Xanax Found in More DUI Stops

Hillsborough sheriff's Deputy Larry Morrell pulled over the 26-year-old woman after she crashed into an apartment gate on Brandon's Regency Avenue.

He shined a light in her eyes and asked her to track its movement. She couldn't.

"It looked like a pingpong game going on with her eyes," Morrell said.

Typically, only an extremely inebriated driver would fail the test so badly, he said.

But the woman's breath test showed a blood alcohol content of just 0.09 percent, slightly above the 0.08 level at which the state presumes impairment.

So while processing her arrest, Morrell asked her whether she had taken any drugs.

Yes, she admitted. She'd been at a party at a hotel in Brandon and had taken some Xanax, a prescription antianxiety pill.

Law enforcement officers increasingly encounter drivers impaired by dangerous combinations of alcohol and Xanax.

In Pinellas County last year, it was the most commonly detected prescription drug among those arrested for impaired driving, according to the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office, which tracks the statistics. The drug was found in 177 drivers suspected of driving under the influence.

That's a sharp increase from 1998, when the drug turned up in just four cases. Then, experts say, doctors were writing prescriptions much less frequently.

The drug isn't as potent as methadone, and not as well known as painkillers like OxyContin. But it is widely prescribed and reacts so strongly with alcohol that people taking Xanax become incapacitated with fewer drinks.

The drug, known generically as alprazolam , exacerbates alcohol's intoxicating effect.

"One plus one may equal three or more," said Dr. Raphael Miguel, the program director of pain medicine at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

A drug on the rise

Xanax, also used to treat panic disorders, gives users a feeling of euphoria, said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, a toxicologist and director of forensic medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

"That's why it's abused," he said.

The pills can be bought from friends who have prescriptions or illegally from an online pharmacy advertising "Anxiety Drugs with Discounts this Week!!!" But the drug is widely available legally, too.

Alprazolam is the fifth-most-commonly prescribed drug in America, according to data from IMS Health, a health care information company. In 2006, 37.5 million presprescriptions for it were dispensed, up from 29.9 million in 2002.

"People aren't any more anxious," Goldberger said. "But patients are being prescribed more and more medication in the past decade."

Miguel prescribes Xanax infrequently, but when he does, he tells patients about the drug's anesthetic effect, which can cause fuzzy memories, and warns them that the pills may make them drowsy.

"I prefer to start them on a weekend when they don't have job responsibilities, so they get a good idea of how they're going to feel on the medication," he said.

Patients starting on the drug may take doses of 0.25 or 0.5 milligrams, Miguel said.

Those doses can seem far less potent than the 80- or 160-milligram doses of OxyContin, a frequently abused painkiller, making it easy for someone to take too much of it.

"Doctors prescribe it for three times a day, but for patients with true anxiety, that's not enough, so they end up popping it four or five times a day," Miguel said. "It's easy to spill over into the next effect of oversedation."

Last year, 456 people overdosed on alprazolam, according to a report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, making it the fourth-most common cause of overdose, after cocaine, methadone and oxycodone, the generic name for OxyContin.