Posted by bassman on April 1, 2006, at 8:08:34
In reply to Re: Is Valium more potent than Xanax? » rjlockhart, posted by tizza on April 1, 2006, at 1:54:28
That's interesting...as I said, Valium doesn't do anything for me in terms of panic, but Xanax works exceptionally well. But the interesting thing is that I don't experience any euphoria or any other sensation other than thankfulness that I don't feel as crazy, really. Maybe if you get a buzz out of Xanax it should be avoided. I do think Xanax has antidepressant effects and that is helpful for me. In addition to not helping with panic (God, I used to take mounds of the stuff years ago to try and calm down), if I take Valium and fall asleep, I wake up feeling awful. So, YMMV, yet again. I agree that Valium might be a better drug to start with-when I was taking oodles of it, I just decided one day that it really wasn't helping and just stopped. Maybe 50-60 Valium mg/day for several years to zippo. Hard to say if I withdrew because I felt so awful anyway. :>}Now people know that was foolish to withdraw that quickly. My point is that Valium must be reasonably easy to withdraw from, as has been mentioned, compared to Xanax-which if I drop the dose by 0.25 mg/day, I feel mightily in terms of anxiety. I've been taking Ativan to relieve early-morning nightmares and I'm withdrawing from 1 mg/day (over a period of about two weeks) of that with absolutely no problems; I don't even know I'm withdrawing. I think the Ativan worked slightly at the beginning and now doesn't do anything, so I'm dumping taking it.
In answer to a previous question in this thread, there are oodles of references out there that people that use benzos so they can function generally decrease their dosage as time goes on. If anyone finds that interesting and doesn't want to Google/etc. it, I'd be glad to find some references. My experience is that people HATE their psychoactive meds (my pet theory is that the sicker the person is, the harder it is to get them to take medication-I don’t know why), no matter what they are and periodically declare themselves fully well and get off their meds. Then they feel miserable for months while until they realize they felt O.K. because their meds were working. Heck, I've done that.:>}
poster:bassman
thread:627071
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060329/msgs/627426.html