Completely cured my anxiety, but now I have another problem!!

[WackyJacky]

Well, about 2 years ago I suffered a death in the family.. my brother who I grew up with my whole life died of cancer at the young age of only 35... after this happend I became what I like to call "Terminally depressed" .. I ended up losing my job because I didn't want to leave my bed and be out in the world, I just wanted my brother to come back... Sooner or later I started forcing myself to get up out of bed and by this time I was still very depressed but not enough anymore to make me completely immobilized, I also found myself to be INCREDIBLY anxious dealing with severe anxiety all throughout my days dealing with CONSTANT panic attacks. Especially in social situations... So a friend of mine convinced me to go see a psychologist who eventually referred me to a pyschiatrist who I began to see regularly...

This doctor must have put me on and I must have tried every drug out there from zoloft to paxil, prozac, celexa, buspar, klonopin, and most recently xanax which I'm still on. NONE of these meds worked for me... the depression, anxiety, and worst of all-panic attacks continued. Eventually, desperate, I began scouring the web for answers and I eventually came across this site .. anxiety.pcti-system. com .. which is this program to cure anxiety/panic attacks for good all naturally.. To make a long story short, it worked incredibly for me.. my anxiety is gone, depression as well almost all but gone, and I haven't had a panic attack in over a month. I do though from time to time still feel sorrow over my brother. However, this is my problem: I'm still taking my xanax because I'm completely ADDICTED.. when I try to stop taking it I start going through incredible withdrawls mentally and physically... If I would have known of this addiction problem I would have never allowed my doctor to put me on them. Has anyone else suffered from benzo addiction and if so, know how to safely get off it with minimal side effects?? Please any advice/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

P.s- For those of you on SSRI antidepressants, I would really recommend taking a look at this site: ssristories. com .. From what I can tell looking in hindsight, these are potentially very unhealthy dangerous drugs.

[Blot]

Well done on conquering the panic & anxiety.What a shame that you are experiencing dependency on Xanax. Have you tried to reduce the amount you take slowly? can you reduce the dose? or omit every alternate dose?

[Rachel_123]

hello =]

first of all - congrads on beating your anxiety, its not easy and it just goes to show it CAN be done. I'm really sorry to hear about your loss - I can't honestly even come close to understanding what its like - but i must say your incredibly brave for dealing with it in such a positive manner. You got yourself out of bed and you made your life better by doing so.

As for coming off the meds - I would advise a trip to the doc where you set out a plan for decreasing your dose every so slightly until eventually your life is independant of medication. Well done for getting this far.

One question: is that the right address for the website? It wont work for me! :D

[jbyrd]

I'm sorry for the loss of your brother. That had to be horrible. I'm happy, though, that you found a way out of the panic/anxiety/depression. As for the benzo addiction, I recently went through withdrawal from Ativan. My doctor put me on 3mg a day for anxiety. It was way too large a dose and made me severely depressed. The only way to get off of it is to do it slowly. A good rule of thumb is to cut back by no more than about 10 percent of your current dose. If you're taking a 1mg tablet, you might see if you can get your pharmacist to give you .25 mg tablets and break them in half and take 3 and a half of them. Stay at that dose for a week to 10 days, then go down another half. As your dose gets smaller you'll have to break them into quarters so that you don't withdraw too quickly. Its not a fun thing to do, but it is totally worth it in the end. A place I went for support was benzobuddies.org. There is a lot of helpful information and people who are going through the same thing.

I wish you the best with it.

[fatty]

Hi Wacky,

I was also addicted to Zanax for a couple of years . I talked to a doctor about ways to come off them and he suggested i take Ciprimil. You take the 2 together which is perfectly fine and after the 2 weeks when the ciprimil has kicked in , then i just went off zanax straight away. Ciprimil is much easier to get off.
Then over the space of a month i was able to cut down on Ciprimil to the point where i was forgetting to take them. Then gave up for good.

That was 3 years ago. Suffered from Anxiety for 10 years, never looked back.

Will share more when i get time.