Overcoming Anxiety Without Tranquilizers: A Groundbreaking Program for Treating Chronic Anxiety

Drummond, a New Hampshire psychiatrist, discusses various treatments that have eliminated the need for medication in patients suffering from many varieties and intensities of anxiety, including phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. Case studies demonstrate his approach to helping patients manage their anxiety without depending on benzodiazepines, a class of tranquilizers that includes Xanax, Klonopin and Valium, long-term use of which, he suggests, actually promotes continuing anxiety, reliance on medication and a restricted lifestyle. Getting off ""benzos"" requires a very gradual tapering of the drug along with mastery of relaxation techniques (meditation, breathing and self-hypnosis), and psychotherapy to understand the life issues that prompt anxiety in the first place. Drummond discusses normal and pathological anxiety and includes an illuminating chapter describing the informal collusion of health insurers, drug companies and doctors that yields millions of drug prescriptions a year, treatment that ignores the root causes of a patient's anxiety in the name of profit and convenience. For long-term users of benzodiazepines, Drummond has written a lucid, nontechnical guide offering hope for freedom from the debilitating effects of the ""benzo blues,"" and promise of renewed control over one's life. Psychotherapy Book Club selection. (Nov.)