Anti-anxiety drug prescribed to 8m Brits linked to nearly 3,400 deaths

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Concerns have been raised after an anti-anxiety drug, prescribed to more than eight million people in the UK has been linked to thousands of deaths.

Pregabalin is commonly prescribed to help people suffering from anxiety, epilepsy and nerve pain.

But recent figures show it has the fastest rising death toll of any drug in the UK, with nearly 3,400 deaths linked to the drug in the last five years alone.

Drug prescribed

According to reports, the use of the drug can lead to dependency after users become addicted to the ‘euphoric’ feeling it can cause, and several deaths have been linked to overdoses.

Concerns have also been raised about the side effects Pregabalin can cause, and the debilitating withdrawal symptoms when people try to come off the drug.

One woman said she knew she had to quit the drug after the memory loss caused her to forget to pick her six-year-old up from school – but trying to quit the drug made it ‘feel like you’re dying’.

Another woman explained the withdrawal side effects as being ‘torturous’, as she suffered from shaking, insomnia, lack of appetite, vomiting, diarrhoea and anxiety trying to come off of it.

Pregabalin users have told MailOnline about the shocking impacts the drug has had on their lives. Alex Silva, who was prescribed pregabalin after a slipped disc on his neck, said “After two months on it, all I could think about was to kill myself’.

He added: “No doctor ever informed about suicidal thoughts. Thank God, I read about it and stopped taking it straight away. Horrible drug but the worst of all was that no one told me about the suicidal thoughts.”

Other users explained they suffered from physical and mental side effects which made them ‘lose the plot’.

One user, Tracy said that her eyesight is now always very blurry and she would like to be off the drug altogether but ‘can’t bear the thought of the withdrawal symptoms again’.

Meanwhile, a third, who was prescribed pregabalin for lower back pain, said:

“I went completely crazy for 2 months and had to wean myself off due to erratic behaviour, blurred vision, mood swings and suicidal thoughts.”

“The doctors don’t tell you this when prescribing and when you mention concerns that’s when it seems you are given the information. I was lucky but only because my partner questioned the tablets when I was losing the plot.

“The despair you feel is overwhelming and you genuinely believe your thoughts are yours and not related to anything a doctor would give you.”

There have also been cases where dependent users suffered fatal overdoses after becoming hooked on the drug.

Alex Cottam, a software engineer was just 27 when he died, after being prescribed the drug two years earlier. His mother Michelle told The Sunday Times the drug ‘completely changed’ her son and led to him becoming ‘obsessed’ with recreating its effects.

Alex was prescribed pregabalin when he was 25 as he struggled to deal with crippling anxiety, and Michelle says it initially helped him get his life back on track. However, the issues came as his tolerance of the drug increased, meaning the amount he had to take to feel the effects had to as well.

When Alex was told by a GP he would have to stop taking it, he started to buy the drug, and others such as the painkiller tramadol, online without a prescription.

In 2021, he was found dead in his Salford flat, with an inquest determining he died of an ‘unintentional overdose’ of pregabalin and three other drugs.

Dr Mark Horowitz, who is a clinical research fellow at the NHS, compared prescribing the drug to ‘selling cars without brakes’.

“How can there be rising deaths from pregabalin and a huge explosion of prescriptions, with all these troubles, and yet doctors are using this drug to treat anxiety?

“It boggles the mind when a drug is showing all these dangers to then use it in a wider variety of people,” he said.

Users are now calling for more to be done to warn people of the symptoms and life-changing effects Pregabalin can have, as well as urging doctors to clamp down on prescribing the drug.

Anti-anxiety drug prescribed to 8m Brits linked to nearly 3,400 deaths

Concerns have been raised after an anti-anxiety drug, prescribed to more than eight million people in the UK has been linked to thousands of deaths.

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