My doctors (I hate being a Medicare Patient) now refuse to write benzodiazepines - and they are the only class of drug which will put me down.
After a month of “bed rest - NO SLEEP”, I passed out at the computer.
I was completely out of everything (kitty was scared) for 3 days.
I’ll take my chances with Temazepam 30mg or Lunesta 3 mg or even Ambien 10 mg - the only drugs (out of several dozen tried) which actually can put me down.
That’s been my experience. Clonezepam is the only thing that works for my anxiety- I’ve tried SSRIs, Buspar, Beta Blockers, antihistamines with no effect. I had to go to 6 different doctors before finding one that would prescribe it. Guess they thought it better I harm myself or even kill myself because of my anxiety rather than risk me getting addicted to benzos.
Anyone who makes their way out of benzo dependency has a whole other perspective about what “unbearable” anxiety is, and whether they would take them again if they were given a redo. (I have never had insomnia for 3 days though.) Most people I talk to would not take anything at all once they manage to get off psy drugs if they ever can.
If you’re on a drug for anxiety it’s serious enough. You are compromised already, o/w you wouldn’t be seeking a “solution.”
What happens if you have a bad or paradoxical reaction? What happens if you have major crisis in life? Can you work now? The only thing your psychopharm will do is offer you another drug. It will probably be an anti-psychotic like seroquel or an anti depressant like remeron, or maybe gabapentin. Then you have some big decisions to make, and you’re not in the mood for that at all. Then you may be polydrugged. If you think this is far fetched, it’s no more so than the initial condition you were under. It’s just a little step to disability.
Your life may depend on the wisdom of someone who is certfied and recognized as a scientist but whose specialty is not a science at all and who is basically learning all of this as he goes along. (New drugs are coming out all the time) If anything bad happens he will not be there for you, if his judgement is going to be questioned. Then you will have an adversary and not a Dr.
I’d say keep it minor, low dose, and infrequent, whatever it is.
I have clonazepam for the “mind racing” that occasionally keeps me awake-- it mostly affects me when something has kept me up the night before, like my son being ill, and so now my bedtime schedule is off. But I don’t always take it. I have experienced the “just knowing I have it” phenomenon as well. I think, “If I’m still awake in 15 minutes, I’ll take it,” and 4 times out of 5, I calm down and fall asleep. I have a prescription for 60 .5mg pills, which I could fill every month if I needed to, and I can take up to 4 of them. I usually take one when I take it. I haven’t filled it in about four months. I probably could tell my doctor I no longer need that many (I used to have a lot more episodes when I was getting my other meds changed and adjusted more often), but I’m afraid of her asking “Do you need them at all?”
Xanax worked amazingly well for me, although I haven’t used any for probably the last nine months or so. That being said, I have heard it described, as Shagnasty mentions, as “alcohol in pill form”, and I do know people whose doctors have been unwilling to prescribe it to them.
NEVER relinquish a script for hard-to-get drugs. Of ANY kind.
I let my Clonezepam script go idle when I could get by with just the Temazepam (yes, I AM scarily familiar with these things).
I now have NO way to get to sleep except run myself to exhaustion - try going about a life while using that type of scheduling.
It’s one of the most effective drugs ever. It solves the problem so well, and makes one competent and able. But that alone is cause for a pause. Because it does this by changing your nervous system. People end up with more anxiety than they originally had, and they don’t know if thy’ll ever heal.
Here’s another aspect for you, as you’ve been on them and are not now: Kindling. It means when you try to reduce or stop a drug but give up, and reinstate the drug. The next time you try to stop, if you are so unlucky, “kindling” would mean it is even harder to do than the first time you gave up on it.
This happens with alcohol too I hear. But you don’t have to endure 2 or 3 years of tapering fractions of pills to get off of alcohol. You just stop.
Ahhh clonazepam, that stuff was seriously good. Scarily so.
That’s really tough…Have you tried all the other alternatives? Remeron as needed in small doses helps sleep. it makes you eat too though. And it may become a habit,
I just know that when I give up on any solution but the one I have my eye on as the only one, I don’t think I am giving myself and my system a chance to do something that it might have to.
Do not take this advice. There are many drugs that you can quit cold turkey, but the two main exceptions that severe, chronic users should not just stop unassisted are alcohol and benzos.
Do not take any medical advice here, including mine. Severe chronic alcoholics and long time benzo dependents are really two whole different things. The levels of functionality and physical decline are way off with these two.
But I have never heard of tapering off alcohol. Can you explain?
If you go for treatment as an alcoholic they will not taper you off. They will not serve you a drink. This is what I am referring to as “stopping”. If you are in hospital they will actually give you Librium, which coincidentally or not was the first benzo synthesized in the 50s. They may be using gabapentin too, with benzos in the news and all. But there is a reason why benzos are so useful for treating alcoholics. And it relates to why they’re so bad too. They go to similar places. As an alcoholic, when you are out of danger as far as seizures go, you will be discharged from the hospital and you will have your willpower and the rest of your life to live. You won’t have post acute benzo withdrawal syndrome for years though.
Yeah, but I’m talking about the unique effects of withdrawing from these two, not the effects of chronic use. Yes, the benzodiazepine has longer lasting effects in most cases.
But I have never heard of tapering off alcohol. Can you explain?
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I mean that you can be a hardcore heroin or Oxycontin addict and quit cold turkey. You will likely have a horrible time of it, but in most cases you will not die, given proper hydration and nourishment. The same is true of most other drug categories, save two.
Alcohol was sometimes prescribed, at least it was in the past. Medical grade ethanol, not a nice Scotch. This is not a long term solution, but was done to stave off potentially life threatening symptoms, and better methods exist.
Same with benzos, although most chronic users won’t have that many
And yes, you are correct, benzos are often prescribed for alcohol withdrawal, perhaps one of the more common ones with less short term problems than ethanol.
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=thelurkinghorror;20290819]Yeah, but I’m talking about the unique effects of withdrawing from these two, not the effects of chronic use. Yes, the benzodiazepine has longer lasting effects in most cases.
But I have never heard of tapering off alcohol. Can you explain?
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I mean that you can be a hardcore heroin or Oxycontin addict and quit cold turkey. You will likely have a horrible time of it, but in most cases you will not die, given proper hydration and nourishment. The same is true of most other drug categories, save two.
Alcohol was sometimes prescribed, at least it was in the past. Medical grade ethanol, not a nice Scotch. This is not a long term solution, but was done to stave off potentially life threatening symptoms, and better methods exist.
Same with benzos, although most chronic users won’t have that many
And yes, you are correct, benzos are often prescribed for alcohol withdrawal, perhaps one of the more common ones with less short term problems than ethanol.
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I’ve got to think they don’t give alcohol to alcoholics, at least in the modern era. If you can provide a cite I’d like to see it.
But in any case they “go on the wagon,” they abstain, and they do not take smaller and smaller doses of their drug reducing by percentages over the course of 2 or 3 years, only to go into a post withdrawal period for years after that. I’d venture if you told one of them that they had to do that, they wouldn’t bother, they’d just die. Getting off benzos, for those who do, is the hardest thing they will ever have done in their life.
Clonazepam is the only med that works for my anxiety. I’ve already told my shrink I won’t stop taking it. I’d rather be a drooling idiot than have another panic attack.
Clonazepam also works for my anxiety, better than anything else. I won’t take it though, I feel just having a few of them (0.5mg) lying around “just in case” is enough for me. I was prescribed them when I was 15 while waiting for an SSRI to kick in and they gave me withdrawal, boy was that a painful experience for a teenager to go through, smoking pot helped me ease off of that, even though pot aggravated my anxiety, I preferred the anxiety over the withdrawal symptoms. I hope that psychiatrist lost her license, putting a teenager on a benzodiazepine at age 15, 3 times a day for 6 weeks is in retrospect, the most irresponsible thing ever. I still don’t trust doctors. Meditation and learning to “not give a shit” really alleviated my anxiety, although it manifests into some mild OCD periods every now and then.
Barbituate withdrawal can be fatal too if not properly managed.
Antihistamines would be a very good anxiolitic for me because it’s hard to feel anxiety when you’re passing out. :dubious:
Sorry, didn’t see this until it got bumped.
Again, I don’t think it’s that common. Here’s one article (15 years old), and here’s an old SDMB thread.
Interesting. Benzos are basically the replacement for barbiturates, they’re kind of a relic of a certain decade just like quaaludes.
In my case, it’s Ativan. I almost never use it but it helps me to know it is there.
I tried Remeron for sleep. It made me tired, but it made me so fucking hungry, and especially for sweets, I was making myself sick eating six doughnuts in a sitting. I was on it for five days. I literally did not eat (drank water, though, lots) my first day off it. I had eaten so much on it that I wasn’t hungry for a day. The thought of food that first day off made me feel sick. One day when I was on it, I didn’t have to work, and my husband wasn’t there, and I was eating non-stop. It was scary. It’s like it totally shut off my ability to feel sated, plus the sweet tooth on steroids.
They should give it to anorexics and cancer patients.