Posted by mikel on April 29, 2002, at 14:06:13
In reply to Xanax, posted by keilia on April 25, 2002, at 14:57:56
keilia,
Here's my story, I hope it helps.I was on xanax on and off for 3 years and I finally
got off just recently. I was taking it for anxiety
and depression. I believe the key for me has always been
the drugs I am taking with it. Prozac and Celexa both
work for me and once they kicked in, it was easy
to get off the xanax. The problem is the side effects
from the SSRI's lead me on a rollercoaster ride.
If I went off the AD because of side effects, the anxiety
and depression eventually returned and I would go back on the xanax
until the AD kicked in.The problem came when I went on Serzone. I thought I'd
found "it" when I got to 600mg of Serzone and had a positive
effect with no side effects. I had also been on 1mg xanax
for the 6 mos. before. So I tried to taper down and
got withdrawal, so I switched to 2mg Klonopin. No matter
how slow I tried to taper Klonopin I got bad withdrawal- surreal
feelings of depersonalization, irritibility, insomnia,
anxiety, nausea. You may ask me why I didn't
just stay on a low dose of benzo with the Serzone?
Well, once I started to experience the
withdrawal, my resolve to get off the benzos was stronger
than ever. I figured no way I am going to stay
on something that can make me feel this bad when
I go off it. So I suffered through withdrawal for
6 mos. until I finally developed breakthrough depression
and started having suicidal thoughts.This was too much for me to tolerate so I went
back on Prozac with .75mg xanax which worked
almost immediately for me. The key is this time
I went on only 10mg of Prozac instead of 20-30mg
that I had taken in the past, in combination with
800mg of SAMe. After 3-4 wks I had minimal side effects and marked
improvement in depression and anxiety.As I felt better, I decided to try to taper the
xanax, and to my amazement I was able to get off
in 3 mos. with minimal side effects. I decided not
to switch to Klonopin, but switched to the .25 milligram
xanax which I could easily divide into four. So I
went down 1/16th of a milligram every week, and
I did have some withdrawal, but it was like night
and day compared to when I was on the Serzone. I can
only come to the conclusion that the Prozac/SAMe
combination is what allowed me to get off- the
Serzone was apparently not enough to
treat my depression/anxiety and allow me off the
benzos.Some other things I found-
-caffeine is very bad. I gave up caffeine late
in the game, and I kick myself for not giving up earlier.
I only had 2-3 diet cokes a day, but once I gave them
up I found it stabilized my mood and was able to withdrawal
much easier. (Nutrasweet might also have had something
to do with it).-I tried Neurontin and Tegretol for withdrawal, and
neither of them seemed to help.-alcohol is also bad. I briefly tried to treat the
withdrawal with beer. My logic was they use benzo's
to withdrawal from booze, so you should be able to
use booze to withdrawal from benzo's? Bad idea. The
problem is that the benzo's actually gave me greater
tolerance to alcohol. So to get a few hours of relief
from the benzo withdrawal, I needed to drink large
quantities of drink, which lead to many hours of
hangover on top of worsened withdrawal symptoms.Anyway, I hope this information was helpful to someone
out there.Mike.
poster:mikel
thread:104124
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020425/msgs/104422.html