Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Hey gratitude, when I said I started therapy I actually meant I had a first appointment with a psychiatrist. We'll see where this goes from there...

The problem with anxiety or depression is that there could be many causes. It's such a vague illness. It could be because of a trauma, nutritional deficiency, or just plain brain imbalance etc...

In my case, I'm afraid it is a hereditary problem. All members of the family on my mother's side are depressed and anxious. Grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, my mom... they all have that unexpressive, sad face, they're all insecure, and are very introverted/socially awkward. Some of them already take antidepressants or see a psychiatrist. And when i see these family members I cant help but recognize my own characteristic traits in every one of them. I hate it.

dixon I agree with you, and I would like to think I live a healthy life. I exercize, pay close attention to my diet, have read tons of self-empowering material. Even tried meditation at one point, and had my "Eckhart Tolle - power of now" kind of period, but did not get much out of it.

You see, I hate the thought of relying on medication to live a normal life, and I always considered the people taking antidepressants were just "weak" because they didnt take care of the issues in their life head-on. However my opinion on the matter has evolved. After years of trying to "be a man", and take responsibility in my life, I've accomplished things that I am proud of, like getting into my top-ranked univ, or speaking multiple languages. I thought that as long as I had ambition, drive and made efforts in life I would get rid of my insecurities/anxiety/depression. Unfortunately I still feel the same today as I felt years ago. And since that depression has been there ever since I was a little kid, I'm starting to accept the fact that I will always be like this, because it's in my genes. That 24/7 background noise of anxiety just wont go away.

Its not like I haven't tried. I'm now turning towards medication because I have no clue what else to do. Its like my last resort. Yea, bold thing to say for a 20 years old :H

In any case I cant see why I would take antidepressants or antianxiety meds, since the vast majority of them are addictive - the tolerance builds up quickly and you have to constantly up the dosage. Its only a short term solution. Hence my interest in bac, which curiously enough does not have that characteristic. Any other meds that do not build up tolerance in my system are worth a try in my opinion.

Neva Eva, I'll have a look at your info and at mirtazapine. :thanks: for the heads up.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Getting There;1349443 wrote: Hi Slim: I am no doctor and I do believe that everyone is different and that meds can affect us all differently as well depending on our make up. But, I thought you might like to know about my experience: I was perscribed Bac by my personal doc when I told him that I wanted to stop drinking and was having anxiety issues. He would not let me go over 30mg per day though. Through another source I got an additional perscription and titrated up quickly as others have here. I too suffer from anxiety and worry 24/7 and it affects my life a great deal. My situation is similar to yours, lots of travel, good family, etc... Unfortunately, I could not handle the side effects at the higher levels of Bac. So, there is bad news and good news for me. I am still drinking and struggling with it every day - but I have been on 30mgs of Bac a day now for almost a year and it REALLY helps with my anxiety. I totally notice when I forget my dose so for me it is working long term without having to take more. Maybe it could work for you too. Keep trying to find a doc who will work with you on this as I worry about buying meds over the internet or from a doc who does not know you personally and doesn't even consider your physical background before giving you a perscription. Good Luck!

:goodjob:

Very encouraging! Thank you.

Only time will tell if I feel the same way. Do you now consider yourself "normal"? As in, you can walk in the streets and not feel that irrelevant pressure, because people are around you? How are your interactions with people now? can you now just relax in a nice spot without having these recurring worrisome thoughts?

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: Hey gratitude, when I said I started therapy I actually meant I had a first appointment with a psychiatrist. We'll see where this goes from there...

Pdocs are not the same as therapists and they don't really offer therapy. And would you want them to? They believe that everything boils down to brain chemistry. On the other hand therapists (of almost all ilks) don't really believe that brain chemistry can 'break' or be 'fixed.' And I know for fact that it can, because I've experienced it and I know a lot of other people (including husband) that have been 'fixed.'

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: The problem with anxiety or depression is that there could be many causes. It's such a vague illness. It could be because of a trauma, nutritional deficiency, or just plain brain imbalance etc...
hmmm. The many causes of anxiety. At some point you just have to throw up your hands and give that up a bit, don't you? I have personally decided that it's all the same. Whatever the cause. Trauma causes brain chemistry mix ups. As does poor lifestyle choices.

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: In my case, I'm afraid it is a hereditary problem. All members of the family on my mother's side are depressed and anxious. Grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, my mom...
Me, too. Both sides, up and down and all over the family tree. Almost all of them drank excessively. Many of them gregarious, but that has a lot to do with self-medication. Interesting, isn't it? It took me a long time to recognize it (other than the booze part.) This is the part that might be relevant for you: I didn't know that what I was treating with baclofen was underlying anxiety. Because anxiety is the wrong word. What I had, that has since stopped, is a fundamental unease and discomfort and a general jumpiness about life. And many, many irrational fears.
For me baclofen isn't a sedative, in the way that some other anti-anxiety meds are, so much as an anxiety removal. I feel like I literally woke up one morning with a very different perspective on the world. Long before I quit drinking. I hope it works the same for you, and at a MUCH lower dose.

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: "Eckhart Tolle - power of now" kind of period, but did not get much out of it.

Eckhart Tolle. grrrrr.

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: You see, I hate the thought of relying on medication to live a normal life,

Me too. Whatever.

slim penguin;1349463 wrote: That 24/7 background noise of anxiety just wont go away.

Yep. I hope it does.


I wasn't sure I was gonna, but I think I like you. (For what that's worth. :H) Nice that you've given this some thought and are able to verbalize it. It's also nice to hear from someone who isn't in the grips of a different dynamic of the "anxiety" disfunction.

For the record, I've known some people around here who swear that anxiety, particularly social anxiety, was not the issue for them and is unrelated to why they drink. They are all men. They all seem pretty anxious to me. (underlying, fundamental, discomfort or whatever.) Even the ones that are on bac. So I don't know if it's a sure thing, but I really hope it works for you.

Getting There, I am consistently flummoxed by the number of people who titrate up very quickly on bac, while drinking, and then find it "doesn't work" or they can't take the SEs. There is some pretty good evidence that the SEs can be avoided, and that going up in small increments over a long period of time, relatively speaking, curtails the desire to drink. But there is also evidence (in a study out of UNC) that 30mg doesn't have any impact on drinking/craving.
Just thought I'd throw that out there for you.

Best to both of you.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Just came back from my first visit to the psychiatrist. We've talked for close to an hour, trying to pinpoint what could be the cause of my life long dysphoria. And couldn't find any "logical" one. For him, it probably has something to do with brain chemistry. He wants to put me on SSRIs (antidepressants affecting serotonin) to see what happens. He's gonna be on vacation for all of august, so this still leaves me more than one month to experiment with baclofen on my own. If it doesn't relieve my pain, I'll just surrender and follow the doc's advice. According to him, these ADs are not necessarily addictive and I might benefit from only short term use of these. Its not like I have many options left.

Ne/Neva Eva;1349494 wrote:
I wasn't sure I was gonna, but I think I like you. (For what that's worth. :H) Nice that you've given this some thought and are able to verbalize it. It's also nice to hear from someone who isn't in the grips of a different dynamic of the "anxiety" disfunction.

ahhh how sweeeet Neva! lol

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Hmmmm. SSRIs.... There are some other medications I would want to explore before I started taking an SSRI--any of them. I would look long and hard at that. ADs are not addictive but they also come with a whole lot of baggage. A whole lot. Of scary baggage. Especially for long term use. (I'm not referring to the black box warning about suicidal tendencies. I'm referring to the fact that people who take them either don't find relief; they can exacerbate anxiety rather than help it; and they become less effective over time. What's more, it looks as though they might actually have the long term effect of being rather debilitating. This is brand new research, and I'd look long and hard at it before I, personally, took an SSRI AD.)

Then again, it may work, and you won't know until you try it.

I would offer the suggestion that you not try both, and that you give baclofen (if that is your first choice) the time and energy before getting on an additional medication. Sounds like you are planning for that, anyway, but I just wanted to offer that thought.

If, or when, you do get the bac, I hope you'll share your plan for titration and what the goal is. That is generally very helpful for people when they're just starting out. (As an example, another poster mentioned taking 20mg four times a day. THAT is not a good idea, and I'm really glad s/he put it out here. That's a Japanese high-speed-train to chaos.)

Nice to hear from you!

[StuckinLA]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

I remember a post around here somewhere about SSRIs, and it went something like "my doc looooooved putting me on those."

Because that's what they do, the docs. Every pdoc I've talked to, first thing they said was SSRI of some form or another. Oh, you have anxiety? Let's give you an anti-depressant. But I'm not depressed? Oh, sure you are because you are alcoholic.

And it does not take much digging at all to find a 2010 metadata analysis of studies on SSRIs that shows they are no more effective than placebo in treating mild to moderate depression... though fairly effective in SEVERE depression.

As for anxiety? I dunno. But all I hear are horror stories... and horror stories that don't stop, because people can't seem to get off 'em.

Sorry... SSRIs, big pharma, and psychiatrists make me very, very angry... So take all this with that grain of salt.

[COSGringo]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Had a doc with SSRI syndrome. I think I tried at least 4 with him. One with a psych who was horrible.
Never again. I did not need them then or now. They messed me up good.
Really nice to find out not to stop them quickly. Love the brain zaps you get off of one them. Maybe lexapro?

Should have just told them I drink too much.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

I agree with all you guys! I've heard negative stories about ADs and I do not wish to be on them.

However, what else is left for me to deal with my issues? If baclofen fails, I'm out of options. If I have to choose between continuing to live in constant dysphoria or give a try to ADs to see if they help a bit... I'll choose the lesser of two evils. Or I can continue searching for alternative cures. I'm discouraged after searching and trying for so long already.

Neva, I stumbled on a mega-thread from "Cassander" who made a compilation of posts related to baclofen as an anxiety med. You're in that thread, mentioning baclofen helped you greatly:

"I don?t know exactly when that changed, but things that used to send me into a heart-racing, face-flushing tizzy just don?t faze me. For all the years of therapy and AA and introspection and self-help books, I never knew I was prone to anxiety. And now it?s gone. Amazing."

Is it still working for you in the way you described it back then?

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Morning (for me) SP!

Yep. It still works. I am not a Nervous Nellie anymore.

And here's what happened: The first thing I noticed (my husband noticed actually) is that I stopped being startled when he came into a room before I knew that he was home. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner (which was pretty amazing, too, since prior to that I always drank my dinner) with the radio up loud. He got home, the dog was outside, and he came into the kitchen. I did not drop anything, jump out of my skin, or in any way have that moment of "ACK! WHAT THE...!" No heart pounding. He was pretty amazed.

The second thing was that I smushed a spider. I had a lifelong irrational fear of spiders. Not the normal, squeamish reaction that a lot of people have. The kind of reaction that disrupted my day. I would avoid a room if I saw a spider--even after someone else got rid of it. So smushing the spider, with no other weapon than a tissue, was AH-mazing. (The list of these irrational fears was long. And tedious.)

The BIG thing, though, was the worst-case-scenario mindset. For instance, I had plans for what I would do if a big rabid dog attacked one of my (big) dogs when I was walking them. Not just a plan, mind you. Several plans. (Run up on a porch and barricade it so the attack-dog couldn't reach us. Tie my dogs to a tree, and grab a tree-limb and beat the attack-dog...) It sounds kind of sad and pathetic to write it all down here, but it is very true. These worst-case-scenarios were pretty obsessive-compulsive, and something I think I've done my whole life. They usually centered around my own health, or a couple of things that were my 'default' obsessions. (The dog. My husband dying in his sleep. I would wake up and check to make sure he was breathing. Or actually wake him up in the middle of the night. This is something he was very used to! It was just one of the things he accepted about living with Ne!!!)

So to the present. Now it's a bit different. These thoughts can happen, for sure. Particularly when I'm stressed about something and not dealing with it. But I know the difference and if I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if Ed's still breathing I KNOW that there is something...off. And I deal with it. (Therapy, meditation, exercise. Or I just get a grip. :H) I suspect that initially there was a sedative effect. And then it was simply that for the first time in my life I figured out that those things were all ... irrational. (WHO KNEW?!?) And now...Now I don't have to live like that anymore.

I didn't expect to write this looong reply, but this change was so profound that simply thinking about it is fun for me! And very important, in terms of my recovery. Because if you read around here a bit, you'll see that a very common side effect when people stop boozing (or even cut down a bit) is increased anxiety. Really debilitating increased anxiety. And that doesn't happen with baclofen.

There are MANY options other than an SSRI AD and baclofen, SP. So if baclofen doesn't work for you, DO NOT lose hope. SNRIs, for instance. Gabapentin. Mirtazapin. Even Wellbutrin, an oldy but perhaps a good one. The list goes on! Plus, baclofen definitely increases anxiety for some people at various dosages. It is impossible for us to know how it is related to the booze, versus just a function of the medication. You know? You're the guinea pig in that, but we'll help you if we can. What I can tell you is that it is a safe medication, and that if you take it slow, with a plan and a goal, you'll increase your chances of success.

You'll get to the bottom of this and then you'll get out from under it. It's just going to take some time, SP. Don't let your (relative) youth forget about the looooooong life ahead. Okay?

When do you get the bac?
and huge :ls.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Hey Neva, I love your long replies! and hearing about your potential defense strategies against angry chihuahuas .

I do recognize my own self when reading through your testimonial. I also get startled very easily, I am tensed all the time. I'm the kind of guy who cannot stand looking at a horror movie. It makes me feel like I'm going to have a heart attack every 5 minutes :H. My little brother has been harassing me lately, to convince me to watch the japanese horror flick "The Ring". Some girls are able watch the whole movie while remaining unaffected, I can barely watch the trailer without covering my ears with my hands, anticipating a dreadful jump-scare. How manly haha! :sofa:

Like you, I carry a boatload of irrational fears and an obsessive behaviour.

My bac could be arriving anytime now, delivery was meant to last 2-4 weeks for shipments to Europe, through Inhouse Pharma. I'll write a post when I receive the pills. And hopefuly, I will have found the holy grail lol.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

How people actually watch horror movies--and why--is completely beyond me. I don't even watch the news. Really. It simply hammers in how atrocious we can be to one another, or the fact that shit happens. Duh. I don't need a reminder. Plus, and most importantly, it is very, very rare to be under a falling piano, much less in a sinking plane, much less attacked by a shark. And don't get me started about spider bites and stray bullets. What're the odds?
I'll tell you what is MUCH more likely for people with my disease: Suicide. Misery. Isolation. Desolation. A long slow descent into poor health and an earlier than needed death. Those are the things that weigh on me. Those are the things I obsess about (in a healthy way.)

So on that happy note, I look forward to your next update! I'm about to enter a new and very busy phase here soon, so may not be around as much when you come back.

Keep in mind: Slow and steady. Focus on the goal. Read as much as you can and extrapolate what is going to work for you.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Just received my baclofen! It took 16 days with Inhouse Pharma. 2 bottles of 100 10mg pills each should be enough for starters.

Here's my plan for titration: I plan on starting with 10mg a day - 5mg in the morning, 5 in the afternoon.

Every second day, I want to up the daily dosage by 5mg. It seems slow and steady enough. If I encounter side effects, I'll slow down.

I just took 5mg this afternoon and I think was able to experience very subtle calming effects. Could be placebo. We'll see! I'll post about my progress :hallo:.

[COSGringo]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Good job Slim.
You could do it lots of ways. Whatever works for you.
Some other ideas, 10mg more per 5-7 days or 20mg more per week.
20 seems to be the standard as least per Dr. Levin.
I think when you start getting higher like 80 or so you might want to slow it down.

Your body will let you know.

Good luck.

[RedThread12]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Hey, Slim:

Wowser, all of this and I'm just showing up at the party.

If this IS Your Way Out, I really wish you the best. I didn't get around to doing anything about my anxiety, backed up by many generations on both sides, until I got "stuck" in an abusive relationship. (And after a LOT of experimenting with what were then "acceptable" recreational drugs . . . MJ, LSD, X, and others.)

So good on you for taking yourself in your own hands. However, I'm going to offer - once - a suggestion for another way out, IF bac isn't your ultimate solution.

I'm 56. I've been sober and I've been drunk. I've been sober 1) because I preferred it, in order to pursue my entire life and lifestyle; 2) going to an AA meeting every day and making "NOT TAKING A DRINK" be the most important thing I did every day; and 3) with baclofen.

I promise you, NOTHING compares to #1.

I was talking with a friend today who took the long and hard bac road to get out of a life-sucking addiction. I told her that, after all I've done and seen, I fully agree with Bill W (founder of AA), that alcoholism is a spiritual disease. He never knew how to explain that; nor do I. But I do know that I arrested my disease at the age of 32, when I went to an intensive, 10-day meditation course. Every part of my life was in disarray, and I had NO TOOLS with which to resist the intense genetic propensities toward addiction and insanity that lie behind me. I'm not kidding. Father died at 61 of congestive heart failure, even though he quit drinking 20 years earlier. Mother's brother put a gun in his mouth after a lifetime of addiction. And that's just 1 generation on each side!!!!

I have one suggestion for you. And it's free. Website Thi?n Vipassana

It's not easy. For some people it seems (and probably is) extreme. But when ANYTHING is easier than living with the angst, anxiety, mental, physical and emotional pain, it's worth a go. Honestly. I've lost count, but I've done at least 12 or 13 10-day courses, a 20 day, a 30 day. I'm now slowly get back there. When I was doing a regular meditation practice, I not only didn't drink or do drugs, I found a place that has given me an amazing, rich, fulfilled life. And I got so far below anxiety it stopped having much meaning, most of the time.

Just sayin'. I really, really, wish you well. You'll figure it out!! Thanks for posting here so we can keep learning.

[slim penguin]

Baclofen as a lifelong anxiety treatment

Hello Redthread,

thanks for your advice. One solution at a time! If baclofen wont work, I'll turn to something else. I cannot say that I share your enthusiasm for meditation though. I've tried some forms of it in the past, I cant say that it helped me much.