I'm living in the US and have been on a steady dose of Clonazepam for GAD since the 80s; except for a few years of detox and substitution with older non addicting and extremely less effective drugs a few times( notwithstanding Zoloft and time release Paxil, but they're only good for agoraphobia, and I have a combination. Also, I've been on Zoloft since 1993 and the delayed sexual evacuation due to less sensation is turning into anorgasmia as I hit my 50s and hormone levels change... And that bites the big one!)
For the past 10-15 years the drug called Pregabalin has been studied extensively and compared to differing Benzos. In all studies, once a higher threshold is reached the pregabalin is as effective as the varying Benzos!
Unfortunately here in the USA, unlike in practically the rest of the world, the drug pregabalin has not been approved at higher doses for anxiety. ( It's a for profit pharmaceutical motive combined with extremely long and costly FDA clinical trials that often after approval in the USA will give the company a short window to both recover its research costs while making big bucks for WallStreet and the executives; it ain't for the researchers, trust me because I've done research for a large Pharmaceutical company where the salespeople make higher salaries than the researchers who are coming out of college with similar degree levels).
Anyway, I digress!
....back to topic, sorry.
After years of combining Clonazepam with gabapentin, in order to keep the Clonazepam doseage lower, I finally got my doc to start me on pregabalin at the anxiolytic dosage level last year.
I would urge you to plead with your doc, and insurance company, to let you try and slowly escalate up to at least 450mg per day of pregabalin instead of just going online for more Benzos! This is, if it's going to be a long term thing like it has and always will be with me. Pregabalin is very effective for GAD, and a tolerance with a desire to keep getting high by taking more does not develop. In clinical studies published on Pubmed over the past 10+ years, pregabalin is the ONLY drug which one will find being as effective for anxiety using both short and intermediate acting Benzos; not even SSRIs over the past 26 plus years share that distinction!
I love the feeling that a Benzo gives me and wish there were no long term side effects, but a recent study indicates that long term Benzo use may be associated with a greater risk for developing alzheimers. Pregabalin is newer and not as well studied but it does not get me high and make me want more and then to wish I could increase the dosage because it feels less effective. It may very well also turn out that pregabalin could dispose long term users with anxiety to a higher risk of Alzheimer's, but time will tell and in the meantime one does not need to struggle with Benzo tolerance issues. Plus, pregabalin's biggest side effect is weight gain, and having been there on other non addicting Meds in the past such as Triavil, I can say that the weight gain "urge" given from taking pregabalin is no where near as strong and uncontrollable as with a neuroleptic such as the trilafon and the tricyclic that are the two constituents of the 1960s non addicting anxiety creation called Triavil; nor strong at all like with Hydroxizine, and low levels of thioridazine... A few more as well but they also fall into the neuroleptic or tricyclic classes of drugs.
If you need to be on an anxiolytic all the time and an SSRI will not do it all, as with myself, go the route of pregabalin before starting on a new Benzo( unless of course you just want to use the new Benzo as occasional "hamburger helper" for how messed up life can be with chronic anxiety!) Pregabalin is a C5 in the USA, BUT that's an overly cautious designation when compared to a C4 such as a Benzo. They might as well schedule Dextromethorphan as a C5 if they think that one will get high and abuse pregabalin
