Am I Addicted?

I have been on Medication for about 2 1/2 weeks, and these were the worst weeks of my life.
My plan is  to stop my meds and just start back from the beginning and just go to Talk Therapy/CBT  because i was way better then, then i am now.  I have been taking .5mg Ativan betweeen 2 and 5 pills a day maybe more becuase it wasnt working and my Dr. wouldnt prescribe anything else, so do you think i am addicted to these now?

[Mark TX]

I really don't know whether it's possible to become addicted to ativan in 2.5 weeks, even at 5+ pills a day.  I'd think it's fairly low risk after such a short period, and I believe ativan is less problematic to quit than some bezos, such as klonopin.

I would think your outlook, in terms of getting off the ativan fairly easily,  is very bright.

But I'm curious what made the past weeks the worst of your life?  Certainly popping lots of tranquilizers should have made you feel better, even for a short period, no?  I suppose some people might not react well to them.  You may be one of those odd cases.

mark

[IrishAmy]

Yeah, I didn't react well. I was started on Prozac, took it for 2 days and then had a panic attack, which i never had before, and right after up until now i experience chronic anxiety, and insomnia and all the doctors' gonna do is keep giving me different meds and i just feel better off  everything the way i was before. Well yeah she gave me the Ativan .5mg but it didn't work at all and no one seemed to belive me for some reason. It was so bad, i couldnt breathe right, my heart kept racing, my body would feel like it was on fire, so i went to the ER and they said everyhting was fine-suggested i go to  a Psychiatric Crisis Center so i went there and still they wouldnt help me. It may not sound as bad as it really is.  especially it being so new to me and having to take care of 2  kids all day by myself, it really sucks to feel this way.

Amy

[IrishAmy]

Yeah, I didn't react well. I was started on Prozac, took it for 2 days and then had a panic attack, which i never had before, and right after up until now i experience chronic anxiety, and insomnia and all the doctors' gonna do is keep giving me different meds and i just feel better off  everything the way i was before. Well yeah she gave me the Ativan .5mg but it didn't work at all and no one seemed to belive me for some reason. It was so bad, i couldnt breathe right, my heart kept racing, my body would feel like it was on fire, so i went to the ER and they said everyhting was fine-suggested i go to  a Psychiatric Crisis Center so i went there and still they wouldnt help me. It may not sound as bad as it really is.  especially it being so new to me and having to take care of 2  kids all day by myself, it really sucks to feel this way.

Amy

[Mark TX]

At least you've realized that your panic attack is probably a side-effect of a drug.  I'd never experienced a panic attack until about two months after going on my first medication.  Boom... along came panic!  And I was naive enough to believe the panic was due to some underlying illness... rather than an obvious result of going on a medication.  Of course then you get put on another medication to deal with the panic... you know the routine.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a cynic these days.  Hard lessons learned.  Oh well.

I'm no longer on meds, btw, and no panic.  I'm tapering off klonopin now.  Another thing they never told me about... ouch!  I asked my psych docs about addiction in the past and it was always sluffed off as relatively unimportant.  Well, it certainly becomes important when you try to get off the stuff!

mark

[suzi-q]

Just to jump in here...Mark, you are soooo right when you talk about doctors not saying much about addiction and withdrawal..I take paxil and buspar daily for over 10 years now.  The only good think is that I never had to increase my dose...but the thought of coming off scares the heck out of me because of all stories I hear.  If I knew all these things, I definitely would have thought twice.  I still may have decided to take them (I was a real mess back then) but at least I would have gone in with my eyes open.

[Mark TX]

I think you hit a key point when you said 'I was a real mess back then.'  I think that's what happens to many of us.  I look at my own case, and that of my sister, both of which I'm intimately familiar with.  Both of us suffered fairly tough bouts that came about as a direct result of huge stresses in our lives.  Perhaps we were predisposed to suffer depression or addiction, I don't know.  But both of us fell into the medication routine which may or may not have been required to recover from the initial traumatic episodes.  But once on a medication track... it's not easy to get off.  As I mention, there are the inevitable side-effects... the need to adjust dosages, switch medications, and even try 'cocktails' of this or that, including the sleeping pills for insomnia, the benzos for panic, all sorts of odd symptoms that suddenly appear only AFTER you are taking these drugs which are supposed to make you feel better.  My sister has now been taking sleeping pills for 4-5 years.  She really has no good explanation why she needs them.  (The fact that she's hooked on them doesn't seem to play here.)  But she's just crazy about her doctor... so she's not about to complain.  Because the doctor, in a way, becomes your 'friend.'  After all, the doc is the one supplying those pills you're addicted to, right?

I'm really not trying to be overly critical here.  But I do agree that the downsides of medications are vastly downplayed.  And the benefits are often overstated.  My sis thinks she's doing just great on anti-depressants and sleeping pills.  Those around her have a somewhat different opinion.

Oh well.

=(