Gwen Olsen spent fif­teen years as a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sales rep work­ing for such health­care gi­ants as John­son & John­son, Bris­tol-​My­ers Squibb, and Ab­bott Lab­o­ra­to­ries. She en­joyed a suc­cess­ful, fast-​paced ca­reer un­til sev­er­al con­scious-​al­ter­ing ex­pe­ri­ences be­gan awak­en­ing her to the dan­gers lurk­ing in ev­ery Amer­i­can medicine cab­i­net. Her most poignant lessons, how­ev­er, came as both vic­tim and sur­vivor of life-​threat­en­ing ad­verse drug re­ac­tions. Af­ter leav­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sales in 2000, Gwen worked in the nat­u­ral foods in­dus­try first as an Ac­count Man­ag­er for Na­ture's Way, and then as a Re­gion­al Sales Man­ag­er for Ga­ia Herbs. She is cur­rent­ly a writ­er, speak­er, and nat­u­ral health con­sul­tant.

In this video Gwen dis­cuss­es anx­i­olyt­ics (an­ti-​anx­i­ety med­i­ca­tions). These med­i­ca­tions are some­times al­so called mi­nor tran­quil­iz­ers. These drugs in­clude the ben­zo­di­azephines such as Val­i­um, Xanax and Ati­van. Bus­par is al­so non-​ben­zo­di­azephine anx­i­olyt­ic.

These drugs are high­ly ad­dic­tive and peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence se­vere with­draw­al symp­toms when com­ing off of these drugs.

Gwen specif­i­cal­ly talks about her own Xanax ad­dic­tion.

She al­so dis­cuss­es "re­bound syn­drome" and "dis­con­tin­u­a­tion syn­drome", which are ba­si­cal­ly just with­draw­al symp­toms.