Delynn Willis had suffered from anxiety for years, but she’d always been wary of treating it with drugs like Valium and Xanax. “I didn’t want to start using anything that might lead to an addiction,” says Willis, a writer.
While traveling through Southeast Asia, she stumbled on an alternative option: a drug called phenibut (pronounced fen-uh-byoot), available over the counter as an anti-anxiety aid. A friend told her it was safer than benzodiazepines like Xanax, so she decided to give it a try.
