You prepared all month for this presentation in front of senior management. You know all the lines, all the slides, and you practiced your hand gestures like your job depended on it. The confidence you built up all morning quickly dissolves in your sweat from anxiety as soon as you stand center stage.
Everyone deals with it, except maybe you don’t have to. A pill that’s used to treat heart disease, Propranolol, can help eliminate all the anxiety you’ll feel before a big presentation. Jason Smoller, a classical musician who uses it before performances, says “The best way to describe it is it feels like nothing,” Smoller said. “It’s just me, the same me that might be at a bar with my friends, but I happen to be doing something that is a high-pressure thing like playing an important solo with an orchestra or auditioning for a job I really want.”
The pill increases performance and reduces anxiety by blocking adrenaline. The US doctor’s who are willing to prescribe it, despite no long-term studies of the pill, say patients need to experiment the effects before your presentation or interview. Dr. John Worthington says “If you have your biggest job interview ever with Google, I wouldn’t recommend taking it for the first time that morning.”
[via Business Insider]
Small problem - if you take it with Addy, vyvanse, Ritalin etc it can kill you
K pins or gtfo
Slightly concerning that doctors are prescribing it without any form of long term evidence.
Just to clarify, taking propranolol for anxiety in combination ADHD meds won’t kill you. If you take propranolol for high blood pressure, ADHD meds can cancel out that benefit. Also as far as long term safety data, propranolol has been out for decades and is very safe, especially at the lower doses used for treating anxiety.