I had akathisia the other night from taking a higher dose of my one psych med without working up to it gradually. I think it's one of the worst things to experience. I'ld rather be sick with the flu, or have a bad hangover. I happened to have the muscle relaxer, baclofen, on hand. So I took 3 of those for a total dose of 30 mg. Pretty soon I was asleep. My psych med is amitriptyline, an old fashioned, tricyclic antidepressant. I doubled up on my usual dose of 50 mg to take 100 mg. Neither of those are huge doses, but I seem to get akathesia pretty easily. People differ in their susceptibilities.

I think I've read that benzos can help relieve akathesia. I believe opiates can also. (Baclofen is considered to work similar to a benzo.) Alcohol doesn't help. That I found out. I consider akathisia a hellish experience. It's torture. I've had it several times. It is no exaggeration to say that it could make you want to throw yourself off a cliff. I think every resident doctor becoming a psychiatrist should be made to experience it once.

Had I divided the 100 mg into two doses 10 hours apart, I wouldn't have gotten the akathisia. So you might want to do that with some of your meds, Dowdy. You mentioned three meds that can all cause akathisia. The effects of those meds can be cumulative.

With benzos (klonopin is a benzo.) it works in reverse. The benzo doesn't give you akathisia, but abruptly stopping the benzo sure can. This happened to me a few times when I was taking Librium. I was only taking 20 mg a day. Sometimes when I ran out, I wouldn't bother to refill it. At first I'ld be fine. Then in about 10 days, I'ld get akathisia. I'ld try getting in and out of a hot bath. Nothing helped.

I've had "restless leg syndrome" from being severely anemic. Some researchers consider RLS to be a form of akathisis - "focal akathisia." They seemed pretty much the same thing to me. The RLS I experienced was a bit milder. The hot bath did help. I got to where I was sleeping in the bath tub.

Try always "titrating up" gradually on psych meds - increasing the dose gradually over a period of days, if not weeks.

Cold medicines can also cause akathesia, especially if you exceed the recommended dosage. (I did that twice in my life. Never will again.) From what I read, it's the antihistamine that does it.