• BASIC DRUG
    DISCUSSION
    Welcome to Bluelight!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Benzo Chart Opioids Chart
    Drug Terms Need Help??
    Drugs 101 Brain & Addiction
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums
  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

How many of you suffer from anxiety? And...

1:I have GAD with social anxiety but since being treated for it about 5 years ago (i think it was that long ago) i rarely suffer from either.

2: Before. I had anxiety pretty much since i had mood swings which has been forever.

3: I take clonazepam for it and it works great :) . Clonazepam is one drug that really helped me change my life for the better. I am way more outgoing, i can talk to strangers without having a heart atttack, i can go to parties without getting drunk to take the edge off the nervousnes, i have no trouble talking to any woman now and since ive been on clonazepam ive realized that all my fears and worries where unfounded. It was just me worrying about nothing that anyone else even noticed. So yeah the stuff still works despite being on it for years and it has made my life for the better.
 
i got panic disorder

i think it was brought on by a bad dxm trip

smoked pot and did drugs before and since i have started paxil 2 years ago..

drugs dont really effect panic disorder because there is no trigger and i dont normally have anxiety so when i smoke pot it doesnt increase anxiety or anything
 
Fibromyalgia is very real. Your body sends unneeded signals that manifest themselves as pain.

Lyrica slows this down or stops it altogether. As well as help with anxiety.
I take lyrica for anxiety, it works well.
 
The Seroquel is "helping" your anxiety. Seroquel makes my social anxiety worse.

Yeah I agree with this. My psychologist actually said it to me the other day too. I've recently (couple months) stopped taking it daily and my anxiety isn't as bad, clear-headedness is helpful for my kind of anxiety.

I rarely take seroquel for sleep or at all really for that matter unless I really need to anymore. And I'll just take 50mg IR. OTC promethazine (Phenergan etc) is just as good for sleep I'm finding.
 
Last edited:
^
Yeah, I tried the XR forumlation of Seroquel too, that was what I was originally prescribed actually, then went to the IRs.

I agree though, it is smoother and doesn't make you wake up feeling like someone smashed you in the head with a brick while you were sleeping like the IRs can, but I don't get too groggy from 50mg.

I didn't like the XRs because Seroquel had a dysphoric effect on me, so if I fell asleep it would be fine as I'd just be knocked out. But because I started feeling it after about 45 mins but it didn't make me drowsy for atleast 2 hours I'd get into a really shit headspace at night-time. Feels better not using it daily for sure.

Definitely do not recommend doing so unless absolutely necessary (psychosis/psychotic illness etc).
 
^ Yeah, i'm perscribed 4x 25mg seroquel IR. The first time I took 25mg I fell straight asleep for 2 hours. Now I take 50mg at night, and wake up not too bad the next day. I can imagine the XR ones being much smoother though.
 
does anyone else who has GAD experience pain pretty much all the time like burning/tingling skin or burning aching muscles?

I get the burning/tingling skin (Extreme sensitive skin). It is actually so bad that it stops me from doing certain things. So I am now back on Lyrica a day. Supposed to be taking 75mg 2x/day but I went and got another script from another doc and also get 60 150mg's but which I have to share with my 'father'. lol

Anyways, Lyrica helps a lot. I try not to take too high of a dose at once though as I notice it causes some tachycardia.
 
Always had a bit of anxiety, but I was great socially and pretty much every way possible. Anyway, yes the drugs... the drugs, they made the anxiety terrible, my skin is getting fucked up because I cant go out, paranoia and looots of social anxiety except for when Im on a ton of downers. I use alcohol and benzos as a medication for this illness, and weed and speed as a poison for it. Everything works great.
In terms of phobia, I used to have a phobia of spiders and centipedes which went away after certain recreational drug use, but I have had this mild phobia of doors and doorways, hallways, rooms, the dark, well pretty much everything since my first delirium trip + everything else after it.
I get lots of anxiety about what Ive done to myself and others, my childhood, some irrational paranoid thoughts, and the leftover visuals that may never go away. But with seroquel I dont get so anxious about the long-term visuals. I can just pass right through a part of the house without staring at it in trauma. Which is not a very smart thing to do...
 
The way i see it,is that to build confidence in yourself,you first have to analyze yourself.Get to know yourself,ask yourself questions and try to answer them.No one else can help you better when it comes to mental problems.And this is a key part in learning to understand others,because before you can find love for others,you need to find love for yourself.When you are capable of loving yourself,it's easier to get used with others showing love for you :)
ive been analyzing myself for years and years,it may work for some but it certainly has not worked for me.:(
 
1. What type of anxiety or phobia do you suffer from? I have generalized anxiety with a little social anxiety.

2. Did you start to realize your anxiety before or after you started taking drugs including prescriptions? For me it was before but it got worse after I started taking prescription drugs.

3. Are you prescribed medications as treatment and what? Yes I take medication, for awhile it was Klonopin but now I take Lyrica

So what do you think, want to answer?

1) I have recently (just in the last year) developed some very serious social anxiety.

2) It was after the majority of my drug use, but I'd been completely clean for over a year by the time my anxiety started.

3) I just got prescribed .5mg Lorazepam 3/day (which I think is too little to really have an effect, but I prefer to trust the professionals when it comes to prescription meds) and 50mg Sertraline 1/day.

I've only been medicated in this way for a little over a week so it's too early to tell a difference.
 
1) I suffer from a combo of conditions - ADHD, GAD, social anxiety, severe panic attacks (with hyperventalating), various phobias, depression, huge mood swings, migraines (most are stress / anxiety related).

2) This all started b4 any drug use (scripts and recreation

3) As you can imagine, I have quite a coctail of scripts:
ADHD - currently on adderol ~ 15 mg twice a day (I usually take 1st dose @ 8am & 2nd @ noon)
Anxiety / Depression - currently taking celexa (similar to lexapro but WAY cheaper) ~ used as a combo anti-depressant / anti-anxiety (supposed to prevent anxiety); xanax (0.5 mg) - used as needed when my anxiety spiked (was on atovan originally but I felt it only brought my anxiety down a little -- basically cut my anxiety in half instead of totally stopping the attack). I find I have less anxiety attacks with the celexa in the first place. I also feel the xanax is pretty effective in eliminating the anxiety attacks (when I get them, I feel very overwhelmed and am either weepy or super snappy / on edge - I yell or seethe a lot). My problem with the xanax is the grogginess that comes with it...
Migraines - by far the condition I've had the most trouble treating. I was suffering from 2-3 migraines/week. I've tried oral triptapans (maxalt & imitrex) ~ neither was very effective. My dr started giving me imitrex injections in his office. This was working but I'd have to sit in his waiting room for 2 hrs waiting for the shot. He perscribed the do-it-yourself version of imitrex injections. These work very well but the frequency of my migraines was still ridiculous. Dr perscribed a preventative - topomax. This was semi-effective but still not enough relief. I can't use the other type of preventative (beta blockers) because they reduce blood pressure and mine is already borderline low. Finally 3 months ago, I got my first botox treatment as a preventative. This has made ALL the difference in tje world. In the 2.5 months I went between treatments, I had a TOTAL of 3 migraines (and ony one that was super severe. I still use my imitrex injections as needed but that need has significantly reduced.
For my insomnia - ambien. Tried using my xanax but I would wake up Really groggy. Getting out of bed was a struggle for me. The ambien works for just the right amount of time & I actually feel awake in the morning instead of like a zombie. My only problem is sometimes I "wake up" in the middle of the night but I'm not really Awake. I tried to make a smoothie one time with disaterous results (blueberry on my kitchen ceiling). I've also moved furniture & picked a fight with my bf while semi-coherent.

Anyone have any other suggestions or other solutions for my myriad of conditions? I don't know what oth combos to try for my depression (slightly bipolar with the extremity of my mood swings) or my anxiety or my insomnia? Any feedback is welcome (unless it's 'u rambled on a lot.' I was trying to present as clear a picture as possible)
 
I had to stop smoking weed because I have panic attacks every single time. Social anxiety and depression, I've been on Xanax, Kpins, Ativan, Effexor, and Paxil. I developed a new worse anxiety after a seizure, constantly fearing i'll have another. None of those helped until recently I got my dr. to let me try Wellbutrin (an SNRI, instead of SSRI) and it's great. It gets me up and about, makes me feel like I can choose to be productive and helps me control the anxiety. Just gotta keep trying until you get it right.
 
I love threads like this one.

I'm really not sure what I truly have and what is iatrogenic or caused from years of taking various psych meds. I was a bit moody in my pre-teens, partly from a very close sibling's death, partly from just being a bit sensitive and possibly from inattentive ADD as well. It was tough but I think I managed... until about 14.

I was depressed and was very ashamed of admiting it because everyone seemed to think depression=sadness, which it certainly can be with melancholic depression but for me it was just feeling numb. Looking back now I wonder if this was caused from my GP prescribing me imipramine (a very old tricyclic NE and 5-HT reuptake inhibitor with horrible side-effects mostly from its antimuscarinic, alpha1-adrenergic and antihistamine properties) on top of my Dexedrine for ADD and what he thought was depression but looking back was probably just typical teenaged angst. Tricyclics are known to be dysphoric for a lot of people--that and the anxiogenic effects from both of those drugs' inhibition of NE transport, even if it wasn't the cause of the depression and anxiety, certainly didn't help matters.

Perhaps I had been a bit anxious before that, but afterward it was really quite bad. I want to say it was social anxiety but I know some people who have those problems and I'm not sure that's exactly what it was/is. Probably just a lot of embarrassment from being forced into several short-term and one longish-term psych hospitals during my first year of high-school. And then having to return to school the next year trying my damndest to avoid having to explain where I'd been the previous year and always thinking that every one knew and were treating me like I was retarded out of pity... or talking shit behind my back. Neither was probably true but instead I think my friends didn't know any of that and thought that I was being a prick so they seemed to mostly keep their distance. And I mine.

Fast forward to now and my resultingly uneven social skills, periods of self-loathing and perhaps (although this is a new feeling) quite a bit of loneliness. But then I've had some really great times, too. Fell madly in love, met some fantastic people and started to feel like life was worth living. The love ended in heartbreak, the friends moved away, I dropped out of college and moved back in with my parents and while it's sometimes difficult to keep my head above water, I'm starting to feel like everything that happened before will happen again but it's not that bad because for some odd reason I seem to be able to eventually get through it. Maybe it hasn't been the most ideal life but it sure hasn't been boring and with my ADD, that's sometimes all that matters.

A bit of schadenfreude to balance that sappy crap out with some bitterness: most of the people who gave me crap about some of that stuff when I was younger are now on antidepressants themselves.. but probably still as clueless about their own failings as they ever were. I suppose that makes me feel better knowing that these things are quite normal and I may have an advantage later in life by having faced my demons when I did.

I'm taking a lot of Ritalin (too much, probably) these days to focus on classes and not feel overwhelmed by life. I have Xanax for sleep but it's never done anything for my anxiety... just made me feel like an idiot while on it. I've been on multiple antidepressants of every single (FDA-approved) class over the years and, for me, the SSRIs and nearly every other commonly prescribed drug make everything worse.

What has helped a lot, though, are the old MAOIs -- Parnate in particular but Nardil is great for depression with anxiety. People are afraid of the overstated interactions but if you do your research and know exactly what to avoid and what will happen if you don't (in most cases a bad headache and high blood pressure but not a hypertensive crisis or brain hemmorhage unless it's a drug-drug interaction.. but even those are often exaggerated... serotonin syndrome is probably the one thing that isn't).

I tried Lyrica but didn't like the way it made me feel dizzy and it wasn't all that great for my anxiety... or whatever it is. Lamictal, another antiepileptic that has very subtle effects (and few ill-effects if you titrate the dose over a couple of weeks), was almost as good for the depression, etc. as the MAOIs but easier to manage. I think its putative effect is as an antagonist at one of the NMDA receptors so it may be helpful to those who like NMDAr antagonists like ketamine. MXE helped me get through a really rough patch recently but I'm not sure whether the effect will last. What would be nice is to find someone willing to prescribe the partial glutamate and glycine NMDA receptor agonist d-cycloserine. If you don't know about it, it's an old TB antibiotic that has had quite a bit of success with fear-extinction when combined with exposure therapy.
 
Last edited:
I have the anxiety/depression winning combo. I also go through periods where I have panic attacks. These panic attacks come out of nowhere for no apparent reason. They first started when I was a teenager. One thing I'm glad about is that I never started on Benzo's. I just deal with the panic when it comes on- yeah it sucks but these attacks don't last that long.

I have been on and off just about every SSRI and effexor for years. I make sure I give them a break and save them for real bad depressive episodes because I find they only work for like a week or 2 and then they're pretty much useless.

Physical exercise helps immensely and I think many people don't give it enough of a shot. At least 25% of people on benzo's wouldn't need them if they just started exercising vigorously every day- at least that's what I suspect.
 
Top