Question:
But it's a whole other matter when it comes to CNS stimulants. I've made
little to no progress in these regards. So now that I've been prescribed
ritalin (methylphenidate) -- which is actually contraindicated with people
who suffer marked anxiety -- I often experience a very bad panic attack
unless I've taken a proper dose of my anti-anxiety medication beforehand.
I'll start to notice the CNS stimulation, which will make me nervous and
anxious about my heart's condition, which will then trigger my fears based
on my bad experiences with abusing stimulants in the past, which, in turn,
will cause a full-blown panic attack.
But unlike teaching myself to get over my fears as I did with CNS
depressants, I can't with CNS stimulants. Despressants are drugs that
typically calm and relax a person so one or two bad experience are
relatively easy to get over with time and practice. But stimulants are
another thing entirely. Even low doses administered to people with a
history of anxiety and panic disorders will cause the same feelings of
panic. So you can't "start out small" by taking small doses of the medicine
in question, and raising it as you continue to feel more and more
comfortable with it, until you've beaten the psychological cause by
establishing a sense of safety.
Can anyone here relate at all to what I'm saying? Has anyone experienced
something like this? If so, I'd really appreciate the advice.
Answer:
how you behaviorally conditioned your use of sedating meds is spot on
as to how you would retrain yourself to take any med required for your
health. As for the ritalin-if you are taking it for adhd or add, you
would not feel stimulated as it has a paradoxical reaction to those
who have these conditions. You would feel more focused and in some
instances calm. If you do not feel this way on these drugs then you
feel the way any normie would feel while taking an amphetamine
analogue, which is stimulated or possibly on the teeter of anxiety.
There is little you can do behaviorally to decondition this side
effect, except challenge the terriblness or awfulness of being
hyper-and of course use counteracting meds to prevent the anxiety
associated with being stimulated
Of all the things to have regained using, alcohol is one of the worst.
It can give, sometimes very bad, *rebound* anxiety as it wears off.
Oh, yeah. I've been seeing my current psychiatrist for over half a year
now. The reason I saw him in the first place was over anxiety issues
(namely, social anxiety) that my former psychiatrist had refused to treat
with anything other than worthless SSRIs (which is ironic since the same
doctor would prescribe high-strength opiates and amphetamines to just about
everyone else). So he definitely knows about my various anxiety disorders
as they were -- and still are -- the main issue.
All drugs or just intoxicant drugs? As far as I can remember, during the
summer I abstained from all intoxicants for about 1-2 months. It wasn't a
voluntary decision. It simply happened because I lost all my sources. I
still took benzodiazepines (clonazepam) for when I'd go out, and I started
smoking cigarettes again to give me a sense of doing something with my days,
but neither of those substances (clonazepam or nicotine) can be labeled as
intoxicants. I can't imagine going an entire year without an intoxicant,
though. I'm not sure what it would accomplish either. Except perhaps to
depress me.
I hear what you're saying, but I've experienced quite the opposite --
doctors who KNEW they could help me by simply prescribing me a
benzodiazepine but refused to do so. Maybe it's because I'm a younger man
and doctors think that all their patients under 30 are drug-addicts
disguising themselves with psychological disorders to get legal drugs. I
don't know. But I DO know that if I'd gotten the medication I needed when I
was a teenager or thereabouts that I'd NEVER had tried to self-medicate on
my own.
I trust the competence of my new doctor. He's far superior to the last guy
I saw. That guy would make me wait in a crowded room full of people who
would individually discuss their medications with him and the clinician in
front of everyone, and finally, when everyone else had left about an hour
later, would give me a few sample boxes of some worthless SSRI and have me
out of the door in 5 minutes. Only to repeat the process all over again 3
weeks later.
As for the ritalin, the truth is that I don't think I have ADD; in fact, I
know I don't. However, for the last 2-3 years, and especially the last few
months, my concentration levels have dropped, my motivation is just about
non-existent, and I feel fatigued for most of the day. I don't know what
disorder these symptoms indicate, but it doesn't look like ADD to me. Other
than the inability to concentrate well when I'm working on something of an
intellectual nature, none of the other symptoms really fit under the ADD
category. That's why my psychiatrist only gave me a 30-day supply of
ritalin; he's not convinced of it either even though he says I show some ADD
symptoms. I guess he wants to see how the medication works (if at all) to
figure out the cause of the problem.
In any case, although I'm sure I don't have ADD, the truth is that the
ritalin -- despite its adverse effects -- DOES help me concentrate than if
I'd been on nothing at all. In addition, I've noticed that higher doses
increase my self-confidence. Now, it's true that the clonazepam gets rid of
most of my anxiety (and all of it if I increase the dose a few times), but
it's one thing to have gotten rid of your anxiety and one thing to have
increased your self-confidence. The ideal would be to have both of best
words: a decrease of anxiety (from a benzodiazepine, in my case) and an
increase of self-confidence (from a stimulant, in my case). If it wasn't
for the side effects of the latter, I'd have the perfect combination of
medicines to start my life over. But I guess that'd be just too simple.
