MC13 Struggling, "as needed" Xanax, trying to taper

[MC13]

My story is a little different one than most... I took Xanax strictly as needed, small doses of .125-.25mg that worked fine for me for a few years. As needed was sometimes once a week, sometimes a few days in a row. Ironically, only a few times for "panic". Mostly for sleep, stress, etc. I was originally prescribed them for anxiety from a bad reaction to a birth control pill (Yaz/Yazmin). I think I went through a major cold turkey withdrawal/reinstatement this way at least twice, each time thinking I was sick with "something"; I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on doctors and tests. All represcribed the xanax. Just thought it was my heart and stomach acting up; upped the Xanax to daily, took a betablocker, tons of vitamins, then tapered the drugs... And slowly recovered. Then started the xanax as needed again. I had no idea that's what was causing all the issues. Neither did 20+ doctors.

 

This last time was the straw that broke the camel's back. In October, I took a winning combo of dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine for bronchitis. 2 ER visits in 24 hrs. Never the same since. Panic all the time, worse than ever before. More drs, more tests, more xanax prescriptions. I have PVCs for the first time in my life. I had to resign from my job; I'm just so sick. Some people in a wellness FB group tell me it's the xanax. I can hardly believe it. How can this be? I took so little, infrequently and responsibly! I become "benzo-wise", finally upped my daily dose from .25-.3mg to .85mg in early Jan. I'm catatonic, suicidal, calling detox centers, the local psych hospital. No one can help. They literally laugh at my tiny dose.

 

Anyway, I could never stabilize on the drug when I wanted to start tapering in early Jan. I'm super sensitive to medications, so the bigger doses felt awful. It just felt like it was poisoning me. I sort of stabilized somewhere at .80mg (triple any daily dose I ever took) and tapered to .72 in the last month. Honestly I was only able to get down that low so fast because there were some days I'd fall dead asleep from the drug and not be able to take it. Recently I "updosed" to .75mg because I was told on a different group I tapered too fast. Some doses feel like I took water, some make me feel tired, some give me panic...

 

It seems each week, I have 1 good day, a few okay days, then the symptoms start getting a little worse leading up to a night of no sleep with constant panic/heart attack feelings (the day after one of those is just debilitating.) Up and down, every day, every moment, different. I'm not even really tapering yet!!! On an even just okay, or even sort of bad, day, I can run errands, drive, function... It's like I'm 2 people trapped inside one body. I have no panic or anxiety about normal things. Just watching tv will set me off. But the freeway is fine?! This is crazy!!!

 

My worst symptoms are: racing thoughts, heart attack feeling at night with no sleep once or twice a week, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, suicidal, internal shaking, akathisia, heart pounding, adrenaline surges, sore joints/muscles/jaw, panic attacks, constant anxiety...

 

I eat a mainly primal diet, I exercise daily no matter what (ride my bike or walk 20-30min). I have a wonderful support system of my husband and 14 year old daughter. And my mom... Who is trying to taper off a low dose of Valium (taken as needed). I take magnesium glycinate and food based vit C powder. I am hypothyroid but was taken off my natural thyroid medication because it can cause anxiety. I want back on that.

 

I need help. I have no idea what to do. How much drug to take, when to start my taper, plus my doses are all screwy since I'm using a liquid suspension from a compounding pharmacy. I tried liquid micro tapering and cutting doses using a jewelers scale as well. I do have a nice micro taper plan in place if I ever get there. Right now I'm dosing 5 times a day. 4 almost even doses and one tiny make up dose I had to add because I cut too much awhile back. I tried combining it with the other doses and felt some bad symptoms.

 

Thank you for reading this. I'm sorry we are all going through this. Truly heartbreaking.

[Meimeiquest]

Do you think you might still be having inter-dose withdrawal? Some people run that stuff out their bodies pretty fast. I am on an intermediate benzo and I dose every two hours, but that is mostly because I can't tolerate much at a time in the daytime. I am so sorry that you are going through this.

[Altostrata]

Welcome, MC13.

 

See this list of doctors http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/988-recommended-doctors-therapists-or-clinics/

 

Stuart Shipko in Pasadena is an expert at Xanax withdrawal. You might want to look at his e-book on the subject http://xanaxwithdrawalbook.com/

[Rhiannon]

Hi MC13.

 

Unfortunately, this is not primarily a benzo withdrawal forum, so we don't have the breadth and depth of knowledge here that we do with ADs. I do know quite a bit about benzos and Xanax myself but my ability to support is intermittent--sometimes I get too busy with other things and don't get onto the forum as often. We have a members' benzo area, but again, not really the breadth and depth of knowledge there that you'd find for ADs.

 

That said, it sounds like you're doing a lot of things right. You already have a liquid to taper with, check. You're doing multiple doses per day spaced (hopefully) evenly apart, check (although it sounds like you could maybe tweak and improve that a bit). Those are the most important things with Xanax.

 

It sounds to me like your symptoms right now are due not so much to what you're doing every day right now, but to destabilization and withdrawal symptoms from what you've done in the past. Please read through this forum and see if you can find some of my posts about how these drugs affect the neuroplastic brain; I don't have time right now to recap that. The kind of windows and waves, roller coaster symptoms you're experiencing are typical for benzo withdrawal and the kind of autonomic destabilization that going up and down and on and off psych meds usually causes, if not at first, then eventually. (As Alto says, our nervous systems are not made of rubber.)

 

I think your best bet now is to find a dose you can tolerate, and stabilize on it. This is probably going to take a matter of months, not days or weeks, at this point. If you're still getting too much sedation at 0.75 you can cut that down a little, perhaps, depending on how intolerable it is; but at this point you have to balance the benefits of any changes with how they're going to worsen the destabilization that you're suffering from already. 

 

Once you pick a dose, divide it up into about six equal amounts and take that amount every four hours, religiously, around the clock. (You might be able to go with an eight-hour stretch at night.) You want to keep your blood levels of Xanax as smooth and even as humanly possible. After a dose the level goes up for less than two hours and then peaks and begins to drop.

 

Once you do that, it's time to just hang in there and let time do the work. Keep a daily journal ranking your symptoms on a scale of 1 to 5. (This may not make sense to you now, but do it anyway.) You can keep notes in there about external stressors that may have happened during that time.

 

For now, avoid other meds and supplements other than magnesium and fish oil.

 

What you want to do is allow your brain to remodel itself and attain a sustainable homeostatic state.

 

Once your symptom journal shows that the numbers are no longer fluctuating as much, and they seem to have plateaued out at a level you're comfortable with, you can begin a slow, safe taper. You can read about all the tapering suggestions on this forum.

 

Use this time (as I say, from what you describe, I think it will be a minimum of three months, possibly/probably longer) to educate yourself. Read through all the topics on this forum, especially those pinned at the tops of sections. I also recommend reading Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker and the work of Peter Breggin and David Healy.

I don't always agree with everything Shipko says, but he's better than most, I suppose.

 

Good luck to you!

[Altostrata]

Please folks, take discussions of benzo tapering to http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/forum/29-members-only-benzo-tapering-discussion/

[bubble]

Hello MC13,

 

I'm also one of the xanax victims but have the additional complication of having antidepressant in the story.

 

I was doing similar things with Xanax for many years and only now realise that it was this that made things so bad for me.

 

Start a thread on the benzo subsection here and then we will address our Xanax issues there

 

best,

bubble