Anxiety Drug Killed My Son and So Many Are Dying From It

HOW MANY MORE? –

March 3. 2024 – The drug that helped Alex Cottam turn his life around was also the one that ended up killing him. Alex, a 27-year-old software engineer, had been prescribed pregabalin to help him with the anxiety and depression that he had been battling with ever since his father James died 14 years earlier.

At first pregabalin helped him feel normal and thrive at work. But Cottam soon became reliant on its powerful effects, which led to dependency and the use of other prescription drugs. He died of an unintentional overdose two years after first taking pregabalin.

“It’s hard to imagine somebody’s whole life revolved around a pill, but it did,” said his mother, Michelle. “It completely changed him, it was like an obsession, An investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed that pregabalin has the fastest-rising death toll of any drug in the UK, based on figures compiled from official data across all regions. It is detected in a third of all drug-related deaths.