My little experiment

Medication is a funny thing. Anti-depressants help prevent panic, anxiety, and depression, but they can cause you to go too far the other way sometimes. Because of that, you may need another medication to keep that in check. Of course there are the panic attacks that still happen, even with the anti-depressants, so you need another medication just in case. Those medications are called benzodiazepines.

I've been having panic attacks lately, as I've said, so I've needed my benzodiazepines. The benzo my doc changed me to is Xanax and I like it. It works much faster than the one I was on previously. The problem with any of them is they make me depressed. I can have panic attacks and get depressed from those or I can take a Xanax and get depressed from it. Neither option is good, although I detest panic attacks so I go with the Xanax.

Over the last week I have gone for the Xanax at the least little hint of anxiety. It keeps me from having an attack, but I don't know if I might have avoided it altogether if I just used some therapy techniques.

That had me concerned I might be getting a bit hooked on them, so I decided to do something. This week I have stopped reaching for the Xanax. So far no panic attacks and today, my third day without them, I'm starting to come out of the haze. I didn't realize quite the fog they were putting over me. I'm really feeling a lot better.

I'm not going to toss them out. I'm not saying I'll give them up completely because they really do work to break the cycle, but I do like coming back to life. Now if I could just get a normal night's sleep instead of too much or too little.