anxiety and clonazepam

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Does anyone else take this drug for anxiety? How does it affect you? I am on it for severe anxiety, as well as panic attacks, ptsd, and avoidant behaviors. When I say anxiety, I mean pure fear emotion and built up stress and sensory issues, tied to situations not ""thoughts"" which I can't seem to get anyone to understand. They think it must mean worrying, with wordy sentence thoughts. No. There is certainly a small element of worry, but not how they think.

Anyway, taking clonazepam seems to be the only thing that just calms me down enough to function. But I hate the side effects, especially memory related, since my memory is already terrible. And it slows my thinking down a bit as well, which also isn't good since I already have slow processing. I hate being long term dependent on such a nasty medication, and the more I take the more I feel I really need it, even though I'm on the lowest possible dose as I'm sensitive to medications.

I feel like it is the medication they throw at you when they know you have real problems and they want you to just ignore them or something. Here, get so drugged up you won't care that you're in deep s**t.

Has anyone been on this? Have you found better ways to cope or better meds at least?

( I'm also on a low dose of wellbutrin, but I'm not as concerned about that).

it took it regularly for a tremor disorder & it quit helping my anxiety after awhile. Nowadays I take it occasionally because I feel claustrophobic like when riding crowded buses so I take it before I go out when I may be getting on a crowded bus. It helps for that & I haven't really noticed any side-effects. I take Buspar for my regular anxiety thou & it stops me from having panic-attacks too. I like Buspar because it's specially for anxiety instead of being for other things too & it's meant to be taken long term.

I've been prescribed clonazapam for anxiety (the physical manifestations, not the cognitive worries). However, I find lorazepam does the trick a lot better. Instead, I found another use for clonazepam; it's been a huge help with my insomnia.

I take Lorazepam which is a similar medication. It is the only thing that slows down my brain when it is stuck in a loop or when I'm really anxious. I find it very good for going out to busy places or when I need to interact with people more; it stops me focusing on if I am being 'weird' or not.

I don't find the side-effects too bad, can cause some drowsiness but only sometimes. I think the 'addictive' nature of this class of drug is a bit over hyped really.

I've tried lots of antidepressants and other meds like propranolol for anxiety and none of them work.

Yes, I find the same thing regarding side effects. I always assume when it causes drowsiness that I didn't really need it as much as I thought I did. I also don't understand why I keep reading that benzodiazepines are addictive. I have never found that to be the case.

I take clonazepam for anxiety; depending on the level of anxiety. I take .5 mg for intense anxiety and 1mg for a full blown panic attack. I find it very helpful, I don't feel drugged up at all when I take it, and compared to Ativan three times per day it is a much better fit for me. If I stay active I don't get drowsy at all, if I sit down and relax I get very relaxed.

I prefer clonazepam for anxiety. It's fast acting, long lasting, and doesn't knock me out.

I used to take it regularly, and it seemed to help with social anxiety. Then I realized that it stopped working after a while. I never got severe withdrawal from it, and after a small break, it would start working again. I actually started to crave the feeling I got when the effect was strong. This pattern felt counterproductive and I also ended up taking higher doses than perscribed, so my doctor and I decided to stop it.

It was actually more effective to attack the anxiety problems with therapy, and get at the real issues. Even though it feels like anxiety comes out of nowhere, there is always an underlying cause. I felt that Clonazepam actually made it more difficult to discuss and analyze the source of the anxiety.