What’s in the sleeping pills? A lot of OTC sleep aids are nothing more than an antihistamine like diphenhydramine or doxylamine. I don’t think you need to worry about any dangerous interactions, but you might find yourself in a bit of a stupor in the morning, esp. if you’re not in the habit of taking either the Klonapin or the OTC sleepies. I think doxylamine is what’s in Nyquil, and that stuff puts me on my butt.
I’ve read and been told that Klonapin gradually takes effect and does not wear off too rapidly so as to cause one to “crash” so hard when the effect diminishes. Maybe it just needs some time? I guess it’s an obvious thing to say, but don’t mess around with dose unless you clear it with your doc. Good luck, and I hope you get some R&R!
Hey dollface,
Since you don’t drink, benedryl and vodka probably not your cup of…well, not tea…
But let me tell you about Ambien…ah, beautiful Ambien. If I ever have a daughter, her name is going to be Ambienne.
No matter how enormous the crappitude of your day, your evening will be calm and peaceful. 5mg and 8 hours later, the world is your oyster.
Oysters, now that sounds good, too!
When you say you didn’t notice much of an effect, are you speaking of a decrease in anxiety or feeling “drugged?” Klonopin won’t make you feel drugged. It takes away bad feelings, but doesn’t necessarily provide good ones, if you know what I mean. How much did you take? I hope you bought the generic.
I’ll second what Loopydude said about clonazepam not coming on immediately after the first or even second dose. I was first prescribed it when I was having some pretty intense anxiety, and I took 1 mg as soon as I got home. I waited for some kind of fluffy feeling - or at least a release from the anxiety - but it didn’t come, not after 20 minutes, not after an hour. (Clonazepam tends to take longer than 20 minutes to start working.) I did feel a bit better, though. It was only the next day when the anxiety left me and I briefly felt a bit warm-fuzzy, if only because the anxiety was gone.
I’ll also second what KidCharlemagne said about it not making you feel too drugged. Having taken a lot of other benzos (e.g. Xanax, Ativan, Serax, and the sleep ones such as Dalmane and Restoril), Klonopin (and Ativan) are the most subtle of the bunch, IMO. Of course, if you go and take a whole bunch, you’ll get stoned.
IANAD or pharmacist or pharamcologist or anything like that, but taking an OTC sleep aid shouldn’t cause a problem. It’s alcohol you have to avoid (but you don’t drink anyway). An antihistamine-based sleep aid would probably be OK. An overly cautious pharmacist might warn you to be careful, though. They always do. So you didn’t hear it from me. It could be that after you start feeling the Klonopin, you won’t need sleep aids.
Finally, if they’re pink, they’re probably 1 mg. Orange is 0.5 mg, white is generally 2 mg. That should be more than enough to wash away your worries for 12 hours or so. Again, once you “get into” clonazepam, if you start feeling loopy at work, then what I’d do is halve the morning dose to 0.5 mg.
So, I can’t take them just “when needed,” I should take them 3x a day, like it says on the bottle?
The pills are a bright, pretty pink. My friend David says that pink or beige pills should be taken with red wine, and blue or white pills with white wine or champagne.
OK, here’s the deal with booze and benzos: They act synergistically on the GABAnergic system of your brain, and the combination can pack quite a wallop. If done in extreme moderation, it’s probably not a big deal, but it doesn’t take much to go overboard.
Sad example: A patient of my mother’s (no names, I have no idea who this is), a patient who swore up and down she had no alcohol issues, was prescribed some Klonapin to help with social anxiety (SSRIs and Effexor gave her terrible side-effects, so she said). Well, Klonapin did wonders for her, and as soon as she started feeling better, she wanted to, well, be social.
So, she goes to the old watering hole with a girlfriend, takes an extra tab of Klonapin just before for bravery, and drinks what she claimed was well under her limit. She got real happy, real fast, and wound up doing the walk of shame the next day with a guy she never met before. She had absolutely no recollection of going home with him, barely remembered him chatting her up the night before, and wound up so horrified by the experience she quit the Klonapin cold turkey. This gave her terrible withdrawl side-effects and caused a terrible case of rebound anxiety that nearly got the woman hosipitalized.
Oh, just so I don’t misrepresent my Mom (who I consider a clinician of the highest caliber):
This patient was told in no uncertain terms to NOT drink while on the Klonapin. She wasn’t told “well, you can have a little”, or “have a drink, but stay home”, or any such thing. She was told “NO BOOZE, PERIOD.” It’s pretty frustrating for the prescriber when the prescribed-to won’t follow orders. The reason I know this story is because my Mom was stressing about the whole thing one day when I was over for a visit, after things got really bad for the patient.
I always worry with stuff like this that I’m leaving something out:
As for dosing: Talk to your doc before you do anything that isn’t prescribed. If your instructions are to take it 3x a day, do that, unless you’re cleared to do otherwise. Obviously the story I related above is a worst-case kind of scenerio, but it happened because the patient was told to do one thing, and then went and did another thing anyway. Worse, the subsequently quit taking the drug without telling anyone, and the next thing my mother knew her patient is sick and having panic attacks. If the patient has simply spoken to my Mom at any point during the ordeal, she would have saved herself a lot of heartache and not given my mother grey hairs.
Benzos cause rapid down-regulation of certain GABA receptors in the brain, and that’s a big part of why patients develop such rapid tolerance to them. If there are fewer GABA receptors around, your brains own natural inhibitory signals are going to work worse for a while than before taking the drug, which is why it’s very important to taper. If you get used to a particular dose and then just quit taking it, the withdrawl effects can be both physically and emotionally quite uncomfortable.
Talk to your doc before doing anything that isn’t prescribed. It’s just the right thing to do.
Eve, honey, I was prescribed clonazepam (0.5 mg t.i.d.) when I was sober, before my three-year slip. I had a revolving scrip of sorts, in that I didn’t tell my shrink at the time that I was drinking again.
Benzos + alcohol = guaranteed blackout. More benzos + more alcohol = overdose.
Benzos have a high safety profile in overdose except when mixed with alcohol.
But then, I was usually taking Klonopin in the day to get over the DT shakes, and then I’d go home and drink. But if I took one while drinking, I’d have entire evenings with phone calls and food orders and men whose faces I don’t even remember.
I still stayed on clonazepam after I got sober, to get over the withdrawal, then tapered off it for a while. My anxiety came back about six months later (therefore not rebound anxiety), so I went back on it. I don’t black out on it, or anything else I take, anymore.
Just be careful. 1 mg t.i.d. prn (as needed) is a pretty heavy prescription. See if you can do 1 (or even 0.5) mg in the morning, and 1 mg in the evening. The less, the better.
Klonopin is definitely an “as needed” drug. It’s not like an anti-biotic, ssri or anti-convulsant where the point is to keep the blood level stable. 3 x a day is a bit much considering it has a 12 hour half-life. When you feel anxiety that you just can’t deal with, chew your dose for quicker onset because it has virtually no taste. Try and do without a sleeping aid because Klonopin will usually do the trick. Ambien is just a benzo engineered for a 4 hour half-life so you don’t feel groggy in the morning.
Problem is, when I take Ambien, I sleep for exactly 4 hours, even if I would have slept longer without it. Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) makes me incredibly dehydrated and very hungover; I prefer a short-term benzo like Ambien if I really need to sleep. And like Scott Evil said, drinking on Klonopin will produce a blackout the likes of which you have never seen. I don’t blackout from just drinking booze, but I have blacked out twice after a night of drinking having taken Klonopin that afternoon.
In both cases I have over 5 hours completely missing from memory. Not even the vaguest clue of where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing. In both cases, I apparently didn’t appear drunk for the first couple of hours.
Wow, I just read somewhere that Klonopin has a half-life of 18-50 hours, depending on the person/circumstances. Can’t trust them damn P-pharms on anything.
I’m sure this has all been said before, but be careful with K-pin. Benzos are strong stuff, and highly addictive. Good luck, and I hope it helps–use it, don’t let it use you.
Oh, and I personally wouldn’t recommend driving on benzos, under any circumstances. You should probably ask a doctor or pharmacist about your particular drug situation, though.
At low doses you’re fine and like I said, you really wouldn’t need it three x daily. In some cases a low dose(.5mg) could help your driving if it calms the chatter in your mind that distracts you from the task. Unlike booze, if you’re impaired to drive, you’ll know it.
Just don’t make Klonopin a habit, Eve. Don’t just take it by default and don’t take it preemptively. Take it when you need it and only when you need it. Or want it. It’s also a good idea to take a break once in a while. Be sure to monitor yourself for a serious downturn in short term memory or forgetting where you were in the middle of a sentence. That’s the klonopin at work.
A) Talk to your doctor.
B) Have a nice chat on the subject with your doctor.
C) Did I mention to discuss this with your doctor?
D) Oh, another thing: A great source of advice about your prescription is your doctor.
And to conclude:
E) If you don’t know the answer, before all else, ASK YOUR DOCTOR.
Again, once you “get into” clonazepam, if you start feeling loopy at work, then what I’d do is halve the morning dose to 0.5 mg.
It’s also a good idea to take a break once in a while. Be sure to monitor yourself for a serious downturn in short term memory or forgetting where you were in the middle of a sentence. That’s the klonopin at work.