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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Treatment and medication
The costs are the ordinary antihistamine ones: dry mouth, constipation, and for older people a genuine risk of confusion and falls, with effects on heart rhythm at higher doses. That is why it fits a bad patch or the gap while something slower gets going. Drowsiness is what is doing the work, which means it dulls the feeling rather than treating what is under it.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
If one of you is ill, or on a journey, on other days later (Quran 2:184). A hard stretch is given its own arrangement, and the arrangement is understood from the start to be temporary.
البقرة
أَيَّامࣰ ا مَّعۡدُودَٰتࣲۚ فَمَن كَانَ مِنكُم مَّرِيضًا أَوۡ عَلَىٰ سَفَرࣲ فَعِدَّةࣱ مِّنۡ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَۚ وَعَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ يُطِيقُونَهُۥ فِدۡيَةࣱ طَعَامُ مِسۡكِينࣲۖ فَمَن تَطَوَّعَ خَيۡرࣰ ا فَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّهُۥۚ وَأَن تَصُومُواْ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡ إِن كُنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fast for a specific number of days, but if one of you is ill, or on a journey, on other days later. For those who can fast only with extreme difficulty, there is a way to compensate- feed a needy person. But if anyone does good of his own accord, it is better for him, and fasting is better for you, if only you knew
Qur’an 2:184read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
It has actually been studied. It reduced generalised anxiety symptoms compared with placebo, it also caused more sedation, and the trials supporting it were few and small. So there is real evidence here, just not very much of it, and the benefit and the drowsiness arrived in the same package.
Guaiana G, Barbui C, Cipriani A. (2010). Hydroxyzine for generalised anxiety disorder.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Being made sleepy can carry you through a hard stretch, but it is not a repair.
Older adults are the people most likely to be harmed by this kind of medicine, so it needs a prescriber weighing it up rather than a request based on a friend's good report.
When what is keeping you awake or on edge is your situation, a tablet can only do so much. That is not a failure of the medicine and it is certainly not a failure of you.
Something that settles a surge of panic within minutes and something that changes how often the surges come are doing two different jobs. A person can need both, and it helps to say which is which.
Take a few photographs of your bedroom, then look at them later and circle whatever has to change or go. Seeing the room in a picture shows you things you stopped noticing years ago while standing in it.