please help me with my xanax tolerance. I don't want to discontinue

[mississippigirl78]

I am currently prescribed xanax 2 mg. three times a day (90 per month!  I realize it's a very high dose. I recently lost my dad and at first this medicine was a Godsend!  I have become so tolerant to them that I can't even feel them working and have to double my dose at times. I read that I could combine it with a GABA supplement but I am stuck and don't know what to do. My prescriptions are running out way too fast! Someone please tell me how to become "untolerant" to them so that they will work like they should. I do have a few 20 mg valium that I can alter with the xanax 2mg. I thought about tapering off then getting back on them. I only have 20 left. I take atleast 3 at time and I know it isn't right so please don't be rude to me. I don't want to feel this way. I just need someone's help. Any suggestions would be ever so welcome and I'd be grateful! Please help. Thanks so much in advance!!!!!

[M4Y0U]

Change in your regiment or prescription drugs must be addressed with a qualified physician. Consult your doctor before using any recommendations provided here.

M4

[Paxiled]

Like everyone else on here I'm just an amateur, but it seems to me what you needed and still need is to grieve for your Dad, not avoid that unpleasant feeling with a drug, legal or illegal.  Because you still haven't dealt with a known cause, you keep telling yourself you need more and more of the drug -- Xanax is addictive and it can be like that.  Most of us use these meds because we have chronic anxiety or in emergencies, but most of us on here also don't really know why we have the stupid anxiety.  In your case, you have something concrete you need to go through and instead some doc is enabling you to use an addictive drug to avoid doing this.  You have an open wound, your Dad dying and your strong reaction to it, but you're medicating yourself with something that wasn't designed to heal that wound.  This is something you need to confront and pass through so it doesn't bog you down forever.  If you need help for this, therapy, your family, your friends would have been and still seems like a better answer.  Now, there may be more to this than you've said -- maybe this is a chronic problem -- but when you reach tolerance to a benzo, it's time to move on.  And with the dose you're on and the fact you're abusing it by taking more than what was prescribed, that will have to be done very slowly because it can be dangerous to stop this med quickly.  Then let yourself grieve -- it's okay and it will pass, but only if you let it.  Good luck with this.