Taking anxiety medication?

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I was completely against taking any medication until I watched a Temple Grandin interview. She said, "Without these meds I wouldn't be here today. " So I'm thinking I should reconsider my previous stance. I've missed out on a ton of opportunities because of my anxiety and I feel that now might be the time to start taking medication.

I would love to hear some experiences with medication and how it helped (or didn't help) to turn your life around.

I've been fighting anxiety for years. The problem is the anxiety meds that really work well (hypnotics and muscle relaxant) are all addictive and doctors don't like to prescribe them very much. They like to prescribe anti-depressants for anxiety, and those usually takes lots of trial and error to find the right one for you. And most of them have all sorts of side effects and takes a few weeks to start working. I never managed to take any of them long enough to work for me, as I have sensitive stomach and the side effects were too much. Some of the side effects of anti-depressants are actually increased anxiety, insomnia, anger and aggression, memory loss, cognitive impairment...etc. I feel I'm just not desperate enough yet. For now I just try to take it easy, and take anti-anxiety med only as needed and never more than a few days at a time.

Oh I tried some sort of anti-psychotic last year and it worked fairly well for me without a lot of side effects, until I noticed significant weight gain. If you're underweight or something those might be good to try.

Lemon Balm (Melissa) oil is very calming. If you want to try something natural you can give that a try. My dad claimed it really works, makes him sleepy. Unfortunately for me it seems to upset my stomach as well.

I take clonidine for anxiety and touretts and high blood pressure. It seems to work well.

1. SSRIs (April 2010-current)
-I've tried 3 SSRIs but only one for greater than 6 months and I''ll list my responses with respect to that one, Lexapro (Cipralex in Canada)
-no side-effects except a bit of emotional blunting which is a good thing for me
-the biggest problem for some is sexual side-effects but I haven't experienced any such side-effects
-okay for anxiety but very subtle and does nothing for sensory problems
Dose: 10 mg once daily for ~9 months now

2. Benzodiazepines (clonazepam) (2002-April 2010)
-made me sleepy but had a noticeable effect on my anxiety and sensory issues with sufficient dose
-had some cognitive deficits such as memory problems
-moderate dependency and tolerance
-I consider benzodiazepines a pharmacological avoidance strategy because anxiety doesn't improve and tends to get worse over the long-term because you tend to rely more on it and use (abuse) it in situations that may not have caused that much anxiety previously but now do
-on the positive, it did allow me to finish my 4 year degree and get a high paying job in my field
-on the negative, tolerance and abuse occurred and eventually I ended up abusing narcotics along with the benzodiazepines because the benzodiazepines wore down my energy levels and made me extremely tired to work
Dose: 1 mg when needed to 4 mg/day eventually after 8 years of use


I've tried a few other drugs but none of the others were very useful. If I could do it all over I wouldn't change anything as I think it was a good learning experience for me.

Edit: In terms of addiction potential, benzodiazepines are eons less addictive than narcotics. For me, narcotics were very addictive even though they didn't greatly decrease my anxiety.

I've taken Prozac for maybe a little over a year now and I think it helps a lot with my anxiety. It's not completely gone, but I stopped taking it for a while (just got out of the habit) so that's my fault. I've taken things that are for taking as needed like xanax or vistaril but I don't really care for those, they just make me feel kinda loopy.

if you end up with xanax or valium or soma......please be careful. if you haven't taken any of them before, you will find that they are.........oh so nice.

if you need them, you need them. i use all three from time to time to help with sleep. have been doing so for years. no problems with tolerance/addiction. i must have the least addictive personality profile of anyone on the planet, so don't go by my experience.

knew someone once who was addicted to valium. took around 150mg a day! had to be hospitalized to break away.

use them but not to excess.

good luck to you.

I have a prescription for Valium (diazepam) at 2.5 mg twice per day (a fairly small dose), but on an as-need basis. It works best by taking none at all most days, and using it on the days I feel anxiety. It is most effective if taken in advance of predictable stress, like shopping that involves a lot of talking to salespeople.

The greatest benefit of using anti-anxiety medication is the reduced effort of social interaction - I don't feel as exhausted and irritable after socializing, and sleep much better.

I began taking Fluoxetine (Prozac) 20mg in the morning (for depression and "panic attacks") about two weeks ago, and I had been taking St. John's Wort throughout the day for a few weeks prior to that (and with about 7 days off in-between the two). The psychiatrist who made that recommendation acknowledged my awareness of the absence of any "silver bullet" (his term) here.

The medication might be helping to keep depression and/or anxiety from overwhelming me, but it certainly does not resolve anything at all related to my actual circumstances or real-life causes behind my depression or anxiety. So, the question of medication here is simply about using a bit of a crutch to cope ... and I have specifically told the doctors I do not want to lose access to, or control of my own mind.

I take citaopram (antidepressant) for anxiety/ocd but it's a really low dose and I'm not sure if it's working or not. I want to take an anxiety medication but I am scared of taking something like that because I read they can be habit forming. I asked my doctor for a fast acting anxiety medication and if there was such a thing but she said they are like tranquilizers and very hard drugs. I know someone with low functioning autism, he's an adult, and he takes Ativan and it helps him a lot. I read up on it on the internet though and it says it's intended for short term use and is habit-forming. That scares me. I really wish there was something good for anxiety that works well and isn't habit forming.

I currently take 200mg of Luvox a day for anxiety and OCD. It does a fairly good job, but it doesn't completely wipe the symptoms out.

It only feels good if you're lucky. For me, those things make me feel out of it and wrong, like I can't focus on anything, almost like being half-dead.

A little bit of ballast helps keep an even keel.

I'm taking 50 mg of Seroquel a day, to immunise against anxiety. It helps.

If you do end up being prescribed something I would urge you to do some research and understand the issues with any drug rather than relying on advice from a single doctor alone, the wikipedia pages are pretty good for most pharmaceuticals these days. Bezodiazapines will typically work initially but cause down regulation of GABA-A receptors, such that their effect wears off and you have to take more - and then you're in a downward spiral. Coming off them often results in anxiewt far worse than you started with *and* doesn't always revert 100%. So you could well end up worse off long term.

My take on psychiatric drugs is that the medical profession is tinkering with symptoms rather than addressing underlying biological problems. There's lots of research out there showing significant differences in various metabolites between control subjects and people with autism, aspergers, cfs, schizophrenia, ocd; and some of these differences have been shown to be correctable (even if only partially) with concomitant improvement in clinical status. As an example google autism + methylcobalamin + folinic acid.

Take care,

locster

Are SSRI's effective?
From what I've read they have the least negative side effects.