Klonopin

[kendall_leanne]

I recently gave birth to my daughter 4 months ago and when she was about 2 months old I developed extreme Anxiety. I had anxiety before I had her but it was never this bad. I literally have anxiety over nothing, I will just be sitting there and have panic attacks, to the point where I can't calm myself down. The physical symptoms become so intense, my mind goes blank and makes my head feel weird, I feel like I can't breathe, I have numbness all over and feel like I'm going to lose the ability to move my limbs and especially my jaw. My headaches are out of control and my mind won't stop racing. I used to take Klonopin for 3 years and stopped about a year and a half ago due to the fact that I would abuse them while drinking. I felt great my whole pregnancy and didn't have any attacks, and now they are back with a vengeance. In 2 months I've already been to the hospital 2 times. I got put back on Klonopin but I'm too scared to abuse them now due to the fact that it was so hard to taper off of them, but I had to weigh my options, live in misery or take a medication that can help me relieve my symptoms. Plus I don't drink anymore so I can take them more responsibly. But here is my problem. I started off only taking .5 mg and after a few weeks they weren't working for me anymore. So I started taking them once and night and once before bed and now they're not working again. I still have panic attacks everyday and I don't know what to do and I don't really want to up my dose anymore. Today I took 1 mg at once at 3pm today and by 9:30pm I'm having panic attacks again and I'm contemplating taking more, but I have such a fear of being on a high dose and never being able to get off them someday. I tell myself that I'm having this bad anxiety because I just had a baby and it's probably just postpartum anxiety and eventually I will get better again like I did before. I'm supposed to take Paxil too but I'm also too scared to take them because I don't like how anti depressants have made me feel in the past. Anyone have some insight or suggestions or maybe been though something similar. Sometimes it just gives me a piece of mind to know Im not the only one.

[alankay]

In addition to a daily ssri to help reduce the klonopin use have you had any psychotherapy to see if a source for your anxiety can be found and addressed?
Paxil might not be right for you but do consider your past misuse doesn't mean you can't realize the meds proper use and start using it that way. You've learned your lesson there. Take it to heart.
Now to try and lessen your anxiety via ssri and psychotherapy so you can use the klonopin just as needed so tolerance doesn't develop much if at all. Then it will keep being effective. Just some thoughts. Alankay

[acetone]

If klonopin aren't working try some other benzo. Perhaps ativan or Xanax? It is possible that you have developed tolerance to klonopin. You might want to try a different SSRI too as Paxil is known to cause some nasty withdrawl effects.