A study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology it states that:

• People involved in car accidents are more likely to have taken psychotropic drugs for a period of days, weeks or months.
• Benzodiazepines, antidepressants, and newer insomnia drugs known as Z-drugs (including Sonata, Ambien, Imovane and Lunesta) all significantly raised car accident risk.
• Researchers suggested physicians may want to warn their patients not to drive while taking such drugs.
• A broken body can be easier to fix than a broken mind, but there are safer alternatives that can help address the underlying causes of mental illness without the use of potentially life-threatening psychotropic drugs

What do Psychotrophic medications treat?

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Insomnia
  
  They are mind-altering drugs. They impact brain function and psychomotor abilities. Which includes your ability to drive a car. You wouldn't drive after consuming other mind-altering substances, like too much alcohol, yet presumably millions of people are driving everyday after taking varying dosages of psychotropic drugs.
  
  Drugs prescribed for anxiety and insomnia known as benzodiazepines (Valium, etc.) have long been linked to an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, and now a new study has added even more widely consumed drugs into the mix – and shown they may seriously raise your crash risk, posing a risk to both the driver taking the drugs as well as their passengers and anyone who crosses their path.

Antidepressants, Insomnia Drugs, Antipsychotics Raise Car Accident Risk:

People involved in car accidents are more likely to have taken psychotropic drugs for a period of days, weeks or months, according to a study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.1 

Benzodiazepines, antidepressants, and newer insomnia drugs known as Z-drugs (including Sonata, Ambien, Imovane and Lunesta) all significantly raised car accident risk. The results were so striking that researchers suggested physicians may want to warn their patients not to drive while taking such drugs, and, as you might suspect, in many cases the higher the dose, the higher the risk became. 

Researchers noted:

"This study contributes additional evidence... that psychotropic medications can constitute a considerable degree of danger to traffic safety... These findings underscore that subjects taking psychotropic medications should pay increased attention to their driving performance in order to prevent the occurrence of MVAs [motor vehicle accidents].

...Doctors and pharmacists should choose safer treatments, provide their patients with accurate information and consider advising them not to drive while taking certain psychotropic medications."

Other Serious Risks Of Psychotropic Drugs: 

The decision to take any type of psychotropic medication should not be taken lightly, as they come with a slew of dangerous and potentially lethal side effects.

The effects of Benzodiazepines (Ativan, Xanax, Valium):

These drugs exert a calming effect by boosting the action of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). These work the same way  as opioids (heroin) and some cannabinoids (cannabis) do. 

This in turn activates the gratification hormone, dopamine, in your brain. Since the identical brain "reward pathways" are used by both types of drugs, they can be equally addictive. Older adults have a much more difficult time eliminating benzodiazepines and similar drugs from their bloodstreams. 

Over time, these drugs can accumulate in your body, which will increase your risk of an accidental overdose (and perhaps further impair your driving ability). 

Side effects of Benzodiazepines (Ativan, Xanax, Valium): These are regardless of age:

• Unsteady gait, and falling
• Dizziness
• Hip fractures
• Drug induced or drug-worsened impairment of thinking, memory loss
• Cancer and premature death

The truth about Antidepressants:

Antidepressant use has been linked to thicker arteries, which increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. Aside from potentially lethal cardiac events, other serious side effects include:

• Suicidal thoughts and feelings and violent behavior: The primary side effect that you should be concerned about is that antidepressants can actually increase your risk of suicide.
  
  
• Diabetes: Your risk for type 2 diabetes is two to three times higher if you take antidepressants.2 All types of antidepressants, including tricyclic and SSRIs, increase type 2 diabetes risk.
  
  
• Problems with your immune system: Antidepressants cause serotonin to remain in your nerve junctions longer, interfering with immune cell signaling and T-cell growth.
  
  
• Stillbirth, birth defects, brittle bones and strokes have also been connected to antidepressant use.

Sleep drugs (insomnia drugs such as Sonata, Ambien, Imovane and Lunesta):

Research shows these drugs are linked to a nearly four-fold increase in the risk of premature death, along with increased cancer risks.  Plus, they are notorious for being addictive, which means that once you want to stop taking them, you'll likely suffer withdrawal symptoms that could be far worse than the initial insomnia. 

Some, including Ambien, may also become less effective when taken for longer than two weeks. Ambien may also make you want to eat while you're asleep – and the sleep eating can include bizarre foods such as buttered cigarettes, salt sandwiches and raw bacon.

Other bizarre side effects reported from various sleeping pills include:

• Sleep walking and even sleep driving
• Hallucinations
• Confusion and disorientation
• Complete amnesia from events, even those that took place during the day
• Depression

Psychiatric Disorders Often Have an Underlying Cause

These powerful psychotropic, mind-altering drugs in no way, shape or form even begin to address the underlying cause of the mental conditions they are designed to treat. Unfortunately, psychiatric conditions are primarily believed to be the result of chemical dysfunction in your brain, or in some cases hereditary and therefore out of your control. Many fail to realize that:

1. Your lifestyle can override genetic predispositions
2. Your lifestyle can be a major underlying cause of that chemical imbalance or dysfunction

If you or your child is suffering from an emotional or mental challenge, please seek help, but do so from someone who does not regard psychotropic drugs as a first, or only, line of defense. Despite what the slick advertisements say, psychotropic drugs have no known measurable biological imbalances to correct. 

Unlike other drugs that can measurably alter levels of blood sugar, cholesterol and so on. How can you medicate something that is not physically there?

The answer is, of course, you can't – and doing so is a dangerous game. Psychotropic drugs can actually interfere with your neurotransmitters in such a way as to upset the delicate processes within your brain needed to maintain homeostasis, leading to side effects that may resemble mental illness. Psychiatric disorders are very real, and they need real treatment, but it's important to understand that drugs often fail miserably in making people feel better. Studies continue to show, for instance, that antidepressant drugs are no more effective than a placebo, and in some caseless effective. A study published in the January 2010 issue of JAMA concluded there is little evidence that SSRIs (a popular group of antidepressants that includes Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft) have any benefit to people with mild to moderate depression.4 Researchers stated:

"The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo... may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms."

The situation is similar with sleeping pills. An analysis of studies financed by the National Institutes of Health found that sleeping pills like Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata reduced the average time to go to sleep by just under 13 minutes compared with fake pills, while increasing total sleep time by just over 11 minutes – but, the participants believed they had slept longer, by up to one hour, when taking the pills. When people wake up after taking sleeping pills, they may, in fact, simply forget that they had been unable to sleep! And taking sleeping pills is well known to impair your function the following day. So unlike getting a restful night's sleep, which will leave you alert and refreshed, getting slightly more sleep (or what you think is more sleep) by taking a sleeping pill is not the same thing. It can actually lead to a sleeping pill "hangover" that may cause confusion, sleepiness and increases in falls and, as noted, automobile accidents. So what we're often seeing with the use of psychotropic medications is people pinning their hopes for relief from depression, anxiety or insomnia on drugs that may not work at all... and carry serious, potentially life-threatening, side effects. 

Chiropractic can help with overall health and when an adjustment is administered, it sends signals to the brain effecting executive function and mood.  There are also so many food based supplements that can be used to help with mood, digestion, toxicities and so many other physiological connections.

Dr. Amie Gregory, DC, CCEP, ANF is a San Francisco, CA and San Carlos, CA chiropractor that understands full body health.  She works with athletes, expectant moms, office workers and everyone else in between.  Contact our San Francisco, CA chiropractic office or San Carlos, CA chiropractic office today!

References:  British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, volume 75, Issue 4, pages 1125-1133, April 2013