I read a lot of blogs, read the comments, and I see how some people have such a hard time with the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, drugs used to treat anxiety and panic. Then you get the commenters who can’t wait to jump on that particular bandwagon and eschew the evils of benzos,period. Oh, sure, they will say they have their place and it should only be short term until you LEARN better ways of coping with panic, but their disdain is not even thinly veiled. I don’t know if doctors overuse this class of drug or not. I DO KNOW that a lot of manipulative people worthy of an Oscar go into the doctor’s office pleading stress and anxiety to get such drugs, even though they have no such issues whatsoever. This combined with the fact that benzos are indeed very addictive have lead to the whole class of drugs getting a bad name without serious regard to what a lifeline they are to certain people who really truly need and benefit from them.
So, since everyone else gets to spout off about the evils of drugs such as Xanax, I would like to present a different point of view and defend benzodiazepines.
I have taken xanax off and on for about 18 years. I have tried klonopin, ativan, buspar, seroquel, all of which made me too lethargic and loopy to function yet did nothing to quell my panic or anxiety. I have tried hypnosis, light therapy, color therapy, aromatherapy, sound therapy, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy. NONE of it helped.
Xanax is my lifeline.
The last time I had some professional lecture me about the evils and that I had to learn to live without it, well, I ended up in a psychotic paranoid state that pretty much destroyed my marriage and made my cyclothymia and depression a hundred times worse.
TWO 0.5 mg Xanax, and I was out of my paranoid everyone-is-out-to-get-me mind frame, LIVING my life again for the first time in months.
No one will ever convince me that this is a bad thing or that Xanax is a bad drug.
Every time I go off the xanax, I end up in such a state that I am borderline hospital-ready.
So ya know what? I have no problem living on a low dose for the rest of my life so long as I NEVER have to go back to that scary psychotically paranoid place.
Yes, Xanax withdrawal sucks. This is why you taper off, same as you do with certain anti-depressants.
But I have quit Xanax cold turkey three times, and it was NEVER as bad as when the doctor told me to quit taking Effexor abruptly and I began to have visual and auditory hallucinations and slept with a knife under my mattress for two weeks because I was convinced someone was trying to kill me.
If one more person gives me a “helpful” lecture on the power of positive thought, keeping busy, retraining my brain, or any of that other sunshine vomiting crap, I am going to have to put a hex on them. Until you have walked in my shoes, don’t pretend to have all the answers because I am not you, you are not me, and what works for you may not work for me and vice versa. It is one thing to share your own experiences honestly, but to jump up on a soapbox and declare that what worked for you is The Right Way is arrogant and a little cruel. (And it is certainly going to make me think twice before ever commenting again, lest I come across as condescending and know-it-all-y.)
It is also ignorant to assume that everyone wants a fix in a pill therefore they haven’t exhausted other options rather than the so called quick fix. I have tried EVERYTHING.In fact, when I first went in 18 years ago seeking help and they started slapping on these diagnostic labels on me ,insisting I needed pills, I held out and insisted I just wanted talk therapy. But when that failed to make things improve, I realized that I had a legitimate conditon and if pills would help,so be it. To date, the only pill that ever did more good than harm is Xanax.
The insane thing would be rejecting the ONE thing that does work simply because a faction of people have abused the drug and another faction see it as the devil. My estranged husband used to work in a rehab center and he saw the worst of Xanax addiction and spouted off about it incessantly, as if he were an expert and the drug should be banned all together. He even got a bit self righteous when told I was going back on the drug.
Then he saw what ONE little dose did to quell my panic and paranoia and his opinions changed drastically.
Much like morphine used to treat the pain of cancer treatment and such, if you have exhausted all other options and have the type of panic/anxiety disorder that I have, Xanax is a legitimate treatment. I do not like it because it makes me high. It does not make me feel super confident. It does not give me false bravado. It just puts my anxiety ridden paranoid mind back into the even keel most people start with. If any of the other drugs did the same thing, without turning me into a sleepy lethargic zombie, I would have the same feelings for them. But with me, only Xanax has ever had the “more benefit than side effect” factor for me.
And wanting a medication that works yet allows you to remain functional is not a sign of dependence,it is a sign of intelligence.
It has always been my fondest dream to get to a point in my life where I don’t need ANY of these pills.
But, allowing others to bully me into going off my meds because they knew a better way has never turned out well for me. As it turns out, they only think they are experts. Even the so called experts with the alphabet soup beside their names can only know what they are taught and learn from experience. They will NEVER be an expert on me, because they do not live with me. I do. I know myself well. I should be allowed to say, “This works best for me” without feeling like a sleazy drug seeking junkie asking the doctor to prescribe crack cocaine.
Other than cotton mouth, I have never had a single side effect from Xanax. That is so rare with psych meds, that I would have to be insane to want to trade it for something that has ten side effects and doesn’t even help my problem.
Benzos are not inherently evil, especially if you find the right one that proves to be your savior, as I have. It is not fair that a bunch of buzz seeking drama queens and pill pushing doctors have illegitimized what is a wonderful medication for a very life disrupting disorder.
I don’t mean to sound bitchy,at all, but I get very uneasy when I see people trashing what has proven to be a sanity saving drug for me. I respect that perhaps they or someone they know had a bad experience with it and they are entitled to their opinion, but it never hurts to see things from both sides of the fence. And on my side of the fence, Xanax is the lifesaver being tossed out into the stormy sea to rescue me from drowning in my own paranoid psychosis of panic and anxiety.