Posted by MJC on October 6, 2002, at 16:37:31
In reply to Re: Anxiety Disorder -- Advise please » MJC, posted by BrittPark on October 6, 2002, at 13:35:36
Honestly, I'm not even sure if any of my anxiety is anticipatory. Right now I'm on a little bit of Clonazepam, Effexor XR, and Trazadone which is kind of balancing things out untill we have a better understanding of this. But I'm just in panic like ALL the time. My mind is basically rushing at 100 miles a minute constantly, providing me with severe insomnia for 4-5 days where I will basically not sleep at all, then on the 5th and 6th days I'll just be so burned out that I can barely do anything. Those nights I'll sleep about 6-7 hours (if I'm lucky) then the cycle will continue all over again. I have a VERY hard time controlling my temper and sometimes I get overly upset about things that I know are minor in nature. I know I'm overreacting but yet I can't stop myself from overreacting.
It's almost like I'm living my life on fast forward though, at the moment, there is absolutely no outside pressure to be pushing me this way.
On my best days I'm pretty uptight, and on my worse I'm having panic attacks. The only other in between I have is being completely drained of energy and any mental capacity whatsoever.
From what my Doctor and I have found out so far, I don't agree with Paxil. It puts me into almost a zombie like state. If I take a little bit of it (20mg), there is a "tiny" bit of control over my anxiety. If I increase the dosage, everything else in my head slows down (I went for 2 months on 30mg and barely left the couch).
On Effexor XR, well, right now I'm taking 75mg doses at 36 hour intervals. I was taking 75mg every day but it was making me feel like I was on speed. It would also give me episodes where I felt euphoric, which I didn't think was bad but my Doctor said that it shouldn't be doing that and lowered the dosage.
The Clonazepam is basically to help keep things under control, not have any sudden violent panic attacks, while we're trying out the different medications. The trazadone is used to help me sleep. Like I said, my brain travels at about 100 miles a minute, so even when I lie down at night, when I'm absolutely exhausted, my body is hurting, my eyes are burning, my brain is still going and preventing me from sleeping.
When I spoke to my Dr. yesterday she told me that she would like to try out Epival on me and she's already filled out the forms to go have my brain waves read at the local hospital.
At the moment I'm more curious as to what exactly I'm suffering from than as to what medications will help me. I don't have GAD, SD, PSTD, or OCD but kind of all three mixed in together in a nice fancy blend with a dose of panic attacks tossed in. Personally, I can't pinpoint one of the 5 that I'm suffering from more. It's basically all 5 at the same level practically all the time.
For my Dr. to describe to me what she thinks is going on here she drew a line on a piece of paper. She said that that line is the ideal chemical state for my brain, this is where everything is level and I should be normal. Then she said that below that line was where depression would fall into place. Above the line is where anxiety would be. Her guess is that my current brain level is jumping all over the place in the anxiety portion with it basically never reaching the normal level.
So, what could that possibly be? What anxiety disorder would do that to me on a constant basis? In order for me to be treated, I need to understand exactly where I'm at, where I'm supposed to be, and how exactly I'm supposed to get there. I'm a Logistics major so that's practically how my brain works now lol...
> It sounds like you might have panic disorder. Front line treatments for panic disorder are benzos and/or an antidepressant. There's some evidence that TCAs are better with panic disorder than the newer SSRIs. Is any of your anxiety anticipatory? That is, do you get anxious about possibly having a panic attack?
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> Knowing you will find an answer,
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> Britt
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poster:MJC
thread:122475
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021006/msgs/122563.html