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Benzos Never thought this day would come - I'm becoming dependent on xanax

Pinkpuff

Pinkpuff

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Messages
570
My tolerance hasn't increased yet, I'm still at .5 mg that I started off with a long time ago. Before December of 2010, I was fine and only took it once in a while. From then on, after a traumatic experience, I wasn't really able to go more than 2 or 3 days without it. I was finally getting better in the end of February and went a whole week without it a couple of times, but I got worse after that and now my anxiety is the worst that it's ever been whenever I don't take it. I can tell I'm slowly getting addicted, so I need to stop this now.

I'm going to go on antidepressants (I have an appointment with my psychiatrist next week), but it takes some time for them to actually start working. I don't want things to get worse with the xanax in the meantime though, so do I have any options here? I feel so weak and I can never tough it out for longer than 1 or 2 days. And those days are completely shitty. I was thinking of going on another anti-anxiety medication that isn't as addictive, would that work? At least so I don't get completely hooked on the xanax while I wait for the antidepressants to work.

Give me some advice and some hope here guys, I'm feeling really lost.
 
when are you taking it? do you have constant anxiety? klonopin is longer acting and generally a little less reinforcing. but you can't get any of this until you see your doctor, so ask him/her. but i do not really get it. .5mg of xanax saves your whole day? and any day without a .5mg dose of xanax is horrible? just make sure you are not building up this idea of addiction in your head.

smart move pulling the plug before things get out of control.
 
when are you taking it? do you have constant anxiety? klonopin is longer acting and generally a little less reinforcing. but you can't get any of this until you see your doctor, so ask him/her. but i do not really get it. .5mg of xanax saves your whole day? and any day without a .5mg dose of xanax is horrible? just make sure you are not building up this idea of addiction in your head.
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Agreed, it could be a lot worse, that's for sure. 0.5mg Xanax isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, so a lot of it may indeed be in your head. You shouldn't have too much of a problem getting of that dosage if you do a nice easy taper with Klonopin (clonazepam) or even Valium (diazepam).

You'll be able to pull through it quite easily, good luck!
 
share all of this with your p-doc next week. until then, stay the course. it will make it easier for your p-doc to assess a baseline. he will want to see you at your worst to understand how severe your issues are. after that, take the meds he prescribes the way he prescribes them and see what happens.

some of the newer anti-depressants, like Lexapro, kick in really quickly, like within a week for some people.

if you've suffered a trauma, the single most effective treatment for PTSD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Your shrink will not be the person to provide this type of counseling, but he can make a referral. CBT takes effort, but it is a proven long term and safe solution for your issues.
 
It's comforting to hear that I shouldn't be too worried. I might be overthinking it a bit, but I just don't get why my days have been so bad.

Now I have constant anxiety because of the xanax. I'm scared of going outside, that's how bad it gets when I don't take it. I haven't gone out sober in weeks. And when I'm at home, I'm constantly super paranoid about stupid stuff, like "Oh no, why is my foot hurting, what if something happens?"

Basically, I usually try to tough out the anxiety first, so I normally don't take it in the morning. It lasts me the whole day if I take it in the afternoon (although by nighttime it wears off so I have a lot of trouble sleeping and usually have to take Ambien). On the days that I take it in the morning, it ends up wearing off - sometimes I can tough it out, sometimes I need to take another one, but the latter doesn't happen too often.

And yes, pretty much most days are horrible when I don't take it. On and off anxiety for no reason at all throughout the day...

I'm seeing my general doctor (who gives me my xanax prescription) tomorrow for a checkup, so I'm going to talk to him about putting me on something else to taper off the xanax. It's not my psychotherapist who prescribes me the xanax, I've only seen him for the first time a couple of months ago so I could get a diagnosis to send to my insurance for them to cover my therapy sessions (health insurance sucks, btw...). Next week I'm seeing him to talk about going on antidepressants.
 
You have a case of operant conditioning. Basically you have reinforcers (positive) and punishments. You'v developed a phobia/fear of something after a traumatic experience and then you turned to xanax to cause you to avoid this fear. By avoiding the fear you are increasing the amount of anxiety you have towards it more and more as time increases. Your xanax is reinforcing you in a way that it makes u feel less anxious and avoids the fear, but because of this.. the punishment is becoming even greater , i.e anxiety of the fear, so your causing your fear to grow and grow by constantly avoiding it.

What you need to really do is find a therapist, one that will work with you, one that cares, one that will possibly go somewhere with you to help face your fear, whatever it is.

There are two ways you can do this. One is a step-by-step approach and the other is called implosion.

Basically if ur fear is elevators, or maybe u were raped and someone had a certain cologne or at a certain place.. the step by step will make u take baby steps and encountering this fear. If its elevators, you would move closer to an elevator and each step u take closer ur anxiety will rise.. you want to be able to take a step.. work with ur anxiety level there and once ur finally able to handle that distance, move closer and etc. until you are finally over the fear.

The other is very scary and you would even need to sign a consent form to do it, but its the fasest way in encountering and beating a fear/phobia. You would get a therapist to go with you and what you would do is basically head straight into it with no option of turning back. You would have to go straight into the elevator with your therapist and stay in it, riding it for hours and as your freaking out.. with your therapist not letting you go and talking to you. your levels of anxiety will decrease and decrease over time. and then when u do it another day, ur levels will start lower and ur anixey levels with lower quicker overtime and eventually youll be over the fear.
 
Benzo withdrawal can be downright dangerous. Since you're only taking .5 mg, your withdrawal shouldn't be so bad but it would be smart to nip this thing in the bud right now before you're taking higher doses. The most comfortable way to do this would be the Valium or Klonopin taper (basically because these have a much longer halflife, making a taper easier on the nerves) or step down to the .25mg Xanax and chip away from there. I believe benzo.org has a tapering schedule you might find useful. Good luck!
SW
 
I am sorry if this sounds rude, but english is not my main language. What i have learned from a cognitive therapy it says that use of anxiety meds often tend to put feelings on the background where they just grow bigger and bigger. There is also a placebo effect possibility as your dose is quite small compared to mine (1mg twice a day) and I dont feel withdrawals when discontinuing benzo use for 48 hours. But in my case build up of diazepam also might mask those withdrawals.

I suffer from post traumatic stress disorder caused from my peacekeeping times in Afghanistan. I at first did not want to confront my feelings and used plenty of benzos without therapy but with therapy I have found a way to address my feelings instead putting them background with the help of drugs.
 
Might be also that you are suffering from psychological schemas also known as emotional lock-ups where you dont want to confront a feeling and instead use some behavior like popping a pill as a defence. Instead you should confront the feeling and have a discussion between your vulnerable inner child that is upset or traumatized about the feeling with your internal parent that calms you down by saying that everything is fine and this happens now and is not related to past experiences. I for example have a lock-up of feeling of abandonment and have developed bad defence mechanism to not confront that feeling like a submission to hat others say, I demand too much from my self and I also try to get approved by other people with the pill popping habit also being a defence mechanism. These lead to a depression and build-up of anger.

Cognitive therapy has really gave me tools to cobfront the feelings as they are instead of using those bad defence mechanisms. I hope that I can further reduce my benzo usage to near zero rate within a year.

But this has taken time. I started therapy last summer and then I used double the amount of benzos than now.
 
Try to make sure you DO NOT get an SSRI. There are other anti-depressant meds that arent SSRI's. TCA's are WAY better then SSRI's when it comes to eventual discontinuation, I speak from experience on this. I have had SSRI's and TCA's and trust me, get a TCA from your doctor if applicable.
 
effexor is an SSNRI selective serotonin and norepinephron reuptake inhibitor

the medical community would take exception to the above poster's statement that tricyclics are better than SSRI class drugs.

some SSRIs are truly effective. If you are really suicidal i can tell you from experience that Effexor will put that thought out of your head.

getting off of SOME SSRIs- especially Effexor is hellish. But there are many, many other options that don't carry Effexor's withdrawal burden.

i personally would never take effexor again, but my significant other is on pristiq (which is an evergreen of Effexor) and is doing really well.

I'm on Lexapro, and its been great. really has worked well, and quickly. i take amitryptaline as an adjunctive insomnia medication. if it has an effect i can't sense it. amitryptaline is basically the original anti-depressant, and a tri-cyclic.

definitely do your research, ask your doc questions- they all love to hear themselves talk- but def do NOT make medication decisions based on what i say or what the guy above you says.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, I went to my doctor today and he put me on Valium. I am picking up the prescription tomorrow, so hopefully that will help me until the antidepressants start working. I'm pretty sure my psychiatrist will be prescribing me an SSRI, why wouldn't they be good? It's whatever he thinks is right. But I do want to make sure that I am able to get off it at some point, and that I don't have to take it for the rest of my life.

To those who have taken SSRIs, have they been hard to get off of?
 
^prozac was not hard at all for me to stop. but i think i have heard stories of people who did have a hard time.
 
^^ word i never actually experimented the benzo withdrawal i heard it was the worse tho and im afraid of that cuz i had my stretches on xanax and what not and i do think i need them cuz that is really one of the only things that will allow me to sleep and it helps my anxiety but i just dont wanna have to go thru no worse then heroin detox cuz shit that was bad enuff
 
i ended up in the ER four times from benzo withdrawals. not fun. it was from klonopin too. and only xanax helped me. when i was on xanax the most i was taking was 4mg a day, then i switched to klonopin and my tolerance built to 8mg a day. it took me 4-5 months to go from 8mgs to 1-2mgs now, and i had to get on an SSRI. seriously - get out while you can. people told me that exact same thing on this forum when i posted i thought i was becoming dependent. start gradually lowering your own dose to what you feel is comfortable. the less you have to take, the better. and the easier it is to come off it

some days i'll take 3mg for no reason other days i'll just take my 1mg cause i know i really don't need more than 1mg. last night at 6:30 pm for example i took 10mg of klonopin and have not slept. that was stupid but there's an example of how fast your tolerance can build. if you're taking .5 now, stay there. 1mg is half a bar, and it's a big jump. xanax usually is prescribed by the .25s

zoloft worked within 3 days for my anxiety. i woke up feeling great and energized, but 4 months later it's giving me anxiety so i'm switching to wellbutrin which has hardly any side effects. i was on it before and it was great

it is true that benzos cause anxiety. i never had panic attacks til i went on benzos. now i can't go without them. wish i never got on the fuckin things
 
BanginMyLifeAway said:
^^ word i never actually experimented the benzo withdrawal i heard it was the worse tho and im afraid of that cuz i had my stretches on xanax and what not and i do think i need them cuz that is really one of the only things that will allow me to sleep and it helps my anxiety but i just dont wanna have to go thru no worse then heroin detox cuz shit that was bad enuff
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I would say benzo withdrawal is probably worse than heroin withdrawal although I have never seriously misused benzos myself.

Have you tried going 2-3 days without alprazolam?
 
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