Posted by 3 Beer Effect on March 19, 2002, at 0:22:35
In reply to Re: Do Drug Holidays for benzo tolerance work? » 3 Beer Effect, posted by andyboy on March 18, 2002, at 19:04:29
As proof that tolerance can occur in only a few months----when they give Klonopin to epileptics the anticonvulsant effect wears off at 3 months & the dosage must be upped significantly or a different medication must be used to prevent seizures (from Prentice Hall Nurse's Drug Guide).
I take Klonopin for social phobia/anxiety & insomnia. 2 mg at bedtime, 1 mg breakfast, 1 mg lunch.It is possible that I may be confusing the side effects with the therapeutic effects. When I first started taking it I had short term memory loss, & I was slurring my words when I talked. These 'klonopin studpidity' effects went away but now it doesn't seem to do much of anything, although the anti-anxiety effect is supposed to be the last to go. I can't really tell if it is working or not. I stopped it cold turkey for this last weekend & had no problems except for rebound anxiety before I had to go to work Monday afternoon, so that is when I started taking it again. I think I am just going to take the daytime dose of 2 mg instead of the previous 4 mg/day to help prevent tolerance & skip the 2 mg nightime dose- Klonopin is pretty lousy as a sleeping pill anyways, I think Benadryl works almost as well.
I am not going to give up on it, i'll probably keep taking it for a long time (it curbs any urge of mine to drink alcohol)- But like all psychiatric medications, it has been somewhat dissapointing- I read all these rave reviews about Klonopin & that besides Nardil, Klonopin is the "social phobia gold standard" & its okay but not that great, atleast for me. It doesn't seem to help with social inhibtion, just with social anxiety. I read at high doses (like I am taking) Klonopin is serotogenic & increases confidence, & decreases social inhibition but this never happened (I still wait for girls/women to talk to me instead of the other way around).
(Zoloft & Dexedrine are the only meds i've taken that helped me be confident, and socially disinhibited- but Zoloft made me manic/insomniac, so now I take Lamictal- I plan to switch to long acting dexedrine spansules for both social phobia & ADD at my next psychiatrist visit- I take 200 mg provigil currently which has pooped out at 2 months.)
poster:3 Beer Effect
thread:98374
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020318/msgs/98730.html