For those of us with anxiety (hello!), the class of prescription drugs known as benzodiazepines, or benzos, can be a boon in times of crisis. Though they are addictive, they’re pretty good at chilling us out.

But it turns out that by drugging ourselves with these pills, we are inadvertently drugging wild animals as well. Especially the ones that live in water.

Our bodies don’t absorb 100 percent of the drugs we ingest, so traces of them end up in the toilet. And because sewage treatment plants usually can’t filter them all out, those compounds ultimately end up where treated sewage is released — in rivers, lakes, and coastal habitats.

This means that fish and other aquatic critters that live in these environments are, for better or worse, exposed to our meds. Basically fish are on drugs — our drugs.

What, exactly, does that mean for wildlife? That’s what a relatively new field of research is trying to figure out. And a study just published in the journal Science offers some compelling clues.

The authors gave young Atlantic salmon in Sweden a dose of clobazam — a benzo........

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