Xanax
CHRIS: Danielle Hannan was a striking Sydney socialite, a fashion model who spoke three languages. 10 years ago, a doctor prescribed Xanax for her anxiety. Look what it's done to her.
DANIELLE: (SLURS) I get up in the morning and if I haven't taken even half, I'd be hallucinating. So that is why it's so important so I've got to get...Take one now. Just, It's a horrible taste. Um, when I first took it it gave me the most incredible feeling of just numbness in my brain. Pushed past the horrible, horrible past behind me.
CHRIS: Danielle is now 47 and a Xanax addict. She spends her days in her little flat with her partner, Charlie.
DANIELLE: Hi, doctor. How are you?
CHRIS: She's been Dr Tanveer Ahmed's patient for close to four years and, truth be told, he's struggled to help.
DR TANVEER AHMED: I understand you've tried to come off it before, haven't you?
CHRIS: Yes. It's the worst thing I've ever been through.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Tell me about it.
DANIELLE: I went completely mad.
NICOLE: I wanna get the word out there that you can have everything that you worked hard for in your life and you can lose it in a second. Xanax took my life, it took my life and, you know, doctors want to give it so easily and it's so dangerous.
CHRIS: Nicole Shellard was a model mum, an occupational therapist from a wealthy family.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Hi, Nicole. Thank you so much for doing the interview. My name is Tanveer. I have come all the way from Australia. I think you're being very courageous. Come and sit down.
NICOLE: Thank you very much.
CHRIS: Now she's a model prisoner, unable to explain to her children how the blackouts caused by Xanax destroyed her life and left a stranger dead.
NICOLE: I think it's really hard for them to just understand what happened to their mum who was doing really good, who was functioning, to "My mum's in jail now because she killed someone with her car.
CHRIS: Xanax is the most potent anti-anxiety drug on the market, a powerful version of Valium that works fast. What concerns Tanveer Ahmed is how powerfully addictive Xanax is.
DR TANVEER AHMED: When I started practising medicine a decade ago, Xanax was virtually unknown. Now it's the most popular pill of its kind. More than a million prescriptions were written last year in Australia. That's a quadrupling in 10 years and that's what concerns me. It scares me that so many people have no idea that this little pill is more addictive than heroin.
DR BREGGIN: We know that Heath Ledger had Xanax in his system, we know Michael Jackson had Xanax in his system, and, of course, Whitney Houston. They're desperate. They've tried this drug, they've tried that drug. And in the benzos, the sedatives, that whole group of drugs, the most potent available drug is Xanax.
CHRIS: Dr Peter Breggin is an American psychiatrist who has been warning about the dangers of Xanax since it has first approved for use in the US.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Over 20 years ago, you thought Xanax should be taken off the market?
DR BREGGIN: If it had been taken off the market, we'd probably have a million or more people alive who are dead now.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Does it even work for what it's meant to work for? Anxiety?
DR BREGGIN: It will work if you take one once in a while to dampen your emotions. It works by disabling your brain. You will get some effect in reducing your anxiety. But there's a lot of problems with it. The more you take it, the more the brain's fighting back and the more you're creating anxiety. So in the studies that we used for FDA approval for Xanax, by eight weeks, the patients were worse. They were in serious withdrawal, up to one third of them couldn't even get off the drug. After eight weeks, they couldn't get off the drug. That's how addictive it is.
DANIEL: I always knew I was bright when I was in school. I could have been pretty much anything I wanted to be. Um...
CHRIS: Daniel Politi hasn't had a Xanax tablet since yesterday.
DANIEL: Yeah, I'm sort of having a half-mini attack now. My heart is all racing away, so...
CHRIS: In 1992, Daniel was one of the first Australians prescribed Xanax. He was 14. The anxiety he's experiencing is a symptom of Xanax withdrawal.
DANIEL: It's like a mental thing, really, I suppose. Yeah, I don't even need to have one. But like, you know, if I know the bottle is in my pocket, ah, yeah, the anxiety is not as bad
CHRIS: Doctors first gave him the tablets to control panic attacks. But Daniel quickly became addicted.
DANIEL: It's a nasty sort of...illness to have. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought I'd do something... Did that freak you out, mate? Um...
CHRIS: Eventually, it becomes too much and after 24 hours without Xanax, Daniel reaches for a tablet, a sign of his addiction.
DANIEL: They give me seven a week now. Just one a day.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Some common things when people come off Xanax, they might hallucinate.
DANIEL: I've had hallucinations, I fitted once. Ah, but I used to have, yeah, a strong, um...What is it? Ah... (CLEARS THROAT) It's... Sorry, mate.
DR TANVEER AHMED: You're right. Take your time.
DANIEL: The question you just asked, just before this, could I get you to say it again?
DR TANVEER AHMED: Oh, just, what was it like when you didn't get the tablets?
DANIEL: The tablets? Oh, yeah, just a nightmare.
CHRIS: Daniel was married and had a solid job with Telstra. He lost it all when he couldn't kick Xanax and the feeling the tablets gave him.
DANIEL: They relaxed me. 15-20 minutes and I could think clearer. It stops, you know, the anxiety, shaking, what you should say, what shouldn't I say, you know, all this sort of thing. Yeah.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Now, I understand sometimes you ended up in hospital?
DANIEL: Yeah, because I've had too many. Yeah. I've been struck down, all that sort of stuff.
DR TANVEER AHMED: What permanent damage can Xanax cause on our brains?
DR BREGGIN: We are getting more and more evidence that long-term, you get dementia and this should be no shock. You can't impair cognitive functions day after day after day
after day after day and expect the brain to not get worse and worse. So not only you are losing cognitive function, people are losing periods of time. They don't remember going to their daughter's wedding, they don't remember the vacation they took with family. They start to lose their sense of identity for a period of years that they've been on Xanax. It's just bad news.
MAN: The health of this nation is under attack from many different directions. And we're not even talking about health, we're talking about freedom!
ALL: Yeah!
MAN: Because when you lose your health, you are no longer free.
CHRIS: New York's Long Island is a community in crisis. Behind the gleaming façade is a prescription drug problem of frightening proportions.
NICOLE: People look at your life and they think you have everything because you live in this beautiful area, you have maids, you have a Mercedes, you have BMWs, you have money, you have no problems and inside that home were so many problems.
CHRIS: Nicole Shellard was an anxious teenager from a wealthy family. She had a master's degree, a career and two young boys. But when her marriage began to crumble, so did she. Her doctor prescribed Xanax.
NICOLE: And I thought that it was helping me and it was just hurting me.
CHRIS: On a spring afternoon in May 2010, Nicole was driving. She'd taken several Xanax and one of its side effects is blackouts.
NICOLE: I remember getting in my car, putting my seatbelt on and I don't remember anything after that.
CHRIS: Riding her bike along the same stretch of road was a popular local hairdresser, Kathryn Underdown. Against the force of Nicole Shellard's car, Kathryn didn't stand a chance. Nicole doesn't remember a thing.
DR TANVEER AHMED: When did you realize the full extent of what happened?
NICOLE: It was my first morning in jail and the inmates threw the paper in my cell and they said, "How do you feel that you killed somebody?" And I was in 23.5-hour lockdown in a cell and I was staring at my picture and this woman's picture and I...I was in total and complete shock.
CHRIS: Nicole was convicted of manslaughter. Her case became a lightning rod for a community struggling with the dark side of Xanax abuse.
DON: As of recently, it has become somewhat questionable coming to work. The question being will I come home at night?
CHRIS: Don Cantalino is a well-known local pharmacist. In the past six months, colleagues, customers and a policeman have all been shot dead in pharmacies by addicts.
DON: I now carry a weapon. Um, I never thought I'd get to that point.
DR TANVEER AHMED: You carry a gun?
DON: I carry a gun. It's not something I ever wanted to do but it is what this situation has pushed me to. My theory is I'd rather be judged by 12 jurors than carried by six pallbearers…All these prescriptions have been forged and we've made copies of them.
CHRIS: Across Long Island, chemists are installing elaborate security. On the black market, a single Xanax tablet is worth up to $100.To put that in perspective -a bottle of generic Xanax that costs a chemist $30 is worth $30,000 on the street.
DON: Another aspect to this is organised crime has infiltrated the scenario. We have complete shipments of drugs from manufacturers en route to wholesalers being stolen.
DANIEL: It's pretty big right now, coming out of the western suburbs. 'Cause I think what people are doing, they're trying to chase heroin and they can't get that so get the Xanax to blitz themselves out.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Who prescribes it to you now?
DANIEL: Medical centre in Penrith.
DR TANVEER AHMED: OK.
DANIEL: Yeah.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Do you ever give it out to anyone else?
DANIEL: Never. Everyone knows not to bustle me for medication.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Have you heard...
DANIEL: I don't care if he offers me something like 50 bucks for one, I won't sell it.
DR TANVEER AHMED: Yeah. Is there a market rate for it?
DANIEL: Mmm.
DR TANVEER AHMED: How much would that be?
DANIEL: Between $3 and $5 a tablet.
CHRIS: Dr Tanveer Ahmed believes it's time the Federal Government acted. It's time Xanax was made harder to get.
DR TANVEER AHMED: What's your advice to the Australian Government regarding Xanax?
DR BREGGIN: Oh, be the first government to ban the drug. Be the first government to take a stand on this horrendous drug. And at the least, give out warnings that it causes violence and suicide and depression. And if you take it more than two or three weeks, you're heading for serious trouble. But I think it's a drug that doctors shouldn't give out.
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