• Posted November 17, 2025

Hit HBO Series Doubled Internet Searches For An Addictive Benzodiazepine

Life imitates art, the saying goes, but does that extend to TV depictions of prescription drug misuse?

The last season of the HBO hit series "The White Lotus" might have inadvertently increased interest in a powerful anti-anxiety medication, a new study says.

Internet searches regarding lorazepam doubled following the series’ third season, which started airing in February, researchers reported Nov. 14 in JAMA Health Forum.

This increase was not observed for other commonly prescribed benzodiazepines like alprazolam or clonazepam, which weren’t mentioned on the show, researchers said.

“We saw significant increases in searches related to acquiring lorazepam,” said senior researcher Eric Leas, an assistant professor at the University of California-San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science.

“It shows that there might be a subset of people that are actually wanting to figure out how to obtain that medication online,” Leas added in a news release.

One of the characters on the show, Victoria Ratliff, takes lorazepam to help with social anxiety and sleep problems.

Her husband, Timothy, starts sneaking her pills to cope with the stress of a financial scandal that’s brewing back home while he’s on vacation in Thailand.

“Not only would he take it, but he would also combine it with alcohol, which we know is very dangerous,” lead researcher Dr. Kevin Yang said in a news release. He’s a resident physician of psychiatry at the UC-San Diego School of Medicine.

Both characters become visibly loopy taking lorazepam, slurring their words, slumping into sleep at the dinner table and staggering as they walked.

For the new study, researchers analyzed Google search data for lorazepam, alprazolam and clonazepam from January 2022 through June 2025.

They found that searches regarding lorazepam spiked by an extra 1.6 million for a 12-week period after the third season of "The White Lotus" began – levels nearly 99% higher than would be expected given prior search trends.

Searches indicating an attempt to acquire lorazepam also increased to levels nearly 64% higher than usual, representing an additional 30,000 searches.

“For the treatment of anxiety, lorazepam is typically prescribed for the short term because long-term use can lead to tolerance and dependence as well as misuse,” Yang said. “Studies have shown that almost 1 in 5 people who are prescribed benzodiazepines eventually end up misusing them.”

Yang said he’s particularly concerned that the show didn’t fully explore the risks of taking lorazepam, such as addiction or overdose.

“It didn't really portray any of the adverse effects that might come from taking too much or from stopping it all of a sudden,”  he said.

In the future, shows depicting drug use might consider includings warnings at the beginning and the end of each episode, to better inform impressionable viewers, Yang said.

Viewers also can help themselves by approaching depictions of drug use with some skepticism, he added.

”My suggestion would be to take everything that is portrayed in the media, whether that's on TV, film or in music, with a grain of salt,” Yang said. “It's only showing one aspect of the medication, and that there are possible downsides. But ultimately, for things like medications, it's important to talk with your doctor.”

More information

American Addiction Centers has more on benzodiazepine addiction.

SOURCES: University of California-San Diego, news release, Nov. 14, 2025; JAMA Health Forum, Nov. 14, 2025