Urgent help needed; Klonopin has ceased working, just RX'd Xanax instead, need advice
I need info quickly/urgently about Xanax (and to a lesser extent Klonopin) and how much I should take to be effective at combating severe anxiety without putting me into a coma or anything...I have SERIOUS obligations both tonight, tomorrow and the next day and my extreme anxiety is currently preventing me from meeting those obligations. I was just prescribed Xanax today and I'm trying to figure out how much to take, but before I go on I think it's very important to know my history with benzodiazepines...I know it's long (sorry), but I believe it definitely plays a role here:
SITUATION/SUMMARY: Was prescribed Klonopin (1MG) about 4 years ago in 2010 to take *as needed* for anxiety - took it sparingly for the first 3.5 years, only when I really needed it (once or twice a month) and 1MG was enough to eliminate the anxiety every time. I once tried 3MG back then and it made me black out.
Latter half of 2013 I began to take it more frequently as my anxiety was becoming slightly more severe but still only maybe once or twice a week - I actually made a Word document with a log every time I took it, how much, and how it impacted my anxiety so I know exactly how much I took. I was still taking the same dosage (1mg or 1.5mg), but maybe 3-5 times a month - this continued up until February of this year.
Then comes 2014, particularly February onward, and my anxiety spikes WAY higher than ever before; my depression gets much worse as well but that's not what I'm posting about. There were no med changes, no events, nothing I know of that precipitated this...just all of a sudden, my mental/emotional health became much worse. So, with increased stress and anxiety I began taking the Klonopin more frequently. I would always purposely not eat so that I'd take it on an empty stomach so it would be more effective...and many times I wouldn't eat anything for the rest of the day in fear of food diminishing the anxiolytic effects of the Klonopin. I increased the frequency to maybe 3 times a week at first. I noticed that the 1 or 1.5mg doses weren't working against my MUCH elevated anxiety so I upped the dose to 2mg or 2.5mg. Then when even that didn't work, out of desperation I tried mixing it with alcohol...mostly hard liquor, shots of vodka etc. I am still a lightweight when it comes to alcohol and when alcohol was involved it usually did not end well and only occasionally improved things/alleviated my anxiety...maybe 15% success rate. I didn't drink with it EVERY time, but from this point on maybe like 1/3rd of the time I took Klonopin for anxiety alcohol would be involved by the end of the night.
LATE FEB-MID MARCH 2014: So then at the end of February/the beginning of last month, March, my mental/emotional state deteriorated further...I stopped bothering with logs for the most part. From late February to mid March I took the Klonopin with about the same frequency, maybe 3 or 4 days a week, and took 3MG every time which was sometimes effective, sometimes not. In mid March I took 4MG, my max ever dose, and after hours with not nearly enough anxiety relief I added in alcohol to the mix and of course blacked out. It's probably worth mentioning that I live totally alone and any time I've drank anything with the Klonopin in my system (and as mentioned above, nothing else, almost always on an empty stomach) I have been alone at home. I should also mention at this point that I am a 26 year old male, 5 foot 7 and weigh 123 pounds.
PAST MONTH (mid/late March to now, April 16th)
After the 4mg dose with the booze and no relief I knew it was time to see a doctor about the meds (and had actually been trying for months) but my doctor had no availability until the beginning of May and every other pdoc wasn't accepting new patients or didn't take my insurance. Started taking some higher doses like 5.5MG or 6MG, although not all at once...spaced out throughout the day when I kept having anxiety so I added more. I kept brief logs of this. 4MG was what I usually took at this point, although I think I cut back on the frequency a bit (twice a week or so).
Sometimes it would help, sometimes it wouldn't. When it wouldn't I would add booze to the mix, rarely with positive results. Last day of March I started out with 5MG all at once since I knew I had a majorly anxiety-provoking and stressful day ahead of me...5MG wasn't enough so I took another 1MG a few hours later, then that still wasn't enough so 2 hours later I took another 1MG, then 3 hours later the anxiety still hadn't subsided so I took another 1MG, bringing me to my grand total of 8MG Klonopin for the day...and then added booze into the mix. According to what I wrote in my diary, it was only at this point that my anxiety finally reached a manageable level.
My diary is missing entries from a lot of days since March 30th, 2014 but I know I upped the frequency of the Klonopin again and 5MG was my new minimum and usually did not work. I have an entry dated 4/13/2014 (3 days ago) saying "UGH it has been 3 hours since I took 7mg kpin all at once and everything is practically the same, anxiety just as bad. 7mg kpin on no food and NOTHING in terms of anxiety relief."
(END OF SITUATION/SUMMARY)
So basically that's where I'm at now. First of all, I learned my lesson and have cut alcohol out of my life entirely. But 7MG of Klonopin taken all at once doesn't do anything for me and I still need immediate anxiety relief for extreme situations, and badly. I have real-world obligations, serious ones, and my anxiety is severe enough to prevent me from doing them no matter how important I know they are.
I finally saw a doctor today, told her the Klonopin had stopped working for my anxiety even at high doses, and she prescribed me 0.5mg Xanax instead. I have never taken Xanax before today. I took the first 0.5mg Xanax 2 hrs and 40 minutes ago, felt no different after an hour and a half, and took another 0.5mg Xanax 1 hour and 10 minutes ago...and still feel zero anxiety relief.
Questions: Xanax is not Klonopin, but they're similar. Does the fact that 7MG of Klonopin has zero effect on my anxiety mean that the Xanax will be equally ineffective? Is the same dose of Xanax equivalent in potency/efficacy to the same dose of Klonopin, keeping in mind I've never taken Xanax before? Can I mix the two together? I feel like 0.5mg is *way* too low of a dose and am more convinced of that now that 1mg has proven to do nothing but then again I don't know that much about Xanax. Can I safely take, for instance, 4mg of Xanax without major repercussions (keeping in mind my tolerance to Klonopin and the severity of my anxiety)? Or 2mg Klonopin and 3mg Xanax or something like that? How likely is it, given this info, that I am essentially screwed in terms of any benzos ever working for me again?
Like I said, I have HUGELY important obligations to meet both tonight, tomorrow and the next day and my anxiety is currently ruining tonight's and I can't afford to let my anxiety ruin the others as well...so any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Sorry for the length, but I felt including all the details was important and hopefully some kind soul will see this and be able to offer some help or information. Thank you for your time.
P.S. I have been prescribed and tried almost every other medication under the sun over the last 14 years, seen 20+ different doctors for my anxiety in that time span, and absolutely none of the meds have gotten rid of my anxiety except for the Klonopin...which is now ineffective. SSRIs, SNRIs, Tricyclics, Stimulants, Anti-Psychotics and several other classes of medication I'm forgetting. Non-med routes as well...15+ different therapists, CBT, exposure therapy, aromatherapy, meditation, almost everything. Nothing else works, which is why I'm so desperate.
