Posted by hok on November 16, 2002, at 18:33:26
In reply to Re: Alcohol substitute - what's best? » hok, posted by oldhand on November 16, 2002, at 18:11:05
I'm sorry, perhaps I should've clarified. I take 10mg of Lexapro daily for atypical depression. Unfortunately, anxiety is still a big problem. In fact, I have always registered more anxiety/excitation on the SSRIs than when I'm not taking them. A lot of atypical depressives tend to feel this way supposedly.
Celexa was better for me in terms of anxiety than Lexapro, but the daytime sleepiness is much less on Lexapro. So I'm sticking with it for now.
Anyway, back to the alcohol issue. I'm not really a heavy drinker and I think I'm no where near the boundary of alcoholism. However, I do realize that having a couple of drinks is my best weapon to fight anxiety in social situations. This is usually not a big deal considering I do most of my socializing in bars and the like.
I guess my question is that, for those that do enjoy drinking as an anxiety crutch socially, what anti-anxiety drug do they feel accomplishes the same calmness without too much sedation and numbing. I find alcohol is great because unlike a lot of the neuroleptics, it doesn't make me zoned out and withdrawn. And more specifically, I was hopefully looking for some of our resident neuroscience experts to chime in about which drugs are chemically similar to alcohol in their effects.
Hope this speaks to more of what I was thinking.
poster:hok
thread:127923
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021116/msgs/127962.html