Xanax and stealing?

[pmitch10]

Wow.....reading all this stuff.....no wonder we have a messed up society....we are paying to have our minds altered by trusting doctors and pharmacists to treat one thing but create so many other problems and altered states of minds. Maybe that is another reason why the US has so many people in their prisons. We are given pharmaceutical drugs like candy.....something for every ailment blinded to what the side effects short and long term may be and how that very thing can destroy our lives......Sigh!

[justcurious2009]

I had a cousin who got himself hooked on these things as well & would steal & rob people all the time, he used them as an excuse because like I told him he remembered everything he done & would brag about it & then in the same breath say the xanexs made him do it, I told him no, you done it because you were a thief b4 taking them & if you know they make you stupid DON'T TAKE THEM. It was his own fault, no one forced them in his throat or forced him to crunch them up & snort them or shoot them up like he was he done this all on his own free will. But he is that way sober just tried to use it as an excuse for his behavior at the time when I would catch him at my store stealing. I have no pity for him, he's always been irresponsible & tried to blame everyone or anything for what he done. Like I said even when he's sober he does this, but he chooses to go hunt & buy these drugs amongst all the others. Some people have got hooked on them by accident due to horrible events that have depressed them ect but they don't do stuff like that, they stay home & sleep & just chill. Just like with any drug if its used for the intended purpose it helps but when abused it may cause a high but it makes it easier for you to get hooked & build up a tolerence. The sad thing about it, his family won't get him help when he's on the heavy drugs because they use him to get their drugs as well & if he gets off the stuff then he can't go get them their fixes. Like others have said when he goes on his binges he takes 15-20 at a time, 1 knocks me out completely when I can't sleep how can he stand up.

[lizzybean]

LOL..... the good ole xanex sticky hands... its pretty well known in rehabs we used to talk about how you would wake up from that drug and have stolen things you didn't even want??? ie.. like music your not into clothes you woul never wear.. something about it makes you very very brave and your right you have absolutly no morals... and no memory

[lizzybean]

Originally Posted by pbandk

To be honest, and I know I will get a bunch of crap for this, but I used to take Xanax every day. I loved the taste of it. If I didn't take it, I thought I was going to die. I have never ever stolen while on the drug. I don't break the law because it's just not something that I do. Criminality is a learned behavior. I think if anything, drugs facilitate unlawfulness that is already present in the person's personality. I say this as someone with a past problem with Xanax and as someone who has a fiance in prison due to crimes that he committed while under the influence of drugs.

I agree with what you are saying from my own experience on the drug and from seeing so many people on it. I think it does "enhance" things in your personality but can also make you act completely outside of your "sober" moral code.

[princessjezebel]

xanax n clonopin r exactly the same thing-both r benzodiazepines,both r 4 panic attacks n seizures(n gettin high)but xanax hits u faster n leaves ur system quicker n clonopin takes awhile n holds u longer.anyways,im 43yrs n i was put on xanax at 14yrs(i was clean from 15yrs-22yrs but that was bcause i was using heroin).at 28yrs i went back on clonopin-people w/benzo addiction do tend to steal.theyve written about it in a medical journal.when i was on pills(started bcause of severe mental probs but bcame addicted)i bcame a professional shoplifter n worked w/a partner but after i cleaned up i had a hard time stealing.it wasnt until about 6 mths ago that i couldnt anymore n that was when i stopped taking pills.there r lots of other things pills make u do.

[geo37]

xanax is the reason my girl is locked up when i got with her i knew she had a problem but she wanted to stop i told her i would support her and do anything i can to help well she would get her script filled and start taking them one day we were driving down the road she had her script filled the day before i was fed up with it and told her i cant do this anymore she had allready taken 11 pills when i told her we cant be together any more she just looked at me she said if we cant be together she doesnt want to live we were doing about 35 when she just opened the door and leaped out i about died when she did that she hit the ground i stopped and got her in the truck took her to the hospital she did not go in so brought her to her moms about an hour later she sent me a text saying she didnt want to live she had taken all her pills went into a neighbors house and overdosed the police were called and she was taken to the hospital were she had her stomach pumped they found over 27 pills well to make along story short she is in prison for it but alive and we are both great full for that

[only1love]

Xanax is not to blame. The problem is that in every case mentioned here, none of the patients were taking this medication as prescribed. If the patient is non-compliant and is abusing the medication, that is an addiction and it is NOT the fault of the medication.

Xanax is not on the market to supply a buzz to anyone. It is designed for short term use ( such as for sedation for a funeral ) or for long term stress reduction ( such as a cardiac patient ) .In both situations, the doses are low and infrequent.

If a patient chooses to shoot up the entire bottle of insulin, is it the insulin's fault?

Controlled substances are just that. Medically controlled so that hopefully they do not get into the wrong hands. So should a doctor let someone suffer on the off chance that a junkie will rip them off and then abuse the medication?

Xanax does not make a person steal. No drug does that. Legal, abused, recreational or otherwise. People steal to support their addiction. That addiction could be drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. Xanax is not the culprit

I will say that because of the enormous number of people who abuse these medications, doctors are reluctant to prescribe it for those that need it which is a shame. Addicts need counseling and detox. Removing zanax wont work. They will just switch to another one!

[luvmyjack]

Thanks

[Brianssong]

I agree somewhat with what you said, but when at any other time in the history of this great world has so many pills been so readily available???? The pharmaceutical companies of the world are multi trillion dollar industries... never before have we had commercials on tv saying "ask your doctor about so and so" it's freaking ridiculous!! the doctors and pharm. companies are no better than drug dealers in my opinion. whatever happened to tylenol with codeine for a back ache or toothache?? now, whenever someone has a little ache, off to the doctor they go for percocet... and they get them!! the number of teens and young adults (ages 12 to 25) who were new abusers of prescription painkillers grew from 400,000 in the mid-’80s to over 3 million in 2000, "according to a study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration" THATS HUGE!!! New misusers of tranquilizers, which are normally used to treat anxiety or tension, increased nearly 60 percent between 1999 and 2000 alone. 60 percent, are you kidding me?! and why?? someone is prescribing these pills, companies are making these pills, it's all about the god almighty dollar. Oxycontin for example, suppose to be used by terminally ill cancer patients for pain, well i don't for one minute believe there are that many patients in need of them compared to how many pills are circulating... someone is making them, someone is prescribing them... doctors get kickbacks, pharm companies are getting very rich from people's sufferings and addictions... it's an epidemic, and it's scary... these pills change a person, they change the brain.... nothing a 28 day rehab can cure... that's for sure. UGH, it just pisses me off so bad... thinking who the real criminals are in all of this, and watching our children become victims of this...

[22mom]

Brianssong, you are so right. My son is an addcit and his original drug of choice was oxycontin. You know where he was getting it? From a lady about 60 years old. Can you believe that?! Not only was she selling oxy, she apparently had many pills to sell. Well, I confronted her one day "I said, quit selling your drugs to my kid, he's effing 17 years old" Well of course it didn't stop her from selling or my son from using. But why is she getting this many pills if she doesn't need them?! UGGGHHH!

[hischubchub]

This is why my husband is gone =(

[only1love]

Originally Posted by Brianssong

I agree somewhat with what you said, but when at any other time in the history of this great world has so many pills been so readily available???? The pharmaceutical companies of the world are multi trillion dollar industries... never before have we had commercials on tv saying "ask your doctor about so and so" it's freaking ridiculous!! the doctors and pharm. companies are no better than drug dealers in my opinion. whatever happened to tylenol with codeine for a back ache or toothache?? now, whenever someone has a little ache, off to the doctor they go for percocet... and they get them!! the number of teens and young adults (ages 12 to 25) who were new abusers of prescription painkillers grew from 400,000 in the mid-’80s to over 3 million in 2000, "according to a study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration" THATS HUGE!!! New misusers of tranquilizers, which are normally used to treat anxiety or tension, increased nearly 60 percent between 1999 and 2000 alone. 60 percent, are you kidding me?! and why?? someone is prescribing these pills, companies are making these pills, it's all about the god almighty dollar. Oxycontin for example, suppose to be used by terminally ill cancer patients for pain, well i don't for one minute believe there are that many patients in need of them compared to how many pills are circulating... someone is making them, someone is prescribing them... doctors get kickbacks, pharm companies are getting very rich from people's sufferings and addictions... it's an epidemic, and it's scary... these pills change a person, they change the brain.... nothing a 28 day rehab can cure... that's for sure. UGH, it just pisses me off so bad... thinking who the real criminals are in all of this, and watching our children become victims of this...

To correctly respond would require a very long post which I have already addressed. The short answer is that historically doctors were in charge of disease management. During that time sick people were in the hospital. Most medications were injectable, given by real nurses exactly as prescribed with well documented outcomes. Patients were not sent home until they were ready! Psych patients were inpatients in special hospitals designed for their specific needs. The criminally insane were hospitalized and segregated from society. Fast forward to a time when the focus switched from allowing time to recover to quick bed turnover to save $ per case and generate$$ through rapid turnover. Doctors were forced to send patients home before they were ready. They were also forced to keep people at home because their illness was not a big money maker. The focus switched from outcome basis to length of stay criteria. It is inhumane to send someone home with stitches, still in pain, can't eat yet, can't sleep without medication. At first we sent nurses to the home to give the shots but then someone decided that was too expensive and the field of public health nursing nearly vanished. So the pharma companies were asked to create pills, patches and potions that people could take themselves at home! They met that challenge. We have a pill for everything! You need to be half dead to be admitted these days. BUT never before were people with no medical training, no nursing skills, no assessment skills expected to manage something they are not qualified to manage! Babies are under-dosed for fevers because parents don't understand how to calculate the dose! Nearly every febrile infant seizes due to under-dosing of Tylenol. Is that Pharmas fault? Or is it the parents fault? The correct answer is neither! They are not trained for this- so instead of bringing that baby to the ER where a nurse will break the fever the correct way, it was decided to create a faster medication for fever reduction! Enter Motrin elixir! Historically our parents and grandparents took such babies to the doctor! Historically this is the first time we let untrained people manage their illnesses. Now that baby vomits! Is it because Motrin upsets the stomach, or did the baby cry himself into a hernia, or is it an ear infection? So now, if the parent can still think clearly, they bring the febrile, screaming, vomiting baby to the ER and get pissed when we first ask for a list of everything that was already put in the baby and the time of same! How dare we ask such stupid questions? If we don't know what was given and when, we could overdose the baby! By this time the parent is so distressed that they can't give an accurate history. Never before in our history was this done to families! Is this pharmas fault? Now the baby who is smoking hot probably has an infection, so we do cultures to find out which infection. Would you prefer we just guess? If we say we want to admit the baby parents frwak out! Mother's scream at us. Fathers demand we Fix this and for the first time ever historically, we have to do what the parents want or they will sue us! So now, we send the baby home with syrups to be given by parents who have no training in how to do this. Now take that scenerio and switch the infant for a grown adult with a psych disorder, an addiction, and for the first time historically expected to manage his complicated illness. He is expected to be able to perfectly describe his symptoms, side effects and he is eXpected to know drug intersactions while trying to recover, work, and be a productive member of society with no more medical traing than the infant! How do we honestly think this will work out? Is it pharmas fault?? We need to be smarter than this. We need to stop blame shifting. Nobody wants to spend another dime on proper medical care. We have tied doctor's hands! And for the first time ever we have the wrong people in charge of your illness! Your insurance company did not go to medical school and neither did you! Neither did your lawyer! But look who is running the show? Is that Pharmas fault? Surely we have the intelligence to know the correct answer to that one!

[friendofafelon]

I'm the type of person that won't even pick up a penny in someone's house. On Xanax, I will rob a convenience store. The reason my loved one is going to TDC is thanks to Xanax. He is the most WONDERFUL person until he takes it. It's crazy how it can affect someone so greatly.

[crl5231]

Originally Posted by BretsWoman

My boyfriend was arrested last year for breaking into a house. He was on a handful of Xanax (10-20 pills) at the time. I haven't seen much posted about this drug in here. And was wondering if anyone else has experience or seen people steal things when on the drug? He never steals when he's sober, but as soon as he's on pills, he has no morals. Any thoughts?

Oh yeah ur def not alone on this one. My bf has had issues with xanax too. He tells me how disgusted he is with himself when he relapses, and as much as he hates the pills, he also loves them. I hate it, he is a completely different person on them. He doesnt give a shit about anything, but the sober him has one of the biggest hearts I've ever seen!! He is in prison now because of xanax, he got charged with b&e. And he doesnt remember a thing. Woke up in jail and didnt have a clue bout what was going on. Part of his time will be served in a rehabilitation center, so we are really excited about that. I know other poeople who get the same way when they take them, too.

[sbdalton]

That's one of my husbands doc! He has many.....so mix those with vicodin, alcohol, k2, weed, ghb, you get a total malicious, evil jerk!!! He's in a "therapeutic community" at Hamilton Unit in Bryan, Tx. and this has NOT HELPED HIS WAY OF THINKING, tho before I met him he had already been in SAFP, I SHOULDA KNOWN TO FOLLOW MY BRAIN INSTEAD OF MY HEART AND RUN LIKE HELL WHEN HE KEPT BEGGING ME TO GIVE HIM A CHANCE AND GO OUT WITH HIM.......HE WAS SOBER AT THAT X SO I DID......I WAS STUPID.

[jfs]

In the wrong hands - Xanax is a sentence in a bottle. I hate those pills and band them from the house.

[probedinfl]

Originally Posted by carole54frogs

I have been reading these posts for quite some time, I am confused as to why an anxiety pill like xanax, would be the reason to make a person commit crimes...

I know I am older but, I just don't understand....I take this drug for panic attacks and it calms me the hell down..

so explain to me please...are they taking too many or stealing to get them?

I assume they are not under a drs care so therefor are getting them any way they can...do they react differently on different people ?

I am an uwilling xanax expert.

Xanax works very much like alcohol does. Your whole nervous system depends on one nerve cell talking to the one next to it and so forth. They do this by sending a few chemicals that the next one receives. Most of these chemicals act to excite the next nerve down the line.

One of them (at least) called GABA acts the opposite way - it calms the next nerve down the line. It does this by getting snagged on a GABA receptor that resides on a little organ on the nerve cell membrane (or skin) called the chloride ion channel. When it does this, chloride ions are allowed into the nerve cell and they calm it down. This same channel has receptors on it for xanax (and its cousins).

So xanax triggers this chloride ion channel to open and thus calms nerves. Alcohol affects this same channel through a receptor for it.

OK, enough technical stuff.

You know that people drink a lot sometimes and "black out". But they really don't just fall down. They do stuff during the blackout that they just do not remember doing. Same with xanax. All it takes is a little too much.

I am not a drinker. But I have gotten drunk on some occasions and indeed blacked out. I know this because my friends explained to me the next day all the embarrassing things I did which I still, to this day, don't recall at all.

So that's how xanax does it. If you are taking prescription xanax and are used to a certain level of it and stick with your prescribed dose, and if you don't drink while you are using it, you probably won't suffer blackouts. But you still might and not know you did. That is sort of the definition of a blackout.

For example, I was taking xanax for 6 years. Always according to prescription. However, I did go out and drink a little during that time. I didn't notice any blackouts.

But I definitely had one at least. I found out about it months later online. I ran into a friend on facebook. He knew all about my daughter and the school she was in. I assumed it was because is in the business that she is going to school for. A week or 2 later I asked her how she knew this guy. She said she didn't.

So I asked him later online how he knew about my daughter. He said I told him one night at a bar. I have absolutely no recollection of even seeing him at any bar ever. But apparently I did, and it was no casual conversation.

So the blacking out form xanax can be very insidious.

I got off xanax in a rough way. I got a job but couldn't learn how to do it. Very uncharacteristic of me. So I lost that job in 2 months. I panicked and went to my doc to ask if i could get a higher dose of xanax for a month (not realizing it was xanax that caused me to lose the job in the first place, but tha'ts another story). Instead he cut me off cold turkey.

Before I describe what then took place, let me stop a second and tell you why I'm here in the first place.

This is not whining or blaming. It was my abandoning of my usual great care about using any drugs that caused this to happen in the first place. I let my guard down and got punished, but it was me who was careless.

I started xanax 6 years ago because of a stalking situation. I asked the doc for a few a month to get my nerves under control. He would not do that. He inisisted I take Effexor and also take xanax regularly to counteract any anxiety from the Effexor. What did I know? I did research it but the bad effects of xanax are not well-reported. So I did what he said to do.

It worked very well. I got off my ass and took all the steps to rid myself of the jerk.

But xanax doesn't let go so easy.

Over a few years my dosage went up and up. I lost a couple jobs in that time. Employers knew I was on xanax but they had wives on it and didn't see it as a problem. But I am pretty sure it affected my work all along. It is basically like working a little drunk.

When my doc finally cut me off he suggested I go to county detox. I didn't want to do that - I have a house to take care of. So I decided to do it on my own.

What a disaster. For about 20 days I was in this completely insane dream world. Luckily I had a friend who knows about alcohol and xanax addiction and stayed with me. During that stay I was so nuts I thought he stole a credit card (and wrote a note saying he did so !) to the point I called the police. I hung up before reporting it though. I also realized I was so crazy after that that I asked him to take me to the ER, which he did.

After the initial few weeks I was shaking and stuttering for another month.

It took me 2 and a half months to feel anything like normal again.

I found a facebook page for people in benzodiazepine (xanax is one) withdrawal. I was lucky. Some people are in hell for years trying to quit.

Also during the time I was using xanax, I started using oxycodone. Was addicted to a fair amount of that and quit. It was harsh but it was a cake walk compared to quitting xanax. I was a total mess during the last couple years of xanax use and I didn't realize it. I finally ended up arrested for coke possession (how I got here). I assure you none of this would have happened without the xanax, now that I look back on it. But it has.

I won't touch a benzodiazepine with a ten foot pole now. the ONLY way I will is inside a hospital for a surgery. I have a bad reaction to propofol, the other drug they use to sedate.

I view benzodiazepines as seriously dangerous drugs. They are on schedule III, but after what I went through I think they should be on schedule II and maybe not even allowed at all. And I am far, far from being an anti-drug person in general.

As to stealing things while on them. Absloutely. I am not inclined to steal things so I seriously doubt I ever did. I have nothing to show for it if it happened. But the friend who stayed with me during my detox told me of a friend in another state who would take xanax and then wake up the next day with his apartment full of electronic things. He didn't recall how they had gotten there.