Klonopin help..

[kendall_leanne]

I recently gave birth to my daughter 4 months ago and when she was about 2 months old I developed severe panic attacks. I've had anxiety before I had her but it was never this bad. I literally have panic attacks out of no where, I will just be sitting there and BAM, full blown attacks, to the point where I can't calm myself down. The physical symptoms become so intense, my mind goes blank and I can't concentrate and it 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 had a drinking problem and would abuse them. I was off Klonopin for about 2-3 months before I got pregnant, and I felt great my whole pregnancy and didn't have any attacks. 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 again 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 in the morning 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. I took 1 mg at one time at 3 pm today and by 9:30 pm 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 I am not the only one.

[missmello]

I'm sure it has something to do with your hormones still trying to level out post-pregnancy, and there must be some stress in your life. I was taking klonopin .5mg also, at first one in the morning and one at night because my anxiety was really bad. Then I would try to make it through the morning without taking one, and only taking it before bed. Had trouble sleeping so it helped with that a little. Then I started cutting them in half, half in am, half in pm. Although there were times where if I felt I needed a whole one I would take it. Took 2 wks to ween off, I was on it for about a month or 2 total. I still sometimes feel like I wanna take one, but fight it, tell myself I'm not feeling that bad, and I won't take it unless I feel like I'm gonna panic, but that hasn't happened in a few weeks.

Maybe you need to switch meds? I was on xanax before they switched me to klonopin. Xanax was working fine until one day I took it and 20 minutes later I had a full blown panic attack. After that, every time I took it, it would trigger a panic attack so I called my Dr. and she switched me to klonopin. The effects are them same, but for some reason my body/brain was associating xanax with panic. Maybe that's whats happening here? Could be tolerence too, who knows. But maybe if you switch to something else it'll trick your mind and work for you.