In Cuba, the anti-anxiety pill is now sold retail, like a cigarette or a candy
14ymedio, Havana, Natalia López Moya, May 28, 2026 — In the cardboard box, placed on the floor of a doorway as if it were an improvised counter, the blister packs of pills form an unsettling geometry. There are white, pink, green, and yellow tablets, lined up with pharmacy-like neatness, but without lab coats, prescriptions, or questions. Off to one side, a woman smokes while sitting on a low stool, her body slumped forward and her eyes fixed on the movement of passersby. She does not seem to be hiding. Nor does she need to. In today’s Cuba, even controlled medications have learned to sell themselves in broad daylight.
Alprazolam, internationally known as Xanax, a powerful short-acting benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety and panic attacks, has become part of the black-market landscape. It no longer appears only in discreet WhatsApp messages or whispered offers between acquaintances. Now it is hawked on the street alongside loose cigarettes, candy, lighters, and packages of adulterated coffee. What is also new is the retail sale: there is no need to buy the whole blister pack. For 50, 60, or 80 pesos, depending on the place and the buyer’s urgency, anyone can take a pill for the road.
“Take your little pill for the road, don’t leave without this, this helps you live”
The phenomenon is repeating itself in increasingly visible places. On Tulipán Street in Nuevo Vedado; beneath the arcades of Carlos III and Reina in Central Havana; or at the Tejas intersection in Cerro, where everything seems to converge — electric tricycles, street cries, exhaustion, and survival — drug sellers have found their clientele. There are no signs or display cases, but neither is there much concealment. One only has to approach, look at the merchandise spread out over cardboard or inside an open shopping bag, and ask. Sometimes not even that: the sales pitch comes to meet you.
Chanting the name of a four-syllable product is not easy. To the brevity of “peanuts” and the cadence of “coconut candy” there has now arrived a rougher music: “alprazolam, alprazolam.” Or, with more salesmanship: “Take your alprazolam, one or two, however many you want.” Near Boyeros, a woman added an even more brutally honest hook: “Take your little pill for the road, don’t leave without this, this helps you live.” The phrase, spoken as casually as someone offering cold water or a croquette sandwich, sums up the country’s emotional state better than any statistic could.
Self-medication, which was always a risk, has become a refuge
There are no published official studies measuring how widespread the consumption of alprazolam bought through clandestine networks has become. Nor are many figures needed to notice that the drug has settled into the routine of a population worn down by blackouts, inflation, uncertainty, and the lack of specialized mental health care. Self-medication, which was always a risk, has become a refuge. A chemical sanctuary, cheap per dose but costly in its consequences.
Cuba has reached a point where, on the way to work or school, someone can buy a cigarette or a pill to endure the day with equal ease. And the gravest thing is not that alprazolam is being sold on the street, but that hearing the street cry advertising it no longer surprises anyone.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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