Benzos are bottom of the barrel drugs as far as I'm concerned.
The fact that they are still regularly prescribed by some doctors to the elderly (for no other good reason than to get them off their face) is borderline criminal.
They are horribly addictive and withdrawal can kill, as can OD and mixing with anything else has potential to kill, so clearly they aren’t without issues. But when used in a measured way I found them to be lovely.
I’ve never taken Xanax though, it’s a lot longer lasting than the stuff I tried.
I also tried etizolam, which has a half-life around 3.5 hours, but its active metabolite has a half-life around 8, so the effect tended to hang around a bit into the next day. Apparently flutazolam also has an active metabolite that lives longer ... but it never seemed apparent.
At the time both of these were freely and legally importable into the UK where I lived. This is no longer the case, and that's probably for the best - RC benzo use was getting to epidemic levels.
(incidentally, reading up on this, I have realised that xanax is not a lot longer lasting as I initially said, it's actually pretty short acting for a benzodiazepine, around 1.5-2x as long as flutazolam AFAICT)