‘Are you somewhere you can have a difficult conversation?’ asked the voice on the phone. Shaking, I mumbled an affirmative reply, and listened in horror as my life was blown to smithereens.
The caller was my new boss of ten months. It was the first – and last – time she had spoken to me, and the news she delivered was devastating. Due to budget cuts, the job I’d been doing for almost 20 years was gone. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ she said. That’s not how it felt.
Although treated as staff, technically I was a freelancer so there would be no redundancy pay off to cushion the blow. It was November, and I was about to be unemployed. Happy Christmas!
The job I’d known for longer than my husband was over forever. The monthly salary I depended on gone.
I couldn’t take it in. I was almost 50, an age when you’re supposed to be established, sorted and secure.
At 50, Polly job was made redundant from the job she’d been doing for almost 20 years
Instead, I was completely adrift and absolutely petrified. From the second the bombshell was dropped, I felt I was going to have a panic attack every second of every day.
I was already a pretty anxious person before this and my family’s financial status being shattered in an instant didn’t exactly help. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I could barely breathe. I have never been so frightened in my life.
It sounds dramatic, but the following sentence is true: I do not know how, or even if, I would have got through it without beta blockers.
I’d taken Propranolol once before, when I had to give an important speech I’d been dreading. My GP happily prescribed, saying she regularly did so for people who had big work presentations or anybody who was nervous and needed, largely, not to be.
I do not know how, or even if, I would have got through the anxiety without beta blockers, writes Polly Hudson
She explained they block the effects of adrenaline (a racing heart doesn’t beat so hard and blood pressure is lowered).
Beta blockers were an unbelievable, almost magic cure for my public speaking phobia. So now, I wondered if they could help again.
I spoke to my doctor and explained what had happened. She prescribed Propranolol again, now to be taken up to three times a day, if I felt I needed it. You will not be shocked to hear that I did – and, 12 months later, still do.
Propranolol is ‘not addictive’, says Dipa Kamdar, senior lecturer in pharmacy practice at Kingston University. ‘It doesn’t produce sedation or euphoria, and its risk of dependence is low.’
In my experience, she’s right. I don’t feel numb, out of it, or sleepy. I still feel like me, just with the panic removed, so I can go about my day rather than be paralysed with fear.
In my opinion, the beauty of beta blockers is you can take them regularly, as I am, or as and when you need one.
And the longer I’ve been on them, and openly chatting about them, the more I’ve realised how many others are too. Prescriptions for anti- anxiety medication have soared in recent years.
According to a University of Bristol study in 2022, for every man prescribed beta blockers, there were 2.33 women.
In fact, if they came in a bottle rather than a blister pack, I suspect most of the women I know would rattle.
‘I love how tiny they are, you can slip one in your mouth wherever you are,’ revealed the friend who first recommended them.
‘I’d never leave the house without them,’ a school mum told me, ‘I have some in every handbag, just in case.’
A third devotee said: ‘They work in ten minutes – and just knowing that makes you relax a bit.’
Most of the people I know in the beta blocker bunch are women, relying on them for many reasons – from perimenopause symptoms to general overwhelm from their demanding lives.
Obviously no medication is without risk or side-effects, and beta blockers may not be suitable for those with asthma, diabetes or certain heart conditions. They’re also largely seen as less effective than anti-depressants when it comes to long-standing or severe anxiety.
I’d taken the anti-depressant Citalopram once before, after my father died in 2012.
They made me feel anesthetised, which was a relief at the time, but I didn’t stay on them long because I was aware I had to go through the grieving process rather than switching my emotions off. I knew they wouldn’t be right for me now either.
Everybody in my life agrees that beta blockers have made me calmer, and they’re relieved that since I’ve been on them I seem more able to navigate my new normal.
My husband clearly isn’t as worried about me as he was, not that he ever came right out and said it.
I have more patience with my son, too – I was dismayed to find myself snapping at him BBB (before beta blockers). I was under so much pressure that any extra request or question could cause a system meltdown in my brain.
I can breathe now. I can cope. I’m slowly carving out a new work life, which is more interesting and fulfilling than what I was doing before.
While I hope to wean myself off beta blockers three times a day, never missing a dose, relying on them, I can’t imagine never taking them again. I’ll be one of the many people out there – some who admit it, some of who hide it – who always have a pill in their pocket, just in case.
If you have any concerns, please speak to your GP