Newbie, Klonopin

[Chuck]

A week ago I suddenly had a night of terrible insomnia followed by anxiety the next day. I've always been a little anxious, but not like this. Since then, I haven't slept at all without drugs of some kind. I'm not sure if the anxiety is causing the insomnia or the other way around.

What I have is not debilitating, but a constant heaviness and sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's not directed at anything in particular, and my life is going fine with no real sources of stress at all.

After a week of dealing with this I went to the doctor and he gave me a prescription for Klonopin, 0.5mg. I'm to start taking it before bed and then take it in the morning later depending how I tolerate it. I'm nervous about getting on something addictive. I've never been "on" anything before and seldom go to the doctor for anything.

Last night I took it for the first time and I was pretty anxious at that time (having just read horror stories about dependency and such of this drug, for one thing). It did not calm me down much and only had a mild sedating effect that was not sufficient to really overcome the insomnia. Does this drug work its way up to full efficacy over time, or is this as good as it's going to get without upping the dosage?

Thanks for any input.

[Carla]

Hello!
I am sorry to hear about how you have been feeling. I have had insomnia for the past couple of weeks and lack of sleep does make anxiety worse and can cause anxiety even if a person has not suffered with anxiety before. Lack of sleep can cause depression too. Anxiety can cause insomnia and other sleep problems too. I dont like taking medication cos it scares me to take it. However I do know that it takes usually at least a couple of weeks for the full effects of anti anxiety medication and other medications to take effect. Sometimes during the first days/couple weeks medication can cause the original problem for which you took them for to become worse. After that then the medication should kick in fully and help. I have been taking Kalms Sleep tablets which are not as strong as sleeping tablets that gps prescribe but are still good. They do help a lot. I still dont sleep much but the sleep that I get is a lot deeper than what it was before I took them.

[Chuck]

Well, the second night was a little more promising. I took the pill at 8:30 or so and fell asleep by 9:30. I've been trying to get to bed early in hopes of sleeping in and catching up on rest I've lost in the last week. I woke up at 5:30, so that's 8 hours, but no surplus. It does feel like more solid sleep than I've had in ages, but when I wake up, that's it. I'm groggy, but not "sleepy" and never really fell back asleep, though I lounged until 7:30 or so.

There is residual grogginess, which will be annoying if it persists. I actually felt more alert in the mornings at 7AM after not having slept at all, but then, that's partially anxiety and adrenalin which doesn't really translate into solid functioning either.

[punkgod94]

Hey Chuck, I only read your first post, but let me give you my experience on Klonopin...

It helped for sure. I'd take 1 mg in the morning and 1 mg at night. The doctors wanted me to take it that way to keep an overall level in my blood system. I tried it that way for awhile. Then I started to severely dislike my psychiatrist who prescribed it to me cause it felt like he was belitting me. I said F*** the medicine and stopped. I experienced withdrawal symptoms without even knowing it cause I went cold turkey. Lasted a few days and I managed to stay at work. Since then I decided to take it AGAINST doctors orders and take it as needed. That's where the danger came in. It IS a quick fix and I soon found myself taking 5 mgs at a time, or even more. It IS addicting, so use caution. I also have an addictive personality and have used many other recreational drugs in the past and present to help cope with my anxiety and depression. I was diagnosed with bipolar type II disorder and now I'm addicted to anxiety pills and some other opiates.

If it helps you then great! But be sure to talk to your doctor and tell him/her that you don't want to be on it for more than a certain amount of time because of how addictive it can be. Take your medicine as prescribed, and also when you and your doctor decide to take you off of it make sure that you don't stop cold turkey...SLOWLY titrate yourself down in dosage, otherwise it's quite possible you can die. Benzos like Xanax, Valium, Ativan, and Klonopin are the ONLY known drugs that I'm aware of that can actually cause death by immediately stopping them without a doctor weaning you off of them. Eventually the Klonopin won't be enough and you'll seek something else. It's a wonder drug when used properly, but BEWARE of the addictive aspect of it. I contacted a rehab center about my other addictions, and one of the recommendations was to slowly wean me off the Klonopin because they believed it aids in addiction of ANY drug.

I hope that helped. If you have any more questions feels free to send me a private message. I rarely check them, but I'll get to it evnetually.

Good luck!