Will medication cure or help my stutter?

There are no federally-approved medications to treat stuttering directly. Some clinical trials have occurred with dopaminergic and serotonergic drugs; often, these trials result in unacceptable side effects), provide only very small differences in fluency, and/or work only for a fraction of study participants.

One medical avenue that some people who stutter avail of is anti-anxiety medication such as Xanax or Zoloft. These medications do not directly act on stuttering, but rather help reduce the individual’s anxious response to interactions in which they might stutter. Even this use of medication is not a cure for stuttering - it simply reduces anxiety, and thereby helps to control a spike in stuttering that may occur as a result of anxiety. People who use anti-anxiety medication may still stutter, even heavily.