krissy20k said>>> Ever since I woke up this morning I have been fighting my anxiety. I feel like I am on the verge of a panic attack. I am so anxious right now. Actually this is how I have been for the past month and a half. I am doing some breathing exercises and it seems to help, but not for long. I can't even eat today. I hardly slept, and I am drained. Can someone share some tips on what you do when you are in anxious mode! I am really trying hard not to take Xanax. That stuff only works for "in the moment" for me. After it wears off my anxiety comes back triple fold!Therein lies the problem with the really short half-life benzos like xanax. This is why PRN dosing almost never works unless you have panic disorder with very infrequent panic attacks and no anticipatory anxiety or panic comorbid with severe GAD which I believe most people have. You take a drug like xanax and you get this incredible surge of anxiety reduction. It makes you feel how you want to feel but this feeling is one that most people can't achieve naturally. This almost instant relief causes positive reinforcement in the brain to do again what you did before to rid yourself of the horrid mental anguish you feel. Benzos are true anti-anxiety meds and most people have taken them but most people have not taken them long-term on a daily basis. If you have ever gone to the dentist or into a hospital for some inpatient/outpatient procedure, you have probably been given just one benzo to calm you down. Most ppl have been given valium, versed, or ativan like this. These drugs work fantastic in situations such as these and have a remarkable safety profile. But when you try to use them long-term on a daily basis to manage things like severe panic disorder or GAD, you may or may not run into problems like tolerance but you will almost surely become 100% medically dependent or addicted. There is no getting around this unless you take benzos infrequently and the doses are spread adequately far enough apart. The problem with PRN is you avoid the addiction aspect but you experience this great relief followed by a this feeling that your anxiety is a little worse than it was before you took the drug after the effect wears off. Ultimately what happens even as careful as you might try to be is that the PRN doses become spaced too close together and too frequent and most people discover that they are medically dependent even tho you tried to avoid. It is a very hard thing not to do with benzos because they provide such profound relief and they do so quickly. Other than drugs, the only other current options are learning naturally ways to relax. IOW, try to do naturally what the drug does but it can be extremely difficult to achieve this if your anxiety disorder is severe. I personally have never found any of the OTC supplements effective and I have tried a lot of them. Physical Exercise, mediation, breathing, and biofeedback have been shown to enhance the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system and counteract the effects of an out of control sympathetic autonomic nervous system which all panic and anxiety sufferers have IMO. It also seems like once you have taken benzos, these manual, natural things become much harder to do and achieve satisfactory results. They do work but you must practice them religiously without fail and do them the remainder of your life. Post edited by: LostInCyberspace12, at: 07/18/2012 02:11 PM ****************signature line disclaimer****************
I am no doctor nor do I have any medical training. Anything I write is just my personal opinion from my personal experience that you may or may not find helpful. Health & Healing have many different paths. Find the one that is right for you and hopefully reclaim your health.
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