Do I need benzos?

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I don't think the issue is so much needing benzos to function, as it is needing to be anxiety-free to function. Benzos are very dangerous damaging drugs. I shouldve never been on them in the first place... Antidepressants are something I should have stuck with.

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I know this is a departure from everything I have ever said on here.

 

Just lately I am thinking, about how I wound up on benzos.  I say, it was given to me for post-partum issues, which is was.  But, I definitely had a history of anxiety.

 

When I was young, I had an episode of severly debilitating anxiety that lasted many months.  Maybe 5 months.  I would freeze with fear and palpitations.  I was in college at the time and this would hit me and I would grasp my desk and not be able to leave the classroom.  This condition lasted a long time and eventually left, without benzos.  But even after that I had some less severe episodes throughout my life.

 

I know that no one really 'needs' benzos.  But, I have been thinking lately about how I have struggled with anxiety all my life.  I wish I would never have taken this drug daily.  Perhaps if I had been told to use it judiciously, like when I was having a hard time, I could have used it to help me.  Instead I was put on a daily dose, which I never really questioned.

 

Just wondering if anyone has thoughts on this.

 

What other non-drug treatments have you tried for your anxiety? Have you given up caffeine, been tested for food sensitivities, learned meditation, had counseling? Just like with depression, anxiety has many causes and many possible solutions.

 

As a general rule, I think it is not harmful to take the 'alternative' approach to treating anxiety, but I'd say in most cases it does not really help. The medical community seems to be enamoured with the idea of the chemical imbalance theory. That is to say depression, anxiety, and many other mental illnesses are the result of some deficiency in neurotransmitters, such as low serotonin. Unfortunately, there is not much validity to this claim, and Western medicine has not even come close to understanding why mental illness happens. But though the chemical imbalance theory does not have scientific significance, it has clinical significance, in the sense that medications really do help many people.

 

The idea behind things like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and other therapy is that the mind and body are separate entities, and therefore things like anxiety are the result of 'poor thinking.' If we take a really close look at CBT, however, it is based on an ancient philosophy, Cartesian dualism, which says that the mind and material world are separate and not the same. Science has showed that this obviously not the case, because mental illness has extreme genetic and organic influences. In that respect, most therapy is based on obsolete Eastern and Western philosophies. I dont think it will happen in my lifetime, but society will eventually reach a point where we can fully understand, pinpoint, and cure the physical causes of mental illnesses. Psychotherapists will become a thing of the past.

 

The idea that we should not need medication to function comes from the need to see ourselves as 'human beings', instead of automatons dependent on artificial creations. It is the same line of thinking that asserts that people with cancer should take herbal supplements and meditate, instead of taking drugs, because their condition is the result of spiritual malaise. This self-righteousness rejects drugs, because they are seen as products of the very society that 'created' the cancer in the first place. Any idea that cancer develops on the physical, microscopic level is overlooked. Likewise, the idea that anxiety should and can be overcome with better lifestyle choices instead of medications comes up.

 

Cutting down coffee consumption, meditating, etc. may take a slight edge off anxiety, but won`t make any major changes to one`s condition. Do you need meds, in the hunter-gatherer survival sense of the word? No. But If social anxiety prevents you from having relationships, making friends, succeeding in the workplace, etc (i.e. being a normally socially-adjusted person who isn`t alienated and alone 99% of the time), then yes, you probably SHOULD be on medication.

 

Benzos, however, are not the answer.

 

 

[[Be...]]

Xana, I'm in the U.S.  Marijuana is available by prescription here but only for super-severe/terminal conditions.  There are no dispensaries in my state but that's about to change.  (Despite some states making it "legal", it's still Schedule I everywhere according to federal law). 

 

Crazy.

[[Be...]]

SnoopDawg for President!

[[Ma...]]

Regarding marijuana, in the US in some states it's legal for certain conditions, like in my state, I could get it for PTSD.  I had a card but it lapsed and I never used it.  But in some states like Washington and now Colorado, its legal period.  For no prescribed condition. 

 

JC90, your post is interesting.  Outdated Western Thought.  Well I don't know.  You really can't get more "Western" than the Native INdian cultures of the Americas, North and South, and they were certainly and still are believers in the spiritual and have used drugs in their cultures.  Are there any societies that ever existed that did not use drugs?  I am not sure of that.  Alcohol has always been around in many cultures, as well as marijuana, cocaine, opium, peyote, betel nut, we could go on and on.  It seems the desire to alter your state of mind cuts right across all cultures.  And why do we want to alter our mind state?  Is it because, we are troubled as humans, somehow?  We want a break from our anxieties, perhaps?  Anxiety has to be common to the human condition.

 

Probably for most of history, people had to work so hard just to survive, they may not have been as crippled by anxiety as modern day western humans are.  People's work in the past was more physical, even washing clothes was a major physical chore.  Just a thought.

 

Many cases in the past of insanity were due to physical poisoning causes.  Such as mercury in the hat makers trade.  There are so many artificial pollutants in the air and water and land nowadays, I really wonder if that is part of what is causing the mental issues we have today.  Life is far less 'natural" than it ever was in history.

 

[Guest [...]]

Very wise post, Mairin!

 

From what I remember of a university subject about drugs and alcohol I took a few years ago (got a Distinction - must have been the prac work!  )

 

I recall the first words in the subject introduction were that humans have used mind altering drugs in some form from the beginning of time!

 

I guess we are curious creatures, as well as being in possession of brains that work in strange ways.

 

Dealing with the malfunctioning of the brain has been changed through the invention of modern drugs. I remember when I was a child, my older sister worked in a 'Mental Hospital' as they were called then. She would come home with terrible tales of people who could not even feed themselves. She was left with a hatred of Weetbix as a result in being covered with it so often. I can't even imagine how she had the courage to work there. This would have been in the 1960s.

 

As a child I was fascinated when she told us of the 'pit' in the hospital grounds. It was a hole with a grate on top. It was no longer in use but it had been used to confine the really uncontrollably deranged patients. Poor souls.

 

Just as we look back in horror at drawings of the 'mad houses', people in the future may well look back at us and ponder the primitive ways we treat mental illness and disorders. In my own mind, I am sure there are physical things that sometimes go wrong in the brain. We just can't pinpoint them yet.

 

I recently posted an article I read about the fact that very recent studies have shown that there is a gene which is involved with anxiety/depression/memory loss. I'll just find it again...

 

Here it is:

 

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130920/Small-alteration-in-a-brain-gene-contributes-to-risk-for-anxiety-depression-and-memory-loss.aspx

 

Hopefully more and more research will be done in mental health. Maybe many of our 'mental health' problems are not psychologically based at all - just something physical in the brain, which after all is just one of our organs. It can fail us just as our heart or lungs or any other organ can. Just my opinion...

 

Xana

 

[[Be...]]

My problem with this is that I don't think the physical world exists at all. I think it's all in your head.

 

Remember... there is no spoon

[Guest [...]]

That's a scary thought. Oh no, I hope I don't think about this in my early morning depressive thinking session.