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Benzos are usually prescribed as 'taken as needed.' It's something you take in acute situations of anxiety and it has a short window of effect. Like someone has a flight to take and they literally think the airplane will crash. They have to make an important presentation at work, in front of the CEO, and they're afraid they'll have a meltdown. That would quality as an 'acute' situation and the person could technically take it. It's a very dangerous drug, the optimal way to use it is as sparsely as possible (or better: not at all) and only if there's a serious reason for you to use it. Notice that both scenarios I described could also be fixed through a cognitive perspective, e.g. understanding catastrophizing thoughts (likelihood of airplane crashing = near 0) or through learning coping skills e.g. attending toastmasters to gain mastery over a feared situation. The med is literally the doesn't-solve-anything way out that maintains the person in victimhood and irrationality instead of progress.
If you're anxious all day long about banal events, imagined scenarios and worries, e.g. GAD, it's not going to do anything because you'd have to be popping pills from morning to night and obviously you can't do that and remain alive.
The whole 'psychiatric meds give you permanent gains' thing is a meme that comes back often in literature. Their logic is that a psychiatric drug changes your behaviour or your emotions on a short term basis (very short term for benzos), and then those changes in behaviour form new brain pathways and yadda yadda permanent gains. This is mostly nonsense. Your brain pathways change literally every day, as we speak they're changing. If tomorrow you decided to start a new healthy habit, a new gym routine let's say, that gym routine will literally change your brain in a permanent or semi-permanent way too. You could maybe make an argument that an extremely depressed person literally laying on their bed all day could get an initial 'burst' of energy from antidepressants that gets the ball rolling for more gains, but unless someone is truly in that situation you can get the ball rolling on your own already.
If you're anxious all day long about banal events, imagined scenarios and worries, e.g. GAD, it's not going to do anything because you'd have to be popping pills from morning to night and obviously you can't do that and remain alive.
The whole 'psychiatric meds give you permanent gains' thing is a meme that comes back often in literature. Their logic is that a psychiatric drug changes your behaviour or your emotions on a short term basis (very short term for benzos), and then those changes in behaviour form new brain pathways and yadda yadda permanent gains. This is mostly nonsense. Your brain pathways change literally every day, as we speak they're changing. If tomorrow you decided to start a new healthy habit, a new gym routine let's say, that gym routine will literally change your brain in a permanent or semi-permanent way too. You could maybe make an argument that an extremely depressed person literally laying on their bed all day could get an initial 'burst' of energy from antidepressants that gets the ball rolling for more gains, but unless someone is truly in that situation you can get the ball rolling on your own already.
