eekysign
New Member
This is so....partially off-topic. But god knows we've dealt with so many medications in this group that I figured someone might know.
Good friend has a dad with brain cancer---she's been having trouble sleeping, anxiety, but functioning fine, otherwise. Mentioned that to her doctor at her visit, wanting something to help reduce stress. He prescribed Xanax. My background tells me that Xanax is not for regular, daily use for depression, and can be very addictive/hard to taper off. Anyway, this is what she says:
well, he only wrote me a script for a quarter milligram. but i told him i'd been having bad weeks and didn't know if my fatigue/achiness, etc was from actually being sick or just from all the stress and anxiety and what not building up.
so he ran all the regular tests and what not and talked to me about results and everything, and before i left i asked if anything could be done to help me be able to focus more and be less anxious, so he gave me xanax.
and he told me to figure out the dosing myself. take it when i need it and figure out how much i need. start with maybe two a day and if i'm still anxious, take two in the morning and go from there taking it up to 4 times a day if needed, up to 8 pills a day if needed. that sort of freaked me out, i need boundaries, but the dosage is super low so maybe that's ok?
8 pills would be a daily dose of 2mg, from a starting point of .5mg. OK, what do you guys think? This isn't a difficult child, this is a normal person who's a bit stressed out. I was expecting her to come back with an SSRI or something like that. NOT a benzo.
Thoughts?
Good friend has a dad with brain cancer---she's been having trouble sleeping, anxiety, but functioning fine, otherwise. Mentioned that to her doctor at her visit, wanting something to help reduce stress. He prescribed Xanax. My background tells me that Xanax is not for regular, daily use for depression, and can be very addictive/hard to taper off. Anyway, this is what she says:
well, he only wrote me a script for a quarter milligram. but i told him i'd been having bad weeks and didn't know if my fatigue/achiness, etc was from actually being sick or just from all the stress and anxiety and what not building up.
so he ran all the regular tests and what not and talked to me about results and everything, and before i left i asked if anything could be done to help me be able to focus more and be less anxious, so he gave me xanax.
and he told me to figure out the dosing myself. take it when i need it and figure out how much i need. start with maybe two a day and if i'm still anxious, take two in the morning and go from there taking it up to 4 times a day if needed, up to 8 pills a day if needed. that sort of freaked me out, i need boundaries, but the dosage is super low so maybe that's ok?
8 pills would be a daily dose of 2mg, from a starting point of .5mg. OK, what do you guys think? This isn't a difficult child, this is a normal person who's a bit stressed out. I was expecting her to come back with an SSRI or something like that. NOT a benzo.
Thoughts?