Do psychotropic meds contribute to poor decision making sometimes?

[Emergent]

A close friend and I were visiting recently. Her husband has been on more than one anti anxiety medication since his son was killed by a drunk driver over 10 years ago.

He is a big hearted guy, although obstinate. She's worried about his latest venture, getting into even more debt by buying a property in the mountains a pretty long ways from their home. If all goes well it would be a good investment I suppose, but he is seriously overextending himself at a time when he should be securing himself for retirement.

My friend and I are both nurses and we were talking about whether anti-anxiety medications can dull common sense. Anxiety is actually a natural emotional response to protect us from risk and harm, just like pain is.

I think we all realize that we are in overmedicated society. We live in a world of sensory overload and a lot of stress. I believe that we are often masking our understandable reactions to this. The medical system just gets people on meds and keeps them on them. It's convenient, so people can keep living their hectic, fast paced lives, while drug companies make a nice profit.

Thoughts?

[Julius Seizure]

Anxiety absolutely can be crippling and often requires pharmacologic treatment however my opinion of benzodiazepines, if that is in fact what the man in OP is taking, is they absolutely can disinhibit, confuse and should rarely be used long term and almost never in geriatrics.

This has been a struggle in my family as well. My mother (who is, I suppose, technically geriatric) has terrible anxiety. They put her on Buspar and an antidepressant, but she doesn't feel that either helps much at all. She DOES feel that the clonazepam helps...but they really discourage her from taking that unless she really needs to (PRN). The clonazepam doesn't seem to negatively affect her at all but I know it could in the future. She keeps asking me what I think, but I am a peds cardiac nurse, so in this arena I don't know what else to tell her.

[YoutubeTheNP]

Is the sky blue ? Is water wet?? lol

Of course they can change the way you think. Have you ever seen or heard of the adverse reaction some people have with ambien? There have been reports of people spending 1000's of dollars in the middle of the night online shopping and the next day not remember a thing.

Have you ever taken a benzo? Depending on dosage and if you're abusing it you can not give 2 ***** about anything for a few hours. This is not coming from experience btw.

[amoLucia]

Ten years of antianxiety meds, after the death of his son, tells me he has issues that needs to be dealt with. I imagine his general life issues cause some trouble with decision making, more than the meds hes been on for ten years. I feel bad for him. His coping skills are well entrenched now, and hard to change.

With this I agree.

Any chance what is being seen is NOT anxiety and problems with his meds for anx?

Not knowing his age, might it be more of a mid-life crisis with a wide big bang swing? Is the son's death anniversary approaching and this is a depressive reax surfacing.

Perhaps anti-depressives are indicated.

TY for your caring.

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

I would love to argue with you, but you've got an interesting perspective there. I have anxiety myself and have taken prescription anxiolytics before. *I* don't think they effected me like that but YMMV.

What is YMMV?

[MunoRN, RN]

What is YMMV?

Your Mileage May Vary

[TriciaJ, RN]

I had money on this after reading your initial response. :)

There is data out there indicating this class of medications in possible increased rates of dementia, falls, delirium and life threatening withdrawal symptoms with abrupt discontinuation. My biggest issue in addition to the above is that they work so well for ameliorating anxiety in a majority of cases, in my personal experience, many people have no impetus to do the necessary, often painful and slow work in therapy which will actually result in functional improvement instead continuing to pop a pill whenever uncomfortable feelings arise. Just my two cents and since none of yous paid even two cents take it for what its worth.

I worked psych back in the eighties. I can't tell you how many little old ladies I had clutching my lapels for their "prn" Ativan right on schedule. They had NO interest in doing anything else to get a handle on their anxiety. Neither did their doctors. Ativan was quick and easy and everyone was happy. And I was Nurse Ratched for even thinking that anyone should come up with a better plan.

[Avid reader]

Sounds like sublimation or distraction to me. After ten years he should have worked through the trauma and be of the meds. It is possible that his Psych provider is lax and dependency maybe an issue. The investment aspect is easily assesesd re expenses evaluation from the lender. That's their purview.

[OlivetheRN, ADN, BSN, RN]

Have you ever seen or heard of the adverse reaction some people have with ambien? There have been reports of people spending 1000's of dollars in the middle of the night online shopping and the next day not remember a thing.

I apparently was in my car all set to go get some eggs from the store so I could make waffles. At 3 AM. Thank heavens something woke my dad up and he heard my car running. I was sitting in my car in the driveway looking for my wallet and he knocked on my window and asked what I was doing and was able to get me to come back in the house by reminding me we had eggos. Never took Ambien again (that wasn't the first issue I had had but getting in my car and about to be driving it was the last straw.