Posted by bluedog on March 2, 2003, at 22:41:10
In reply to Re: Tolerance more to sedative and anticonvulsive » mattdds, posted by viridis on March 2, 2003, at 19:12:31
Hi Viridis
I tend to agree with you and Matt. My social anxiety and major depression really started taking a turn for the better since my Pdoc placed me on a daily dose of Valium. The drowsiness was initially a problem but I can now take up to 30mg per day at 10mg 3x per day (I think 30mg of valium is roughly equivalent to about 6 mg of Klonopin) with NIL sedation, co-ordination or memory problems whatsoever YET it really king hits my social anxiety and the anxiolytic effects are as good as when I first started taking valium nearly a year ago now. Most days I really only take 10mg to 15mg and I reserve the doseages of 20mg to 30mg ONLY for those days where I know I am going to be placed into socially stressful circumstances. So I usually only take the equivalent of 2mg to 3mg of Klonopin each day. I did build up the doseages over an exteneded period of time and I feel absolutely no need nor desire to increase my doseages of the valium beyond what I already take. In fact I'm now considering a trial reducing my doseages to see if the anxiolytic effects remain effective at a lower daily dose and I will discuss this with my Pdoc when I next see him.
By the way my anxiety symptoms just so happen to be the usual trigger for my depressive symptoms so the Valium has also very noticeably reduced my depressive symptoms and I feel like I'm able to live my life again. (In fact it has worked against my depressive symptoms MUCH MUCH more effectively in COMBINATION with an SSRI rather than SSRI monotherapy. The combination has worked so well in fact that I've been able to reduce my AD dose of Lovan (generic Prozac) to the very low amount of 10mg daily without any return of my major depressive symptoms.
What's more the Valium has also helped enormously with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(CFS) and Valium is actually indicated in low daily doses as therapy for CFS and Fibromyalgia symptoms.
I should add that these drugs have of course not cured or completely eliminated my symptoms as no medication is capable of doing this but it has made my life much more manageable.
I just wish that the Psychobabble search option was up and running because there used to be a poster before my time called Elizabeth who wrote some absolutely EXCELLENT posts on the differences between addiction and medical dependance in relation to Benzodiazepine useage. She was aslo exrtremely knowledgeable about Benzo useage in general.
I think she stopped posting shortly after some of her very best posts on this subject because the anti-benzo posters at that time made life very difficult for her and started attacking her personally rather than sticking to the facts at hand. She never posted again on PB after the personal attacks were made against her and that I find a REAL shame. I really wish that Elizabeth would come back and contribute to this really great discussion.
I've tried the Google search option that Dr Bob suggested but it's no where near as efficient in trying to locate past posts as the PB search option. If I could find some of her really good posts back I would post a link to them right now!!! Can anyone help in this regard?
regards
bluedog
poster:bluedog
thread:205179
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030301/msgs/205396.html