Eli5: I’m dependant on a 3mg dose of diazepam because of severe anxiety disorder. Why is there no medication that works even as close as good to Benzodiazepines against anxiety, without the really bad side effects, what makes Benzos special compared to other medicaments?

Question

Eli5: I’m dependant on a 3mg dose of diazepam because of severe anxiety disorder. Why is there no medication that works even as close as good to Benzodiazepines against anxiety, without the really bad side effects, what makes Benzos special compared to other medicaments?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Basically because the brain is complex, and we don’t know exactly how it works. We know that activating GABA receptors in the brain quells anxiety, which is what benzodiazepines do. But we don’t know the details of what causes one brain to be more prone to anxiety than another. If we knew that, we could potentially design a drug or therapy that specifically changes the anxious brain to be more like the non-anxious one. We do have drugs like anti-depressants that must work in some way to change the brain itself (it takes time for those changes, which is why anti-depressants take awhile to start working). These can sometimes help with anxiety disorders. But, since we don’t know exactly how they work, it’s hard to make ones that work better for anxiety. Unfortunately, until then, we’re stuck with benzos for symptoms. Any drug that works like benzos will have the same issues with addiction and side effects