This is self-work and I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. At self-work we'll discuss psychological and emotional issues common in today's world and

what to do about them.

I'm Dr. Margaret and self-work as a podcast dedicated to you taking just a few minutes today for your own self-work

Hello and welcome to the 27th episode of self-work. I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I'm a clinical psychologist out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. I've been in practice over 20 years and I love what I do. I learn every day from every patient and

basically I feel like I'm here almost as a conduit between you and the patients

I've worked with so that we all can benefit from their work and

their change and their wisdom.

So welcome and I'm glad you're here.

Today we're going to be talking about anxiety and prescription drug addiction and

we're going to be talking about it in a very very personal way for me because

I'm going to tell you a story and that story is about my mom.

I've told this story on the internet but I'm finding sometimes when I actually talk about personal issues,

that it's harder to do that in person

than it is to do it in written form.

But I think it's an important story and one that if it only helps one person who's listening, it's worth telling.

We're going to go on to discuss a little bit about our culture and all of the writing and focus that's going on right now about the

anxiety in our culture. There are all kinds of articles and books and

podcasts and hashtags that are about anxiety and we're going to discuss those

a little bit.

I'm going to give you some stats on benzodiazepine abuse and opioid abuse.

It's interesting, I had a medical doctor who was a patient of mine tell me he had

actually been an opioid user, an abuser. He said that doctors know that when

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