Posted by alan on June 14, 1999, at 20:38:44
In reply to Re: Lorazepam, posted by Tom on June 14, 1999, at 11:48:56
> > I am just starting to take Lorazepam as well as just starting therapy. Am I going to get hooked on this stuff? The first few times I took it, boy was I mellow. And I had a great day at work also. No stress!!
>
> To put it bluntly...yes, you will get hooked. Even if you use the drug properly, you will have a difficult time giving it up even if you no longer feel you need it. And it gets more difficult the longer you stay on
> the drug. I've tried for a year and a half to get off these types of drugs (ativan,klonopin, xanax) and still can't give them up. Be very careful with these drugs...
>
> Tom
Well, people are different. I've used benzos and nevver had any trouble getting off of them, as long as I did so very, very slowly. Of course, if you are a very anxious person, and remain so, then when you try to stop using benzos you will feel very anxious, and knowing the benzos would help, it will be hard to resist the temptation to relieve the anxiety by going back to the benzos, and if they were not harming you, I think it would be foolishly masochistic not to. I suppose that could be called 'craving', but few would not crave relief from the painful feelings of anxiety. Personally, I only experience pathological anxiety episodically, usually as part of a major depression; when the problem lifts, I stop the benzos. I do not crave benzos when I am not anxious; quite the cotrary, I welcome the chance to get off something which may make me tired and forgetful--tho those side effects do diminish with time. There are, I have heard, people who crave benzos when not anxious, who get high on them, and who keep increeasing the dosage to get that high. (Don't confuse the 'euphoria' of the initial relief from anxiety with the euphoria of a drug high. I suppose the only way to tell which is which is to wait for the initial euphoria to pass and see whether you then feel that you just gotta get it back and are strongly motivated to increase dosage even tho you are not anxious.) If you are one of these, then of course you should try to do without them; I assume you do not want to live a life centered around getting your next fix. But if you use them as prescribed by one responsible physician, and they work for you, I know of no reason not to remain on them for life. Of course, if your anxiety lifts, as at the end of a depression, or if it occurs only in certain situations and you can learn not to be anxious in those situatons, perhaps with the help of CBT, or if you run for the benzos when anxiety is appropriate, then they are probably not for you in those situatons. (An example of the last case: Dont use benzos to deal with test anxiety caused by your failure to have studied!) On the whole, some, but few, people who use benzos get 'hooked' on them in the addiction' kind of way.
poster:alan
thread:7065
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990601/msgs/7392.html