I can't believe I'm reading this. I'm glad I'm reading this because hopefully I can help you.
I was in the exact same position you are in right now and I was just as confused as you are. I ended up taking between 1-2 mg/ day for a couple months. I started getting weird side effects and anxiety, but I thought that was from the Adderall I was taking - My doctor prescribed me the ativan to help me in the evenings because I am super sensitive to stimulants and I'm prone to anxiety in the first place. I
had to take the adderall though because I'm in school and I couldn't survive without it....I had to take several doses of immediate release because I don't have insurance and couldn't afford the extended release Adderall.
Ativan has such a short half life, that people can get
"interdose" withdrawal. That's right. It's very weird, but ultimately that's what I figured out.....When I'd go on "adderall holidays," I wouldn't take the ativan and then I'd end up waking up in the middle of the night with a serious panic attack, and I don't ever have panic attacks. I thought I was experiencing Adderall withdrawal (even though there really isn't a physical addiction to amphetamines) but it was actually ativan withdrawal.
It took me a while to realize that I was physically addicted because it didn't make any sense. If you're taking pretty much the same dose of something on a pretty regular basis, you just don't expect to have withdrawals from it. After a while, the withdrawal symptoms started off with mental confusion, derealization, headache, a weird feeling in my head, my hands would shake, short term memory loss, dizziness, feeling hot, anxiety, I'd be very jumpy, very sensitive to sounds and movements, hair trigger temper, depressed, etc, etc.
So your side effects are probably withdrawal symptoms. Basically, you need to figure out if you're physically addicted. I'm pretty sure you are, but it's possible that you're not. You can get physically addicted to ativan in a few days. If you've been taking it for a month, you're probably addicted.
The good news is that you're in a much better position than I was, but I'm making progress. The longer you take it, and the higher the dose you take, the longer and harder it is to come off of. People who have been on benzos for years sometimes end up taking an entire year to be able to come off of it. If you've only been taking it for a month, you'll be fine though. What you're going to need to do is to use a long acting benzo to substitute for the ativan and you make a slow transition.
Depending on how long the process takes, you may end up addicted to the other benzo (usually valium or librium are used for this purpose). That's actually kind of the goal, even though it sounds really stupid. The point is, something like valium with a much longer half life is much easier to wean from, also because it is available in really small doses, whereas the smallest you can get with Ativan is 0.5 mg.
Is your doctor a psych or have a lot of experience with benzos? If not, you might have to print something out and show it to him.
Hopefully, this is a moot point and you're not addicted in the first place. But even if you are, it won't be that hard to get off this bullshit drug because you haven't taken it that long and it wasn't a huge dose. Please read this website. It's really not that long and it explains the method that I had explained earlier. The lady who came up with this technique is a physician in England and also a professor. She ran a clinic
for 13 years that was specifically for benzo addiction and withdrawal.
This is something you might want to print out and bring to your doctor if he's a family doctor. This is pretty well known. He might already know what to do, but just in case he's not really sure, it's good to have this in your pocket. Long half life benzos like ativan or librium are what they usually use.
http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzcha00.htm
You CANNOT stop Ativan cold turkey. It's possible to have a seizure, although that applies more to people who have been taking it longer and in bigger doses. Hopefully, you won't need the 2nd benzo, but when you're already getting interdose withdrawal without even dropping your dose, then there's a good chance you will.
If your life isn't very demanding and you can get by without too much trouble, then you may be able to tolerate withdrawal better than I could...Everybody's different. I had to concentrate really hard every day on subjects like biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, microbiology, etc, so I just couldn't tolerate the withdrawal because one of the first symptoms for me was mental confusion.
I hope I'm not scaring you or anything, but I just went through this and I want to make sure it's a little easier for you than it's been for me (if in fact you've developed physical dependence).
