I've been on Clonazepam for a week and it m akes me irritable

I take a quarter to a third at night to help me sleep and never been irritable.

I'm assuming it is a side effect - I would hold off for awhile and/or let your doctor know you are having this type of affect.

Get off it now Klonopin (Clonazepam), it is the worst! I became addicted to it in a matter month and took me 5 years to get off it. The doctor that first put me on it, was later fired for incompetence. My next doctor couldn't believe the dosage the old doctor had me on - 6mg a day! In general, try to stay away Benzodiazepines. They're all bad news.

Maybe half the pill?

I hate clonazepam. My shrink pushes it a lot. I had severe anxiety for years that it did help to numb and cloud out, but my panic attacks went away after a few ayahuasca experiences and being treated for a Lyme disease infection I had for years without knowing it. My shrink still encourages me to take Klonopin, and I keep a bottle of it but in balance it seems to backfire for me. I hate the feeling of it and that gives me an edge/makes me very frustrated because I kind of feel like I want to fight through the haze, which is impossible. It makes me sluggish and makes waking up difficult, and it takes 24-48 hours to wear off.

My mom was in a dire state in the hospital last year and I resorted to taking Klonopin (half a pill) to “take the edge off” of what was happening (we lost her), and it made the experience exponentially worse. It made me woozy and mentally sluggish but the pain was as acute. I have not taken it since then. I really dislike clonazepam. It may have helped me while I was feeling suicidal years ago—I’m really not sure—but I think it’s bad medicine overall.

[quote]Get off it now Klonopin (Clonazepam), it is the worst! I became addicted to it in a matter month and took me 5 years to get off it. The doctor that first put me on it, was later fired for incompetence. My next doctor couldn't believe the dosage the old doctor had me on - 6mg a day! In general, try to stay away Benzodiazepines. They're all bad news.

Friend of mine is going through the same thing. Bad stuff.

R5 Stevie Nicks did an Oprah’s Master Class episode on OWN, and she discussed all her drug use, etc. She only really thought she was going to lose her life when she was under the care of a psychiatrist who I think she said had her on the same dose (6mg) of Klonopin. She said someone she knew figured out why she was so doped up and told her it could kill her by depressing her respiration. They confronted and fired the doctor, and Nicks said she thought the doctor was trying to kill her.

I just found another video of her talking about it. She was on it for eight years.

R4 - sorry to hear about your mom. I have a question - for your Lyme Disease are you in a chronic state? If so, are you able to function? Okay?

I'm in a weird situation right now - I take 1mg of Klonopin a day, but my psychiatrist gives me monthly prescriptions of 3mg per day (although I don't get the prescription filled every single month). I don't recall when or why he started giving me this (maybe around 2010 or so), but I never asked him to stop, because I just figured it would allow me to have extra pills around in case I had an anxiety attack.

Fast forward to 2018, and I want to find a new psychiatrist, because my current one is now in his 70s and may soon retire. So I saw a new doctor this week, and wrote on the form asking for my current medications, "klonopin 0.5mg twice a day", which is true...but after our first visit, he went to my online medical records and saw the actual dosage prescribed, and called me up and basically called me a liar, and said he can't work with me. So now I don't know what to do - I do not want to start a new doctor by telling him I take 3mg a day, because I don't want to lie - and a lot of doctors don't even like prescribing benzos anyway - but if I tell the truth, my medical history makes me a liar. I'm kind of fucked right now.

R7 The answer is complicated, but the answer is generally yes. I contracted Lyme when I was young, was treated and went on with life. By my early 30s I had MS-like symptoms. Many years later I was re-diagnosed with Lyme and it is likely that the original infection was not cured and became latent, and then became a neurological infection—the same process that happens with untreated syphilis. I believe/hope the antibiotics (which I was on for over a year) cured the infection, but I am not exactly well. I likely have some permanent physical nerve damage that will never be repaired. I also have an autoimmune disease called mast cell activation syndrome that causes most of my present problems and which fortunately responds pretty well to treatment with OTC antihistamines. Lyme disease has been known since the 90s to catalyze mast cell disorders but this is generally overlooked today so I am lucky I found out about that.

Anyway, the nightmarish nerve pain I had for many years and the psychiatric problems, which ranged from sudden, unprovoked panic attacks to dementia-like disorientation and forgetfulness (in my 30s!) have resolved fully and I am grateful. It’s like a second chance at life.

R8 Sounds like a psychiatrist I wouldn’t want to work with, to be honest, if he was so quick to rush to judgment without hearing you out. I continued taking the Klonopin prescriptions from my psychiatrist for many months after I stopped taking it and finally told her. I don’t think that that is uncommon. It’s never advised by doctors, but of all MDs, psychiatrists should be the most understanding that many patients self-mediate their medications. LOTS of mentally ill people discontinue their medications regularly—it seems odd that a psychiatrist would be so cut and dry. Maybe he doesn’t want to take on someone who he believes is taking 3mg of Klonopin a day because he knows how profoundly that affects judgment and behavior and overall well being and doesn’t want to deal with managing it.

I hope you feel better.

Bruce Springsteen takes Klonipin he said it saved his life.

R9 - thank you for answering. From what I have heard, everyone is different experiences and has challenges all on their own. For me, I don't know for sure if I have Lyme - I had a target rash on my knee and the urgent care doctor treated it as Lyme - although, I think it might have been skeeter syndrome which is basically a mosquito infection - similar target rash. I was on antibiotics for 30 days and have some slight swelling in one of my knees. and am now seeing an infectious disease specialist and will be tested again in a month.

A friend's husband had a horrible bout and was diagnosed almost a year later.

It sounds like you have a good attitude but I'll say a prayer for you and I hope life gets better for you .

R13 Thanks. Generally EM rashes are interpreted as Lyme infections and treated as such, but especially if there’s an associated tick and/or blood tests are positive. (But the blood tests return false negatives as often as they return true positives, so they are useless or even dangerous in many cases.)

Most infectious disease specialists refuse to treat Lyme for longer than 28 days regardless of the severity of symptoms. But if all you have is a problem with one knee, you are likely fine with respect to Lyme. If you have severe pains that jump around from joint to joint for hours or days or even months at a time and then move, then you should pursue a Lyme specialist.

Made me jittery. .....stopped immediately

R14 thanks for the advise....means a lot and much appreciated!!!

Years ago I had a shrink who prescribed Klonopin for my insomnia and Xanax for anxiety. He was very free with the prescription pad and I swear if I told him I had a headache he would have prescribed heroin. I took them recreationally and not as needed. I had to switch doctors due to insurance and she cut me off all benzos. I didn't have withdrawals I guess because I wasn't taking them daily.

What R2 said.

Clonazepam inhibits proper liver detoxification, plus is also causes anemia, neutropenia (low white blood cell count, depletes folate, on and on and on.

r18: I've been taking 0.5 mg of clonazepam for 10 years for insomnia (originally) and have had regular blood panels every year for all that time and have normal iron (no anemia), am not neutropenic, have adequate levels of folate, and nothing wrong on my liver tests. I just don't want to go through the ordeal of going off the drug, and get it prescribed by an understanding internist at this point (originally it was a shrink). I only take it at night before bedtime. Benzos are not good for you, I agree, but the side effects you mention only happen to small percentages of people, like most drug side effects.

My advice: Try something else before you take benzos. Avoid them unless you have no other recourse.

Klonopin helps me a lot but Valium made me edgy and irritable.

Go for a walk.

R20 I have no other recourse...

For R22.

It seems to be easing...

Never had Klonopin but was on Xanax for years. My psychiatrist had no problem giving me like 100 .5 mg per month. It was ridiculous.

I am a former smoker, and I can tell you giving up cigs was easier by a mile than stepping off benzos. It was a hell I never want to repeat.

Avoid them if at all possible.

"as needed" is not all the time...trust me. You can't be on any "Pam" long term....... and long term for that stuff is a week.

Growing up an anxiety riddled mess, I know my meds. Most of the time you need to increase the dose as your body becomes accustomed to t very quickly. You need to give yourself a break and take it when you really are feeling like you can't go one...do something else if it only mild anxiety

Anyone know about Sertraline? I'm on 25 mg and I feel so sick..

^^^^It's called Zoloft.

It seems different drugs affect people differently...for me:

-Klonopin puts me into an absolute stupor and it lasts for almost two days. I hate the feeling. My psychiatrist had me on it and sertraline/zoloft and wellbutrin/buproprion for many months when I first went to her because I was suicidal. I also had a neurological infection that I wasn’t aware of and so that complicated things a lot, but as I recall I had no problem discontinuing clonazepam. Because I hate the way it makes me feel.

-sertraline makes me an emotionless zombie. It can be good short term but then it freaks me out not to be reacting emotionally. But my Lyme doctor actually said that Zoloft can be good because it may reduce brain inflammation, even if it’s caused by an infection, and that can improve both psychiatric and some physical neurological problems.

“Researchers have also found that eight weeks of Zoloft treatment was able to decrease some pro-inflammatory cytokines seen in depressed patients. On Zoloft, the depressed patients also saw an increase in anti-inflammatory cytokines.”

In some cases, anxiety, depression and other mental disorders can be caused or exacerbated by inflammation, and taking things that reduce inflammation can improve those symptoms, believe it or not.