Labor day blues...

Well, the labor day party we had had a nice turnout, too bad the wall of panic attacks kept me in my room for 90% of the party. Towards the end of the afternoon, I remembered an old trick I could use when my anxiety and panic were so bad nothing I could do would weaken the anxiety.. .that trick was taking 1 or 2 pills of lorazepam in addition to my normal meds.

DON'T TRY THIS WITHOUT FIRST TALKING AT LENGTH WITH YOUR DOCTOR!!!!

I've talked about doing this kind of thing for years with my doctors. It goes something like this. Lorazepam is in the benzodiazepam class of anti- anxiety/depression drugs, it's a short-term use medicine that has potential for addiction.

My problem with benzodiazepams is that I grow immune to them very, very very fast. Like within days, and then after that no matter how much I increase the dosage, they don't help anymore. I'm currently taking Xanax at a high dosage four times a day, and basically this is just to prevent me from getting withdrawals. As for the lorazepam, I can only add that, at most, once a week, otherwise I grow immune to it as well. I try not to add the lorazepam more than once a month if I can, and actually prior to labor day I hadn't used it in three months and had totally forgot about it.

So, since it was impossible for me to enjoy the party and as I laid there all curled up in bed having a panic attack, something finally reminded me of it, so I took two pills of lorazepam and within 15 minutes half of the anxiety and half of the depression were gone.. a wonderful relief! But then to my dismay, as I came out of my room everyone was leaving... :( wish I had thought of that sooner.

So, looking forward to my birthday next month, I think I won't use this trick again until my birthday party, so that I can enjoy it.

Let me state once again that doing this kind of thing, I keep my doctors well informed of what I do, and I keep a journal of my use of medicines. I don't recommend anybody experimenting with their meds without first developing trust with your doctor and then letting them know what you would like to try, and if the trust is mutual they will probably work with you. Then you have to monitor yourself very closely to make sure you don't become addicted or have side effects. This is very important.

I also started taking valerian root yesterday and I ordered some supplements online that are supposed to increase my body's ability to produce GSH (Growth Stimulating Hormone) which the two of which my doctor recommended that should help with my sleep without any side effects. I'll let you know how it goes once I finally get the stuff in the mail, since no stores around here carry it. Adding these things to all the supplements I'm already taking is roughly equivalent to the EM Power+ thing I mentioned in an earlier post. When I was in my doctors office I had him pull up the info on that supplement and look at the ingredients, and he gave me the option that I could either try it or just simply add the missing ingredients I'm not already taking. Other than that, we didn't change any of my meds this time, and he didn't want to give me an actual prescription for real GSH, which is basically a pill of the actual hormone itself, because it is more expensive and has side effects to boot.