Paxil withdraw help

[khugh777]

I am currently trying to get off Paxil. I know how to ween myself off it but it ,as many people know, has terrible withdraw side effects.  One of the side effects I am having is my anxiety attacks are coming back the same as they were before all of the medication. I am perscribed to xanex. If I take xanex ocationally in this period of Paxil withdraw will that harm me?? Are the anxiety attacks just a side effect that will go away after the withdraws are gone?? NOTE: I dont have anxiety issues any more I THINK. But they have come back. Will they continue after the withdraw of the paxil is complete????

[Paxiled]

You say you're weaning, but you sound like you're off already. So it's hard to tell what's going on from your post.  But if you haven't solved your anxiety problem through therapy or some other way, the Paxil doesn't cure anxiety, it just treats symptoms.  If the anxiety you're suffering now is exactly what you were suffering before, not different in any way, then it doesn't sound like withdrawal, it sounds like the Paxil was working and without it you still have the anxiety problem.  Withdrawal symptoms are many and different for all of us, but they aren't the exact same thing we had before we went on medication.  They're odd and they create different issues than we had before.  So again, most likely, you're not ready to come off medication yet since you're problem hasn't been solved.  Of course, none of us from our chairs can tell you what you're going through or whether you solved your anxiety problem, but that's what it sounds like from what you've said so far.

[Julie359]

It is very possible that if you are in the early stages of Paxil tapering down then you could be experiencing withdrawl but it may also be the return of the anxiety... Paxil, like Paxiled stated only calms the symtoms down it doesn't cure the underlining reason for having them in the first place.  Maybe if, like me, you have been on it for many years and now that you have come off the panic is returning you need, like me, to go into therapy.  

I have come to realise that these med's do have their good uses but i think only in the short term, if we are to live anxiety free for the rest of our lives we need to LEARN how to control them and face the problems that are causing them.  In essence we need to have a good ols sort oyt of our closets and dig out those skeletons.   Horrible i know, but in the long term it's the only way.