take Xanax are wont to do. He often took Xanax pills to alleviate panic symptoms associated with his attempts to quit heroin and other narcotics.

Dr. Jeff Rabrich, who directs the Emergency Medicine Department at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, said he often sees the negative effects of illegal narcotics exacerbated by benzodiazepines.

"The Xanax potentially makes it a much worse overdose. It could turn a relatively mild overdose into something that could be fatal," Rabrich says.

"A history of abuse of other substances, both licit and illicit, is associated with a higher prevalence of benzodiazepine abuse, a greater euphoric response to benzodiazepines, and a higher rate of unauthorized use of alprazolam during treatment for panic disorder," the American Psychiatric Association reports.

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