Climbing Leads to Addiction?

I’m not usually a fan of Outside Magazine, but occasionally some decent writing ends up in there, and a recent article written by a friend of mine is one such exception. In it, Matt Samet chronicles how his obsession with climbing lead to anxiety and panic attacks that he medicated with drugs, and how that lead to a drug addiction that nearly claimed his life. The scary part, and what I know he wants to help spread awareness of, is how his psychiatrist knowingly prescribed him the drugs that screwed him up so bad and left him with debilitating health effects that he is still dealing with to this day. Here’s a snippet from the beginning of the story:

“I’ve seen my old psychiatrist twice, at a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado. It’s hard not to notice him, since this is the man who tried to kill me. Or maybe he’s the man who stood by and watched, bemused, while I nearly killed myself with prescription tranquilizers, and then did less than zero to help me stop. Each time he’s bought a morning brew and slumped in his car, sipping coffee and ogling women. It occurs to me that I should walk over and say something caustic. But at that early hour—with me still sick, wheezy, and shaky, three years into my ordeal of psychiatric-med withdrawal—it isn’t worth the effort. He’s who he is, and I’m in hell, and never the twain shall meet.

My name’s Matt, and I’m a recovering addict. I’m 38 and I live in Boulder, where, up until recently, I was the editor of Climbing magazine. I’ve been climbing for 22 years, sometimes at a semi-professional level but mostly just for fun. Still, I love it; I crave it. Climbing is the cause of and cure for all my maladies. It’s the thing that made me obsessive, anorexic, and so anxious that I really thought I needed all the pills—most notably, fast-acting benzodiazepine (“benzo”) tranquilizers like Ativan, Klonopin, and Xanax. Over the years, I’ve shredded body and mind with poisons and palliatives, and sweated out the mess: benzos, booze, marijuana, muscle relaxants, opiates, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anti­psychotics, coffee, sugar, computer games, food, puke, shit, piss, blood. Fueled by my hunger for climbing—and my fear of it—I wanted to drink it all in, to kill the sucking void.”

Read the rest here, it’s well worth your time, and I know this is a story that Matt wants people to hear.