Death Grip
A Climber's Escape from Benzo Madness
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Death Grip chronicles a top climber's near-fatal struggle with anxiety and depression, and his nightmarish journey through the dangerous world of prescription drugs.
Matt Samet lived to climb, and craved the challenge, risk, and exhilaration of conquering sheer rock faces around the United States and internationally. But Samet's depression, compounded by the extreme diet and fitness practices of climbers, led him to seek professional help. He entered the murky, inescapable world of psychiatric medicine, where he developed a dangerous addiction to prescribed medications—primarily "benzos," or benzodiazepines—that landed him in institutions and nearly killed him.
With dramatic storytelling, persuasive research data, and searing honesty, Matt Samet reveals the hidden epidemic of benzo addiction, which some have suggested can be harder to quit than heroin. Millions of adults and teenagers are prescribed these drugs, but few understand how addictive they are—and how dangerous long-term usage can be, even when prescribed by doctors.
After a difficult struggle with addiction, Samet slowly makes his way to a life in recovery through perseverance and a deep love of rock climbing. Conveying both the exhilaration of climbing in the wilderness and the utter madness of addiction, Death Grip is a powerful and revelatory memoir.
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Samet (Climbing Dictionary), a former editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine and an accomplished rock climber, unsparingly recounts his addiction to and withdrawal from benzodiazepines or "benzos" the family of fast-acting minor tranquilizers that includes Valium, Ativan, and Klonopin. Samet describes how regularly pursuing the high-altitude sport in his teens provided him with an "almost transcendental peace" that "stood in stark juxtaposition to all the urban and childhood anguish" in his loving but less-than-stable family life. But this peace is soon disrupted by a series of panic attacks that produce in him "a terror like no other... my heart slamming... hands shaking violently." Samet details each step in his long search to conquer his panic through psychopharmacology, which leads to addiction, "ferocious" withdrawals, misdiagnoses, overmedication, and hospitalization. Samet is no fan of the way "Big Pharma" encourages "drug-mongering" by psychiatrists to patients like him. But Samet's admission of complicity in his drug problems including "gobbling Valium like Tic-Tacs" while having an "on-and-off love" affair with marijuana, wine, and Vicodin actually supports his belief that "benzo" users don't always realize how dangerously addictive the pills can be.
