Self medication ?

[Tiizle]

So I have been extremely, overwhelmingly anxious to the point I am unable to pretty much function properly. Its been going on for a while but is getting progressively worse. I was referred to a see a doctor to talk about getting prescribed either anxiety or depression meds. I personally am a bit weary with the depression meds, both actually but like I said its coming to the point it's becoming hard to function and is inferring with my everyday life. My appointment isn't for a few weeks and was wondering if anyone had any incite on self medicating with anxiety meds, maybe low low amount of Xanax when I feel overwhelmingly anxious. I wouldn't be asking if I felt/knew there was other ways to deal with it. I already go to talk therapy once every two weeks but it hardly helps.
If I did try to take a low dose of Xanax would it effect the drug therapy I would potentially be receiving? If so by how much?

 

[tacodude]

Tl : Dr

Self medicating with any substance that can create a physical dependency is a recipe for disaster. Go discuss it with a psychiatrist and while I doubt you'll get xanax or a benzo off the bat they will work with you as long as you work with them honestly. That doesn't mean just do what they want without question, but to be honest about any questions or reservations you have.

 

[Chronicpain54]

I completely agree tacodude. They may have to work with their doctor for a while, but the end result is that if you stay the course and you're honest that you'll get the help you need.

Sometimes you may have to change doctors if you aren't feeling better, but they usually choose their job field because they want to help.

I wouldn't pick Xanax to help anxiety if you haven't taken them before. They wear off way too fast and you can end up taking 8 to 10 mgs a day quickly. Try a longer acting benzo like klonopin.

I have bad anxiety and muscle spasms and 1.5 mgs of klonopin a day takes care of 80% of it. I don't think my doctor would agree to increase my dosage, but I prefer 2 mgs a day with .05 mgs extra for bad situations.

 

[Jekyl Anhydride]

You would be better off discussing the different meds available and how different benzos are used to combat anxiety/ panic attacks. If you try using a med like Xanax on your own, you might end up with rebounding panic attacks or possibly plain under treating the problem. It might take a combination of meds or none at all which is why consulting a psychiatrist is going to be your best bet.

OD-->BDD

 

[Lobsterbutch]

So I have been extremely, overwhelmingly anxious to the point I am unable to pretty much function properly. Its been going on for a while but is getting progressively worse. I was referred to a see a doctor to talk about getting prescribed either anxiety or depression meds. I personally am a bit weary with the depression meds, both actually but like I said its coming to the point it's becoming hard to function and is inferring with my everyday life. My appointment isn't for a few weeks and was wondering if anyone had any incite on self medicating with anxiety meds, maybe low low amount of Xanax when I feel overwhelmingly anxious. I wouldn't be asking if I felt/knew there was other ways to deal with it. I already go to talk therapy once every two weeks but it hardly helps.
If I did try to take a low dose of Xanax would it effect the drug therapy I would potentially be receiving? If so by how much?

self medicating has single handedly allowed myself to hit the "FuckIt" switch far too many times. Self medicating puts you 100% in charge of your head, but I've found being in charge of my own head while medicating my head eventually leads to my head becoming......over medicated. Next thing I know Im physically dependant on X, Y, and Z.

Besides, medication rarely, if ever, leads to solving problems you have. Xanax will kill a panic attack when you have one, but it wont stop the reason you have panic attacks. If you're anything like me, then you might start to depend on the xanax for the stressful situations that bring panic, but doing this starts to weaken your ability to deal with the stress and panic, which will lower your overall tolerance for stressful situations, to the point where you might have a full blown panic attack in a slightly stressful but typical and common every day situation if you dont have the xanax.

The overwhelming anxiety isn't going to go away with just medicine, its really, really important to do mental healthcare like seeing a therapist or psychiatrist. The Psyc can script you medicine you need for now while working with you to change thought patterns or automatic thoughts that are harmful, teaching you ways to work to suppress or work through panic, and other things that will keep working after you stop taking medicine.

Xanax and other benzos/anxiety meds are only meant for short term/sporadic use and have a significant contradiction in that medium to long term use of them can make anxiety much worse and can cause/make depression worse. Besides, getting physically dependant on them is the best way to make sure that the next 1-5 years of your life suuucck.

I guess my point is that by self medicating you dont have supervision by a doctor, you are likely not doing the work to address the cause of the anxiety/panic, and its likely that introducing the meds into the cycle of your anxiety is going to make it worse. I remember before I was balls to the wall dependent and I was just starting to get mentally hooked, I went out with friends and forgot my pills i "prescribed" ,myself and when I realize I had a panic attack and ditched my friends to go home and get them. before the benzos I wouldve been able to have some fun that night, with occasional bad anxiety twinges, but at this point I'd made them my safety blanket so I had to have them

 

[Lobsterbutch]

OH, and to answer your question, anything you take IN ADDITION to drugs you are already prescribed will change how they work. All drugs have some degree of interaction, so its really best not to self medicate. If you decide to self medicate anyway, do tell your health care professional what you're doing. Benzos and anti depressants can get prescribed together and as far as I know don't have any dangerous or huge interactions, but hey, I'm no doctor so don't listen to me. And for all you know, one time self medicating on top of your "legit" meds might land you in an ER.......It'll be tricky to get your doctors trust back after doing that.

One weird thing I had happen, is I had therapy, and it wasn't helping. I started self medicating with some opioids and benzos.......and what do ya know, the therapy started to work!! I was able to finish the therapy and my therapist told me I just need to make an appointment if something happens but otherwise I completed my treatment. BUT, I had to stop the self imposed drug therapy soon after................and I was two steps back from where I started when I called to schedule a new appointment, and my doctor was not happy to hear what I did. Never quite regained the trust there either. I thought therapy worked, but I was just high.

 

[T. Calderone]

^ That's very good advice from Lobsterbutch. OP, the problem with self-medicating with Xanax is it could end up exacerbating your anxiety. I've fallen into this trap before where I told myself I will only use them when absolutely needed. Then found myself rationalizing why every day I needed a little bit just to help things run smoother. When you see the psych doctor, be open to other medications and treatments that he suggests and keep going to therapy. Have you been prescribed depression or anxiety meds in the past?

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

I?ve self medicated my depression for years with opiates, i cant say what would have happened if i chose another route but i really wish i went with therapy instead of self medicating.

One of the problems with self medication is that when you aren?t able to get your depression treatment of choice you are not only in complete misery from not having the drug but you might experience withdrawals.

I cycled on and off opiates for about a year after taking them irregularly for a few years to help cope with my depression. i would take high doses of tramadol to feel normal for a week strait, then almost the whole next week i was either in withdrawals or recovering from withdrawals. Now that i am 95% off opiates the depression hasn?t gone away, i was merely masking it for so long that i was under the illusion it was gone.

I can?t say what the best choice for you is but i hope you are able to find something that works.

 

[Tiizle]

No I haven't been diagnosed in the past, though I probably should have but never tried to bring it to the doctors attention. I have all the symptoms of anxiety and depression and have watched them get progressively worse over the last two years. Something happened to me about 3 years ago that lead me straight into being anxious as hell, having so many sleepless nights, panic attacks, etc. I think that the incident along with other aspects of my life threw me into depressive states. I never wanted to look into getting help with drug therapy because I was scared it would change me, I would get addicted, etc. I heard and read so many different accounts of people who have used anti depressants and anxiety meds so it deterred me from looking into it as a serious option-though I have also heard positive things. I now have been going to talk therapy for a few months- provided by my university- but I don't feel it helps me too much for a few different reasons: They don't have enough resources to allow me to go as much as I would need so I end up going once every 2-3 weeks and by that time it's hard to do anything in 45 minutes, also I am still getting use to going and get scared to tell the therapist everything in fear that they will send me off somewhere else or something. Not sure if my therapist just rubs me the wrong way but might be time to try a new one. But my therapist offered to get me an appointment for anti depressants after my second session but I denied it saying I would try to cope on my own. Turns out intense levels of anxiety have returned that bring me to the point I feel like I can't go to class/leave my house at times because I am going to pass out or something. So I had recently talked to my therapist about referring me because its severely affecting how I live and interact with people on a day to day.
The appointment isn't for like another 2-3 weeks which I can wait but at the same time I just wanted to be able to see them right away because its fucking with me and I am in my last semester of college and don't want to somehow throw it all away because I am having trouble coping. I partially knew that self medicating with low doses of Xanax or other forms for the mean time isn't the best idea. I think I just really needed reassurance because I felt desperate and just wanted to kill the anxiety. I mean I still do but all your inputs really helped, thank you all.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Do you excersize at all? I?ve been running on a treadmill a lot lately and its definitly been helping. I?m not saying excercise is going to cure depression but it?s a very healthy coping mechanism.

 

[Lobsterbutch]

A lot of the negative things you hear about anxiety/depression medication is true, but I believe that they work for more people than not. Its just the people who have bad experiences are more vocal than those who have good experiences. Besides, anti-depressant therapy isnt supposed to put you into a warm, fuzzy, happy-go-lucky sunshine mania for your waking hours, its supposed to correct the "neurotransmiter imbalance" in your brain that exacerbates your depression. You stop feeling depressed all the time, but that doesn't necissarily mean you're going to feel happy all the time either. They aren't supposed to get you high. I know myself and several of my close friends were prescribed ssri's and all of us ditched them within a week because "they didn't do shit". We were just expecting a "WOW I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE RAIN IS GONE" effect, but they were working right, we just were unrealistic and impatient.

Also, your best chance of success will be if you are 100% honest with your doctor. When my friends would "tweak" their story at the office to try and get something specific, The treatment more or less went straight to nowhere and they were worse off because the doctor was treating symptoms that werent there

 

[aspiringchemist]

sorry for long post...

Treatment of anxiety and depression is a rather large topic. I am very involved in the psychiatric field, as well as suffer from diagnosed dysthymia and anxiety disorder and possibly PTSD. I've experienced mental health issues for at least the past 15 years. I also have self-medicated in the past to the point that I "came to", so to speak, 5 years later with a habit I couldn't kick and a far greater deal of pain and suffering than I had ever thought possible. Of course, this is not true for everyone.
Anyway... As others have said, being honest with your healthcare providers in your best option. Unfortunately, in today's medical climate many psychiatrists and medical doctors are afraid to utilize certain classes of medications (mainly benzodiazepines, opioids, and stimulants), or are absolutely against their use; there's lots of black and white thinking being employed in the medical field these days and it is to the detriment of the patient IMO.

You stated in the OP that you are weary of psychiatric medication though have reached a point where you are willing to try medication(s). I assume this means you do not have a lot of personal experience with said medications? My opinion is that you are safest waiting to speak to a professional. You'll likely get a handful of SSRI/SNRI type medications recommended out the gate. Jumping straight to benzodiazepines is not the most advisable thing, though they do work, and I've seen many patient's live long lives with reduced symptoms by taking them appropriately; myself included. There is a difference between addiction/addictive behaviors and medical dependency, though it requires serious honesty with self and doctor.
Though, this is after years of trying various "safer" medications without positive benefits. I could write a novel about the lack of safety and definite addictive profile of SSRI/SNRI's, but that is not for this thread.

As Lobsterbutch stated above, these medicines aren't designed to get you high, rather to alter a possible neurotransmitter imbalance, and then determine if these alterations relieve your subjective symptoms to a degree. As someone once told me "lack of depression is not euphoria".

Typically, a well-rounded approach to treatment includes proper medication regimen, therapy, healthy diet, and exercise. Attack the beast from all angles. Self-medicating, while it may relieve the symptoms for a time, is playing with fire, and a gamble at best. If you are suffering to the point that you simply cannot wait for this medication appointment, I would suggest going to the emergency department of your local hospital for psychiatric evaluation and treatment. Otherwise, hang in there. Honest and open communication with a good doctor is the best treatment I've found. Finding the good doctor is the hard part.​

 

[Tiizle]

I do exercise. I enjoy going on runs it's been slightly harder to do that because I have been smoking cigarettes more again. I get nervous and almost find relief in the cig for a moment. I've been in the process of quitting and have before. I'm sure it's part addiction at that rate but it does effect how I can exercise so I have moved on to using my bike and going on long bike rides with music and honestly it freaking saves me some days.

I also have never taken any sort of meds for mental health- anxiety, depression, etc. I have known several people who have. I would hear bad things but I have had friends that say they believe it saved their lives in a sense and feel better taking it. I definitely get what you mean, Lobsterbutch, when you say you hear more of the bad than the good. I am a huge believer in therapy so I definitely will continue to regularly go to therapy especially if I am prescribed anything. I have taken Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin before, a long time ago (friend's script) to get high, not to self medicate for anxiety, and it was never a consistent thing. I also wasn't an anxious person at those points in life. I am not super educated on other forms of meds but I will speak with the doctor and be very honest. It's the anxious part of me that thinks they'll put me in an institution or something but they won't.

I am extremely lucky to have people I can reach out to, like friends and you all, who do help so I think I can hang on a little over a week until I can see the doctor. I really appreciate all of your inputs.

 

[Tiizle]

^^^When I say I have taken the meds for mental health I mean I was never prescribed.