To Benzo Or Not To Benzo

[The Shattered Soldier]

Soldier....that children of Honduras picture.....LMFAO

I get weird ideas popping into my head a lot, but that one was a total surprise. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I still get a kick out it every time I look at it.

 

[mrgolfr]

SSRI's and SNRI's don't do diddily. Actually, the first week they make me sleep which is a great thing, but after a week I get more agrivated that ever. My original condition is that I want to get up and run around. However, I am a para, so that makes things worse. I am agitated, and I can't move around which makes me even more mad. I go from being mad to a type o clostrophopia because I can move. I end up screaming and flailing my arms because I get so mad. My wife thinks I'm crazy and leaves the room. I think I'm going nuts!

 

[mrgolfr]

I've heard that benzos make you do crazy things you don't remember. Currently I get mad and go bonkers on Seratonin. Which is worse? My wife is threatening to leave (25yrs) so I have to do something. SSRI's make me go nuts. Nothing makes me impossible to live with. I hear Benzons are addictive and severe mood swings. What is the answer? My doc says Beno but I've learned not to turst docs. Somebody please help!

 

[Guest]

I've heard that benzos make you do crazy things you don't remember. Currently I get mad and go bonkers on Seratonin. Which is worse? My wife is threatening to leave (25yrs) so I have to do something. SSRI's make me go nuts. Nothing makes me impossible to live with. I hear Benzons are addictive and severe mood swings. What is the answer? My doc says Beno but I've learned not to turst docs. Somebody please help!

Start at the lowest dose that helps you and they won't cause you to do crazy things you don't remember. That particular quality of benzos is exaggerated, IMO, you really need to abuse them before that happens. Benzos are addictive, some more than others, the ones with the short half-lives are the worst addiction-wise. Addiction is something that happens when you take SSRI's as well, anyone who has taken them for a while and then stopped cold turkey can surely tell you a horror story that would make your skin crawl.

Mood swings, eh, it depends on the person; you sound pretty desperate so perhaps you may consider trying the lowest possible dose of a long hafl-life benzo like diazepam (Valium) and see if it helps you. You aren't going to become a raging benzo addict after taking a single pill.

You have a doctor that is actually trying to give you benzos, a lot of people here would love to be in that position.

 

[mrgolfr]

Let's say I start Benzo's tomorrow. Then a week later I need more. Then 2 weeks later I need more to sleep and not wake up panicked. Doesn't this sound like a slippery slope that should be avoided? On the other hand the SSRI's and SNRI's are making me more agitated after a couple of weeks. I'm tired and cranky. My wife has started sleeping in another room. Is there an answer?

 

[Guest]

Let's say I start Benzo's tomorrow. Then a week later I need more. Then 2 weeks later I need more to sleep and not wake up panicked. Doesn't this sound like a slippery slope that should be avoided? On the other hand the SSRI's and SNRI's are making me more agitated after a couple of weeks. I'm tired and cranky. My wife has started sleeping in another room. Is there an answer?

Well, it seems that you're already at your wits end, so work with this seemingly generous doctor of yours and give the benzos a try. Tell the doctor about your worries and request a long half-life benzo like diazepam. Aside from that I can provide no answers.

 

[mrgolfr]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot. What have I got to lose except a family right.

Thanks again.

 

[The Shattered Soldier]

Let's say I start Benzo's tomorrow. Then a week later I need more. Then 2 weeks later I need more to sleep and not wake up panicked. Doesn't this sound like a slippery slope that should be avoided? On the other hand the SSRI's and SNRI's are making me more agitated after a couple of weeks. I'm tired and cranky. My wife has started sleeping in another room. Is there an answer?

I have an answer for you. If that happens, scientists will want to study you. Tolerance it's not like that. Did you believe everything you hear? Who told you this crap? Your imagi ination? yes your idea is a cooking oil lubed slope. Read, read, read until your eyes pop out. Google it and read every article you see, especially wikipedia. Ignorance breeds fear. Listening to naive people instead of someone who has experience, an education, and credentials is a little illogical. But even though he has been through addiction for 5 years, met addicts at rehab, group therapy, and narcotics anonymous, and can describe any process you want down to the molecular level, you want to hear scary stories. You must like toasted marshmallows. I'm unsubscribing to this thread. Why aren't you happy? Blissful? You meet the criteria...

 

[Guest]

The horror stories are true, in some cases at least. I watched a very dear friend go through a 3 month downward spiral where he wrecked two cars (he didn't remember either accident), had a grand mal seizure, and almost burned the house he was living in to the ground because he forgot that he had started to cook some Mac and cheese. Again, this all took place in a 3 month period...that was the most frightening aspect of it for me.....

....however, it must be said (and I think I can echo Soldier's frustration here) that my friend wasn't taking his Xanax in anywhere close to an appropriate manner. He'd snort 2 bars at lunchtime. If you are going to use benzos in an appropriate manner, mrgolfr, then you needn't worry about the train wrecks and disasters. I don't understand all the anxiety about, well, your anxiety! These are medicines, and should be used (and respected) as such.

 

[The Shattered Soldier]

The horror stories are true, in some cases at least. I watched a very dear friend go through a 3 month downward spiral where he wrecked two cars (he didn't remember either accident), had a grand mal seizure, and almost burned the house he was living in to the ground because he forgot that he had started to cook some Mac and cheese. Again, this all took place in a 3 month period...that was the most frightening aspect of it for me.....

....however, it must be said (and I think I can echo Soldier's frustration here) that my friend wasn't taking his Xanax in anywhere close to an appropriate manner. He'd snort 2 bars at lunchtime. If you are going to use benzos in an appropriate manner, mrgolfr, then you needn't worry about the train wrecks and disasters. I don't understand all the anxiety about, well, your anxiety! These are medicines, and should be used (and respected) as such.

Just got home, phone wouldn't let me unsubscribe. The first two years I was on them, I didn't do anything crazy. My tolerance didn't go up in an unrealistic and impossible way. The brain works SLOW, so do it's nerves. Tolerance develops when you grow more receptor sites for GABA. Now, more sounds like better right? Well, they kind of work in tandem. If you have a few receptors and hit a few, you get a good effect. If you hit a few huge amount of receptors, with the same amount of GABA, they're not going to react as well. So you need more GABA to stimulate the nerves involved with these receptors. The receptors multiply because GABA will trigger their growth and also, because the brain wants to compensate for the increased stimulation of the receptors, they have a life, they can only be hit by so much before they die, so the brain starts doing it's strength in numbers thing. Now, you're not going to grow a ton of receptors in a few weeks. You're gonna be a little high for the first few weeks, then calmly even out. I told you how to avoid tolerance, skipping days. BTW people are more likely to start beating their wives on AD's than benzo's. Now, when my dad started Klonopin, he started to be kind of an asshole, but he was always an asshole, he just couldn't cover it up as well. So if you're a daredevil, a wife beater, or an exhibitionist at heart, just be a little careful.

And Jsarus, your friend was a jackass. You can't snort Xanax! It's fat soluble. There ain't done be no fat in yo nose! The snortable drugs are water soluble. Now, he could dissolve it in milk or cream and plug it (I've never done that /default_wink.png ) but snorting it really is a waste, and the PN drip probably went to his stomach.

Yeah, some of the horror stories are true for the abusers, but the ones who call their DOCTORS, or their IOP's lol, when they feel like they're losing it, they fair pretty well on another one. Now, I'm batshit crazy, and I did ok except when I was abusing them. I would go to bars just to pick fights, just an example.

So Goferman, what do I have to tell you for you to believe me? I can do citations, no, that's a pain in the ass, but if you MG my vendor, you got 'em.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, my friend was a jackass at that time. He'd snort, swallow and plug the stuff....he even asked if it could be smoked at one point. But you blame the man, not the drug for that sort of behavior. And when you are taking 6mgs of Xanax just to get up in the morning, you aren't that much of a man...(maybe that dose is appropriate for some people, but I strongly doubt it).

 

[The Shattered Soldier]

Yeah, my friend was a jackass at that time. He'd snort, swallow and plug the stuff....he even asked if it could be smoked at one point. But you blame the man, not the drug for that sort of behavior. And when you are taking 6mgs of Xanax just to get up in the morning, you aren't that much of a man...(maybe that dose is appropriate for some people, but I strongly doubt it).

Man, that is a HARDCORE habit. That is just asking for a shaking, facial twitching, hell of a WD! I don't know if it's drug or man, but that's what I call "The Prisoner"

 

[Guest]

The moral of this long, drawn-out story is this: There's a difference between benzo use and benzo abuse and not all users abuse.

That's it, this thread and the other one exactly like it have officially made my eyes bleed...

 

[Jewbacca]

The moral of this long, drawn-out story is this: There's a difference between benzo use and benzo abuse and not all users abuse.

That's it, this thread and the other one exactly like it have officially made my eyes bleed...

I was thinking more ass chafing, but we'll go with your bleeding eyes thing!

 

[The Shattered Soldier]

The moral of this long, drawn-out story is this: There's a difference between benzo use and benzo abuse and not all users abuse.

That's it, this thread and the other one exactly like it have officially made my eyes bleed...

The moral of this long, drawn-out story is this: There's a difference between benzo use and benzo abuse and not all users abuse.

That's it, this thread and the other one exactly like it have officially made my eyes bleed...

Blood in the eyes from reading, I am well educated on this, lets start with the anatomy of the eye....God, my fucking brain hurts! I need to smoke a big fat bowl of Xanax!!

 

[mrgolfr]

So you're taking anti-depressants for GAD and what looks to me like a panic disorder, but the panic lasts too long for a doc to call it that. People don't build a tolerance to an AD in two weeks. In 4-6 weeks is when their therapeutic effects begin. So your sleepiness is the initial side effect of the medication that you build the tolerance to. Then you're still in the grace period and feel the same way. When you hit the 4-6 week mark you either react to the medication or are resistant to it. Anxiety has a lot of causes. It can be an abundance of any chemical in the brain, or even the lack of a chemical particularly dopamine. There are numerous problems that can cause hyper-excitability of the nerves in the brain. You took two avenues to address this problem, and probably tried a few different medications in these classes and they didn't work either. You could have gone the way of atypical antipsychotics. One that comes to mind is Seroquel. It calms the brain by antagonizing or blocking several receptors in the brain that might be a bit hyper. It works well for my anxiety, but I'm not sure if it's officially approved for anxiety. I know they use it as an add-on for AD's. I don't understand how that would work since it's blocking the receptors that relieve depression, it didn't work that way for me, but I love how it knocks me out cold and makes me less anxious. You might want to mention it to your doctor. He/She probably has a ton of samples to start you out with. If you have no insurance and a moderately low income you can get it for free from Astra-Zenica, the AZ and Me Program. So this med addresses the hyperstimulation of certain receptors, actually, it has the most thorough blockade out of all atypical (the word they use for new) antipsychotics.

You've got Abilify, which is a drug that fascinates me. It blocks Dopamine receptors making you nice and calm. But it is a 5HT-2a agonist, meaning it sensitizes the receptors that brighten your mood. So when a serotonin molecule hits one, it's effects are amplified. They usually use it with an SSRI so that there is more serotonin in the synapse resulting in more hits to the sensitized receptors. The stuff is energizing and calming at the same time. I'm on it but when my energy becomes uncomfortable I take a day off from it. Unlike Seroquel, which is known to make some people zombies (and they need to be shot in the head, not the body, you need a clean head shot to put 'em down) but seriously, I took my dose late last weekend and went into work in a cloud. People thought I was high. It didn't help that I worked night shifts all week and had to switch over to a 9am-11pm shift. My 3xNo-Doz Especiales de Novartis didn't even work. I could be tweaking like crazy, take one, and it shuts it down like a light switch. Anyway, those two are ones I have experience with. I know Risperidol blocks dopamine receptors like Abilify, but also blocks the happy ones. Abilify on it's own, actually with my infrequently prescribed MAOI Parnate (because I've tried every AD on the market and none of them worked) gives me insomnia. Nardil works on anxiety too, but MAOI's are the last step before ECT, it would be nice if they were more mainstream because they are more effective than any other AD.

You're wondering if you're going to feel better on benzo's after a few month's? How about 45 minutes to an hour? I went a few years before I began to abuse my Klonopin prescription. You said you're afraid of abuse, then you'll most likely be afraid while you're on them. Most people don't do things that they're afraid of doing. Benzo's do reduce inhibition, but mostly in higher doses. Still, inhibition implies that you're going to do something that you want to do but is considered inappropriate.or dangerous.

So, you have some hyperactive nerves that nobody knows how to control. Since you can't fix the problem, you might as well take some palliative measures. Now you have GABA receptors all over your brain, they are widespread. Benzos release GABA which hits these receptors causing a brain wide calming effect, the hyperactive nerves relax. This is why the medication causes an immediate effect. Over time, the nerves get used to having extra GABA to calm them down. This is why you have to slowly take it away. If you just stop, they go totally nuts. This is because the brain is used to having alot of GABA too and decided not to produce as much. So there is a deficiency that can only be corrected with time. And the brain is notoriously slow a correcting itself. So you do a slow taper. It's like getting into a really cold pool. You have to ease them in. Now, if you skip a day every so often, the brain and the nerves realize they can't depend on the extra GABA and have to go back to work.

As for the underlying problems, the benzos won't effect them, maybe you were just genetically predisposed to having hyperactive nerves. If the underlying problem gets worse, you might as well be comfortable while it does because you don't know what it is, or how to fix it. It's like saying my fan isn't working right, I don't know what's wrong with it. Do you think the air conditioner will make the fan more broken? Oh, I forgot to add, it's the last fan in the universe, so don't think you can buy another.

So I went down that road and failed. It went from once in a while to once a week, to a few days a week, to killing my prescription in three days, to buying online, to stealing to buy online, to trying a taper, getting down from 20mg of Valium to 5mg then snapping and binging. Now, there are two types of people, one with an addict hiding in them, and the others who don't. You should know by now. Can you have a few beers then stop? Can you smoke a fat dust blunt and not want some later /default_smile.png? Do you just need to get that rush from any substance, is it never casual, is moderation is a foreign concept? Well, for the people with the addict hiding in them, certain things wake it up and fuck up your life. I don't think mine was ever hidden. For me, drinking was for getting fucked up. For my brothers, they just hang with a few beers, I don't know how they do it. So back on the subject, I was living with my parents, they were already worried, they'd seen me wrecked so many times. It just so happened that they were going out of town to see their first grandchild, it was so special to them. When they saw how messed up I was again, they wanted to cancel the trip to watch over me. I said, I'll be taken care of, I'll be in rehab the entire time you're gone.

I relapsed a few times, but they were isolated incidents. I still have GAD so I still need Valium. I don't abuse it. I don't even want to. Not because of the hell, just because I like the way things are now. So it's been over a year, everything's been cool. I'm an addict for life, but I took a good look at the prescription and it didn't say take 20 over the course of the day until bottle is empty.

I just read the beginning of your post. You need to taper off of AD's too, same concept as the GABA vacation the brain goes on. And when there is a dramatic drop in serotonin, weird shit happens. I call it the most vivid NT of all. I mean, LSD acts like it, even hits it's receptors. I really think it's responsible for our perception and self awareness.

I hope the technical stuff didn't bother you. I'm just teaching what I know, why learn it if you can't share it? It may look like I'm trying to sell you on these meds, but really it's my point of view and my own voice of logic.

Let me know what you think.

Again, thanks for your time. I'm going this week to doc to get benzos. My family can't stand to be around me. I've got to settle down before I lose them completely. One more thing. My wife doesn't want me to use them because she has friends that have had bad results. I figure it is better to be better adjusted and have fun with family than lose them because I am so irritable and combative.

You have been more informative than doc.

golfr

 

[Guest]

I need to smoke a big fat bowl of Xanax!!

Uhhh ohhh, you've moved into a whole new dimension of aplrazolam abuse, SNORTING it isn't enough for you anymore!!!

I'm afraid we've lost you now, Soldier...

Soldier smoking a big, fat bowl of XANAX --->

Shortly afterwards--->

 

[Boo Radley]

Jesus Christ people this is the same conversation on 2 different threads. Not sure benzos are the answer. Sometimes you need a therapist just so you can pay someone to listen when everyone else is exhausted. I'm not trying to be an ass but how many ways and how many threads can SS answer the fucking question.

Fuck. Now I need benzos

 

[Boo Radley]

............. Sorry was that mean? So much for southern hospitality

 

[The Shattered Soldier]

Jesus Christ people this is the same conversation on 2 different threads. Not sure benzos are the answer. Sometimes you need a therapist just so you can pay someone to listen when everyone else is exhausted. I'm not trying to be an ass but how many ways and how many threads can SS answer the fucking question.

Fuck. Now I need benzos

YOU'RE GETTING A LATE "LIKE" BOO, I WAS READING THIS THREAD OVER AGAIN AND I love HOW YOU CLOSED IT OUT!