I was temporally prescribed metoprolol for some palpitations but also discovered it does helps with anxiety symptoms, so I still use it sometimes. At first it gave me nightmares but they stopped. I wanted to try propranolol (probably better) but I read the side effects are worse than those of metoprolol so I didn’t.
Edit: I read the side effects are basically the same, including ED.
As described at the link above, it would be inappropriate/harmful for a physician to prescribe more than a single dose of propranolol for this purpose — to be taken in concert with a therapeutic session and likely never again — but absolutely not as a take-home prescription of more than a single pill. This is the same type of prescribing regimen that we’re finding out psilocybin works with too, and you wouldn’t get a take-home supply of that either.
That you can acquire the drug readily for other medical reasons is not in any way a reason to start self-prescribing it for anxiety. Without the trauma-inducing psych session, the anti-PTSD benefit they describe has no chance to occur. And it’s a bad plan to give yourself traumatic recall flashbacks - a bad trip by any definition - without some sort of competent mental support from competent human beings.
