Has/Is Anyone Suffered From Irritability This Bad?

[[bl...]]

Two months after I started clonazepam in 2018, I went to my psychiatrist for complaints about abnormal irritability. I was snapping at people, getting mad about almost everything, road rage.. etc. So I got put on Risperidone to help and ended up at 1mg, which seemed to help. However, coming off of Clonazepam has brought back the irritability with a vengance. This time though it is worse because I can't handle sound currently, so even the sound of my kids and partner's voices make me want to bash my head into the wall. Sometimes it's so bad that I just want to move away and be alone. However, I actually don't want that, because I used to enjoy being a family person.. pre clonazepam, and pre taper. It's just so incredibly frustrating to not be able to stand being around my family. Could this be more of a sensitivity issue than irritability? Or a mix of both? I can't listen to music anymore either.. I really hope this goes away once I complete my taper and start the healing process.

 

I don't know what my signature says, so I'll put a little update. Jumped off benzo on 3/19/23.. reinstated at .25mg on 5/1/23. Holding until the end of the year, to then complete a year long taper of the last .25mg because I think I need to go extremely slow to function.

[[Pa...]]

While I was recovering from my cold turkey I was dead inside, I couldn’t feel love, joy, empathy or happiness, only negative emotions.  My hearing felt like it was bionic, couldn’t listen to music or watch TV, everything was too much. 

It sounds like benzodiazepines have never agreed with you if you started feeling this way soon after starting them, are you still taking the Risperidone? 

May I ask, how did you feel after you reinstated, do you feel it helped you?  It sounds like you’re dealing with tolerance now or you may not have gone back on a high enough dose. 

[[bl...]]

Hi Pamster,

Yes, I am still taking the Risperidone.. it just seems to be ineffective against this new level of whatever it is I'm dealing with. I was thinking maybe I should bring this up to my psychiatrist, however the last thing I want to do is to go up on any psych drug, because I have the clonazepam, risperidone, and lexapro to come off of. I just wonder if it would give me any relief if I did. I just worry because my psych, tends to want to throw meds at a problem, so that's where my hesitation comes from. 

I think the side effects of Benzos were quick to show themselves with me, however I considered them a life saver early on because they kept me from having panic attacks, and I could leave the house and "function". 

So, after I reinstated I have been able to hold down a job (which I wasn't doing before), re enroll in college part time, and have been able to dig my family out of the financial hole that me tapering from benzos caused. I'm functioning better than during my taper, however like you mentioned I am completely unable to feel any positive emotions. I am constantly still wanting to run away from life and just go lay in a hole somewhere where there is no noise, so this is a very fine line that I walk between functioning and wanting to give up. 

[[Pa...]]

I can see you’re walking a fine line here, you have a lot of responsibility on you, I can understand wanting to lay in a hole to escape.  These darn drugs, they can be a lifesaver but our destruction as well, the hopelessness and catastrophic thinking it forces on us is overwhelming.

I see such determination in you though, you’re doing what you need to do for your family through all of this and still determined to gain your freedom from the drug. 

What is your plan for the panic when you’re off and recovered from the clonazepam, it must be disheartening to know that you’ll still face that at the end of this nightmare.  

[[An...]]

Hi @[bl...]

Reinstating back on the .25 mgs of K seems to have worked. When you jumped on 3/19/23 prior to the reinstatement, how much clonazepam did you jump from? What are your doses on the Lexapro and Risperidone? Do you plan on tapering off the K at the start of 2024 and staying on the other two meds or do you plan on tapering off those too?