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Anxious about a speech? A startup wants you to pop a minty cardiac drug
- eesmith 9y agoThe title itself shows the worry. "Anxious about a speech" is not the same as social anxiety. For me, if I'm anxious about a speech then I practice it. For a talk at a conference I usually practice about 10 times. It's a lot more work than taking a beta blocker. But notice that "Kick wants to become a telemedicine platform that makes it easy for nearly anyone who needs a confidence boost — before a first date, perhaps, or a big work presentation — to get a prescription for propranolol." The reason I'm anxious is because I need to figure out how to piece everything together, and practice saying the words so they come smoothly and coherently. This sort of anxiety isn't fixed with a chemical confidence boost but by practice. Certainly there are people with social anxiety where a drug helps. A friend of mine took beta blockers before a big test because they stressed him out so much. The company which sells the drug also wants to be the company which provides tele-medicine services to people who want the drug; it will surely be hard to resist the inventive to work with doctors who over-prescribe. "He envisions reaching not just people nervous about public speaking, but those who are shy. Or who fear going to the dentist. Or flying on a plane." Movies and TV shows have taught me that the traditional self-medication for the last case is alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_courage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_courage . :)