Anti anxiety medications

My Gabapentin and Klonopin are for anxiety and for taking "the edge off" during episodes. Although Klonopin can be good, I notice it makes me more tired these days for some reason, and I don't like feeling that way. The trade off though, is feeling calmer, although on occasion, if feels like just a temporary fix /band aid for something that needs to be addressed.....not always though, and this is only my own personal experience. Seroquel helped with anxiety during the day at 600 mg+.

Bp2 with bad anxiety. Klonopin I abused, so was switched to Xanax .05 x 3. For me, X does not give me a K type high so I don't abuse it.

Did you mean Xanax at 0.5mg ? The lowest it comes in is 0.25.

Yes, my error!

Antidepressants did help me for many years. I was on Lexapro for I believe about 5 years starting in 2005. We were just treating depression at that point as I had not yet had any manic or hypomanic episodes. The Lexapro seemed to stop working to curb my depression so we switched to Cymbalta and that again worked well for a few years. When that started to be ineffective we added lamictal and that was about when I had my first hypomanic episode. This was around 2014 and ever since, I have been pretty much a classic bipolar2 patient and struggling to find a med/s that work to keep both the depression and hypomania at bay.

In talking with my pdoc, their seems to be a somewhat recent consensus within the medical community that antidepressants are not the best course for treating bipolar patients. This is why we pulled the Cymbalta out of the equation about 2 months ago...and this coincides with when my depression has come back with a vengeance. What I take at the moment is 300mg of lamictal, 60mg latuda and 50mg quetiapine for sleep. This is proving to not be the right cocktail for me so back to the pdoc I go tomorrow. As I've mentioned before, lithium may be something we are going to give a try. Gotta try and stay hopeful there is something out there that will work.

I know I didn't give the Klonopin much of a chance (less than 2 weeks) but I stopped taking it for really two reasons. It wasn't doing much for me other than making me tired and the addictive nature of benzos has me feeling I'm better to steer clear of them. I felt withdrawal symptoms after only being on the Klonopin for a short period of time. If anything, it was only going to be a temporary band-aid.

From my experience, I think cannabis for pain and anxiety can certainly be effective for some people. Pain for sure and for anxiety, I think it can help some people. The reason I say some is due to the fact that cannabis itself can cause anxiety for some people. Not everyone tolerates it well. It may be somewhat strain specific (THC/CBD ratios) but who knows. The research has been slow to come due to the years of illegality...sad but true.

I use Buspar for anxiety. This helps but anxiety still gets to me from time to time.