I remember what day it was, where I was standing and what I felt. It was an overwhelming feeling of unease, my innards had turned to jello and my lower intestines felt like someone had shoved a fire extinguisher full of cold Co2 up my ass and pulled the pin.

My journal had slipped out of my uncontrollably shaking right hand and I felt the need to sit down before I fell down.

It was a Friday morning and I had just completed loading video equipment into my SUV for the long trip to Bracco headquarters in New Jersey to shoot a sales training video for their national sales meeting.

Such was the stressful nature of my thriving brainchild, Double O Creative Multimedia Productions. It was so successful it was actually making me crazy.

I had just read and printed out the incoherent and almost unshootable script for the clusterfuck that would ensue seven hours later, when my Jones came crashing down.

I’ve had hangovers and withdrawals before, but nothing like this. On a hunch, I quickly put one under my tongue and immediately straightened out.

Uh, oh!

This would be the beginning of a long struggle to get off Xanax (alprazolam). It would lead me back to alcohol after almost 40 years.

I know from years of medical sales experience that although you are a patient, you are also a revenue stream to your doctor.

If you have ever had a conversation with an internal medicine doc kvetching about the loss of his heart disease patient to a cardiologist, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Medicine is a business and some will do whatever it takes to retain said business. As was the case with me.

My doc was smart enough to CYA herself with “Would you like to try this?” as to exhort my complicity in this rabbit hole to hell.

I share this cautionary tale as a warning, so if your provider asks you if you would like to try something and couches it in “be careful,” ask questions, think twice and google your ass off.

I wish I did.