The Pill That Women Are Taking for Everything From Speeches to First Dates

At this year’s Academy Awards, actress Rachel Sennott’s red carpet advice was “Take that beta blocker, girl. Swallow it down and lock in.” Her sound bite became a sort of rallying cry for women, who report experiencing anxiety disorders at higher rates than men. Reality star Paige DeSorbo and comedian Hannah Berner, who host the popular podcast Giggly Squad, sold a “Beta Blockers” baseball cap last year to promote their show. DeSorbo has spoken candidly about being introduced to beta blockers while experiencing anxiety on tour; the duo have since praised the medication on-air many times over. DeSorbo declined to speak for this story. Representatives for Sennott and Berner did not respond to requests for comment.

Where other beta blockers focus on specific parts of the body, propranolol “affects beta receptors in the heart and everywhere else in the body, including the brain,” according to Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, an academic psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine.

“The effects on the brain are the effects that cause the decrease of anxiety,” Ghaemi says.

Compared to benzodiazepines, such as Xanax or Valium, propranolol is considered nonaddictive and is among the “mildest variety of anti-anxiety medication,” he says, but it is not without risk. Because propranolol works to reduce blood pressure and heart rate, if you reduce it too much, the person could faint.

When pharmaceuticals cross over into popular culture, prescriptions reliably rise. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing: As GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have proliferated in the U.S., for instance, obesity rates have fallen, if only slightly. But are nervous jitters really enough to merit medical intervention?

“You don’t need to avoid everything in life that makes you nervous—some nerves are good,” says Fisher, the bride. She recently put out a call on TikTok for other brides to weigh in on whether they’d tried it and would recommend it.

“Certainly there is pushback saying, ‘If you need to medicate yourself, why even have a wedding?’ ” she says. “I know it’s something I can most likely handle without the assistance. It almost seems like a cheat code, if you will.”

ANNABELLE TREADWELL, 23, says she decided to ask for a prescription after watching a 2022 episode of The Kardashians, where Khloé Kardashian said she takes beta blockers prescribed to her mom for anxiety. “I was like, OK. This is a real thing.”

After a quick telehealth appointment, Treadwell says she received a prescription for propranolol. She was a college junior at the time and says the medication helped her with both schoolwork and social gatherings.

“It just helps me relax and actually perform well rather than worrying about performing well,” says Treadwell, who graduated in May and works in software sales in Dallas. She says she typically takes the medication twice a week.

Telehealth has quickly become a standard part of healthcare, making it easier than ever to get prescription medications. Alongside that, social-media influencers have normalized open discussion about the use of many medications, from GLP-1s to beta blockers. Online advertisements and endorsements have led people to seek out specific treatments and medications like never before.

Several women who spoke to WSJ. Magazine said they requested a propranolol prescription from a telehealth provider. They described a quick and easy process, typically involving a questionnaire about how their anxiety manifests and some self-reported vitals. Days later, a bottle of propranolol arrived at their doorstep.

Some of the women said that the Giggly Squad podcast hosts piqued their interest in beta blockers. The show has also captured the attention of the telehealth company Kick Health. “Giggly Squad said beta blockers. We said: Say less. 100% online. Fast shipping. Real calm,” reads a recent Instagram post from the company, whose website promotes its sleep and performance-anxiety prescription treatments.

Kick Health founder and CEO Justin Ip said that the company has “helped tens of thousands of people succeed in situations they never thought possible.”

“As pop culture talks about performance anxiety more openly, it’s important to remember this is a real medical condition, not a personal failing,” Ip said in an email.

Kaelyn Dannenfelser, 29, says she was served an ad for Kick Health on Instagram after listening to a Giggly Squad episode where DeSorbo discussed her stressful experience filming a cameo for Love Island this summer.

Dannenfelser, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, says she’d struggled with performance anxiety at her influencer marketing job, so Kick Health’s messaging appealed to her. The company’s website says beta blockers can take people from “ ‘panic-mode’ to operating with ‘ice in your veins’ in any stressful situation.”

“I just filled out a quick health questionnaire. It was like, ‘Great, you’re a good fit for beta blockers,’ ” Dannenfelser says. A doctor messaged her through the platform with instructions about how the medication works.

About a week later, she says, they were in her mailbox. The pills “completely helped,” she says. “I’m a huge believer.”

Ghaemi says he didn’t believe it was practical to prescribe propranolol through telehealth. “If you’re not physically in the room to touch the patient and check the pulse, there’s no way you can really know [if it’s right].” He also noted that the medication can be particularly dangerous for people with asthma or diabetes because it can mask early symptoms of an attack or exacerbation.

Alta Bloom, a 25-year-old risk analyst in Boston, says she googled where to obtain a prescription for beta blockers after first hearing about the medication on social media and then hearing how they’d helped a friend with work-related anxiety. The telehealth company Hers popped up.

“It was so easy to get a prescription,” she says. She had to fill out a questionnaire and share her blood pressure. “You could kind of fudge that, if you wanted to, which was a little bit scary,” Bloom says. “There was really no verification to prove that was your blood pressure.”

Dr. Dan Lieberman, the head of mental health at Hims & Hers, said that “while doctors must frequently rely on self-reported information, propranolol is neither a controlled substance nor a high-risk treatment, especially at the low dose of 20 mg.”

He said that practitioners on the Hims & Hers platform conduct “a professional risk-benefit analysis for each customer.”

Bloom calls the pills a “total game-changer,” and that the effects have been lasting. She says she’s been tapering her use, since she now knows she’s capable of calmly delivering a presentation.

“It has really eased my mental anxiety,” she says. “Because now I’m not as worried about having to deal with the physical reaction.”

WHILE DOCTORS legally prescribe medicines for off-label use all the time, there is little clinical trial research showing the effectiveness of beta blockers for treating anxiety.

In the U.K., where propranolol is licensed to treat anxiety, it’s been more scrutinized. In October, the General Pharmaceutical Council, which regulates British pharmacies, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, said that pharmacists should be aware of the risks of propranolol overdose and take measures to safeguard against it, such as prescribing smaller quantities. In 2020, the U.K.’s independent Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch investigated the potential toxicity of propranolol. In 2023, a 17-year-old girl died in England following a propranolol overdose. (Also in her system were a prescribed amount of an SSRI and a pain-reliever medication.)

In the U.S., musician and model Delilah Belle Hamlin, the daughter of actors Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin, has said that propranolol played a part in her 2021 accidental overdose. In an Instagram video that year, she says she was overprescribed propranolol, which she was taking multiple times a day, and ended up in the hospital after taking it with Benadryl. She also described being dependent on Xanax. Hamlin declined to comment.

“We know that people are more anxious,” says Charlotte Archer, who last year co-authored a research review showing that there’s a lack of robust trial data to support that beta blockers effectively reduce anxiety patterns. “There’s probably more people that go to their GP to talk about their anxiety. There’s a bit less stigma around it. And we also know that it’s actually really hard—certainly in the U.K.—for people to access what we call talking therapies or psychological therapies.” That, she says, leaves general practitioners with few options but to write a prescription. Archer says beta blockers can be an appealing choice for people who don’t want to take mood-altering drugs.

Brooke Sanders, a 24-year-old molecular neuroscientist in St. Petersburg, Florida, says she was prescribed the medication by a psychiatrist to treat her anxiety and mental-health struggles. She says she was told it could be taken as needed, and later for everyday use.

Sanders noticed she began losing circulation in her feet. After eight months of seeing various specialists and going to the ER, she was diagnosed with Raynaud’s disease, which can reduce blood flow to extremities. While the propranolol didn’t cause the condition, she says it was worsened by the medication.

“It’s interesting to see people’s attitudes of taking this medication with not as much consideration for other aspects of their health,” Sanders says. “It’s not a controlled substance. It’s not traditionally addictive or a medication that causes dependence, so people are more willing to take it.”

Kylie Darling, a 21-year-old social-media manager and influencer in Salt Lake City, says Giggly Squad put the term beta blocker on her radar. Leading up to her wedding this July, she was experiencing a lot of anxiety and nausea. She popped a beta blocker for the first time on her wedding day, about 30 minutes before walking down the aisle.

“A lot of people say they black out during that, but I remember all of it,” Darling says. “And I just felt so calm.”

Write to Sara Ashley O’Brien at sara.obrien@wsj.com