On Clonazepam

[spacecadet79]

Hello, I'm a 28 year old male living in Costa Rica, and have been prescribed Clonazepam alongside Citalopram for quite a while. I'm very concerned about the Clonazepam - if I try to stop taking it abruptly I can't sleep at all and heart beat seems to increase, and my anxiety, worriesn and so called phobias (be them irrational or rational) become overwhelming and my cognitive capacity decreases terribly. The same happens if I ever stop taking Citalopram. Sometimes I feel stigmatized so I try to feel normal by doing what seemingly "normal" people do, not take medications and try to be "normal". It's hard. Sometime I even feel that the Citalopram isn't helping me, although I am able to somehow hold a job for now. I increased the intake of Clonazepam to at least 1 mg a day and I can't take less, or else I feel unbearably strange. I was considering switching medications and keeping a very low intake of Clonazepam but my anxiety levels don't allow me to do that. If there is anything you can suggest I would be very grateful. I'm very skeptical of the psychiatrists in Costa Rica; I heard from too many people that most of them are very expensive and ineffective in many ways. I don't want to generalize on the medical institutions of Costa Rica, but I don't want to put my condition at a greater degree of risk. Thank you!

[JSGeare]

I certainly hope you have posed to your doctor the same questions you've asked us -and we would be grateful to know what your doctor tells you.

Meanwhile, Medhelp has a very thorough drug database. To get to it, enter the name of any drug in the search box at the upper right of your screen and click "Go." At the top of the page that appears you will see various references to other links in which the drug is mentioned. Toward the bottom you will see the drug name itself as a link. Click that link, and it will take you to information about the drug itself.

Thanks for the question.