Posted by becksA on November 30, 2006, at 14:26:14
Long, please read!
Wow where do I start. I have been on so many drugs I should probably say what I have NOT been on, to be more brief. Anyway I have SEVERE social anxiety...and moderate depression. I tried Xanax to a ridiculously high dosage and it did NOTHING for me. I finally found Klonopin at another RIDICULOUSLY high dose (14mg daily!) to finally quell that anxiety. I have no side effects from it but I'm beginning to realize that it for obvious reasons is making me do stupid things, staying out way too late, wasting money, etc.
Finally took a step back (with talks with my doc), and decided we better try a different approach before I do something REALLY stupid that might even get me into some real trouble. He thinks we may be treating this "anxiety" from the wrong direction. I seem to have a different type of anxiety.
I'm not always scared about things, it's not generalized. It is almost a physical anxiety. The biggest thing I notice is that in new social settings, meeting new people, if it's strictly business, no smiling, serious matters, I'm OK. If it's a party, jokes, people laughing, my face literally freezes up, and I cannot smile! I cannot even force a smile, and when I do I know how obvious it is that I'm coming across as extremely anxious, I think about this, and that only makes things worse. I begin to panic, try harder and harder to smile, appear relaxed, and of course the opposite happens, it gets worse. I become so obsessed with trying to appear natural that I appear SUPER anxious, and sometimes miss half the conversation because I'm so focused on myself that I cannot even hear what they are saying.
With those symptoms, we are thinking it's more a combination of depression and anxiety (in the past I've always said depression really isn't an issue). And it never has been a HUGE one to the point of suicidal or crying my eyes out all the time, but I've been pretty blah and down for quite some time. I also seem to have a HUGE lack of motivation which I always blamed on my ADD but I now am sure the depression is playing a huge role in this. So now we have been trying some mood stabilizers.
Lamictal did nothing but raise my anxiety further. Depakote seemed to make me more depressed, if anything. 2 days ago I started on Lithium, and for some reason I'm more excited about this one. I've read a lot of good success stories on it, and I would LOVE to come down on the klonopin for many obvious reasons.
I've only taken my first two doses of 300mg at night the past 2 nights so I'm not expecting to feel anything. How long does it normally take? What can I expect? How's the success rate? Any kind of input or past experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
poster:becksA
thread:709029
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061123/msgs/709029.html