Don't blame you for being scared... but would it help you to know that I take clonazepam and I have NO side effects from it? I'm also on .5 mg but sometimes I take a whole mg. That's not very strong, you know. Sometimes I wind up taking 4 in one day because my anxiety gets hard to control.

I hear it's better than Xanax because it's not as habit forming, although I never had that problem with Xanax. It seems to work "better" for me than clonazepam. Zaps the panic quicker.

I took Paxil for a while and it never did do much for me at all!

You could cut the pill in half and see how it goes.

Good luck! The kind of meds we need to take are all trial and error, I'm afraid. What works for one, won't work for the other.