For what it's worth, I'm not sure this is a mental breakdown, and it might give the wrong impression to people who do legitimately suffer breakdowns related to stress about tech.
For me it's only happened once. It was an anxiety attack, and I'm very lucky my wife was there to talk me through it and help me understand what was happening. She's had them many times, but it was my first (and thankfully only).
It turns out that this sort of thing happens to people, and that there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't mean you're defective or weak. That's a really important point to internalize.
Xanax is worth having on hand, since that was what finally ended it for me and I was able to drift off to sleep.
I guess my point is, there's a difference between having intrusive thoughts vs something that debilitates you and that you legitimately can't control, such as an anxiety attack or a panic attack. You won't be getting any work done if those happen, and that's ok.
Not all breakdowns come in the form of panic and anxiety attacks. Those are certainly a way that breakdowns can manifest, but it’s not the only way. Stress manifests in wildly different ways for different people and even stressors.
You weren’t in his head, experiencing what he was experiencing, so it’s pretty much impossible to “diagnose” from the outside. It certainly sounds like he was functionally paralyzed for hours, even if he didn’t have a full blown panic attack.
That's a good point. I didn't mean to gatekeep, which is what I ended up doing. Thank you.
If he was functionally paralyzed for hours, then that absolutely qualifies. I was reading through it and thinking "If you can debug stuff, you're probably not having a mental breakdown" and wanted to highlight that some people do break down (which is why it's called a breakdown) and that it's ok.
If they were staying up for hours debugging, then they were also probably too tired to see the forest for the trees anymore. Simple exhaustion is sufficient to cause people to go on autopilot and follow trails that lead nowhere, or to just stare at nothing for minutes. Unless it's about life or death (or financial ruin), it's smarter to call it a day in such a situation. Or to at least do a powernap.
It really doesn't take much to be effective if you don't take it regularly. It takes over a week for it to be addictive.
One of the potential side-effects of the medication is after you stop taking it your baseline anxiety will be worse for a while as your body resets. Similar to caffeine and feeling tired.
Depending on how long you're trying to use it you may need to slowly increase the dose to offset increased baseline. This isn't really dangerous using for say.. one week every two months.
It is possible to get psychologically dependent by frequently using it instead of strategies you would learn in therapy. This also happens with things like alcohol.
Using medication to deal with occasional severe anxiety or panic attacks is far safer than substituting it with alcohol.
You're correct. Don't take it lightly. But have it on hand for an emergency, if you're prone to panic or anxiety attacks.
Those are relatively rare, so you shouldn't end up taking it at a frequency where addiction can manifest. But everyone's different; keep open communications with your doctor.
Xanax is a benzodiazepine. You get "high" when taking just barely more than instructed. It's addictive. It's abused frequently. I've abused it before. It feels nice.
I would be surprised if you asked your GP "I have mental breakdowns now and then, I'd like some Xanax", and they just handed it out to you. Then again, I don't live in the US, so maybe the doctors there do just dish it out.
Doesn’t usually cause addiction if used in emergencies only and quite a few people in tech do.
I do feel more stressed 12-24 hours after taking benzos though. This leads some people to take a higher dose and you can see where that leads.
But no, no addiction in me or anyone I know using it “as needed”.
Some doctors prescribe it daily for a long period of time, which is reckless if other drugs are available for the same problem, like sertraline for anxiety. But then, some doctors prescribe oxy for pain when ibuprofen will do. Malicious stuff. All the addiction warnings are to steer people away from these drugs in these scenarios.
Benzos 3x a day for a month will be tough to shake. Benzos 3x a month to 3x a year — hard to imagine problems with that.
I think it's just a default warning; any drug can me. I am taking Sertraline for anxiety and even while I went through it with my psychiatrist about if it can be addictive (his statement was - no, not really - and for me that was true, I was able to stop taking it without any side effects), there's still that risk.
As with any medical thing, better consult it with a specialist anyway.
> A safe taper typically takes much longer than a week-long detox or 28-day stay in rehab — an average of six to 12 months, experts say.
This is not to downplay SSRI tapers, which can be plenty awful if you are on them for a long time, but quitting benzos too abruptly can give you seizures. You have to be very careful to taper them safely.
I shouldn't have to drug myself to cope with the stress of constantly half-assed released, features getting pushed in without thought, and 3AM pagerduty alarms because of these things.
We will likely see a large cohort of people who got into tech in the mid 2000s dying off from stress related disease.
My wife is a critical care nurse, and she used to work at a hospital in an area with a lot of tech workers about five years ago. She saw a lot of heart attacks in men in their late thirties and early forties that she rarely saw elsewhere.
It depends on the type of anxiety and how you're using the medication. If you it routinely to handle everyday stress, you're heading down a very bad road. If you have events a few times a year that are extremely stressful, medication can really make a difference.
I had the same fears and I'm not gonna say you should try medication, but I will share it my psychiatrist did. She wouldn't let me have more fifteen low-dose pills at any one time.
Consider your relationship with alcohol. If you already have a problem with it or completely abstain from it, I would strongly recommend avoiding medication.
I'm the same, and similarly, the idea of taking a pill to make it go away is terrifying.
I have to keep myself very disciplined on the "helpful" medications I do allow into my life because I know how easy it'd be for me to get hooked and start depending on the meds to avoid my problems. Instead I've been working on training myself to see through my nerves.
Alcohol at least has the drawback that the few times I've had it, I've had such an awful experience that I don't associate it with avoiding my problems.
I mean, that's how a lot of prescriptions work anyway. I take daily medication to prevent anxiety and depression. It's not addictive, but I try pretty hard to never miss a day, because anxiety and depression will get in the way of me living my life. Assuming Xanax is safe to take daily (I have no idea), the only difference is that a supply disruption would have side-effects. But if I run out of my medication, I'll get depressed within weeks, almost guaranteed, withdrawals or no.
Yeah I was actually disappointed to find an article about a routine dependency debugging story. I've felt on the precipice of a breakdown a few times before and was really hoping this would be a more relevant article.
For me it's only happened once. It was an anxiety attack, and I'm very lucky my wife was there to talk me through it and help me understand what was happening. She's had them many times, but it was my first (and thankfully only).
It turns out that this sort of thing happens to people, and that there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't mean you're defective or weak. That's a really important point to internalize.
Xanax is worth having on hand, since that was what finally ended it for me and I was able to drift off to sleep.
I guess my point is, there's a difference between having intrusive thoughts vs something that debilitates you and that you legitimately can't control, such as an anxiety attack or a panic attack. You won't be getting any work done if those happen, and that's ok.