TRT & Xanex - Need to Get Off of the Xanex

Pharma TRT
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In short I’m on TRT (.2, 200 mg, E3D)…I’ve always had anxiety but recently I’ve had a lot of stressful events and I’m in the middle of a move…I decided to get Xanex to help me get through this time. I’ve been on it now for a couple months and I still have a couple months before I move out of my in-laws and into our newly built house.

Anyhow I do not like where I am with it and it’s giving me some really wild dreams…one where I woke up and screamed and woke up my entire house

I started out on .5 of Xanex to help with sleep and now I’m at 1mg…I have a doc apt Wed and I want to put together a plan to get the hell off of it but I don’t want to lose my mind during this stressful time. I know I need to taper but I thought maybe I could get something like Ambien for sleep as I taper off from Xanex as an in between days when I don’t take X, then of every 2 days the next week, every 3 the week after until I’m off all while having ambien supplement to make sure I still get sleep.

Then from there get something lower like a Zoloft to re-regulate my saratonin levels…

Nonetheless I want off and I’m winding If anyone else had a game plane like this or any kind during a stressful time.

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What inept physician put you on xanax for a duration greater than 2 weeks. It is not first line. Its is for acute exacerbations of anxiety and for panic.

Unless you got this xanax on the street?

Sounds like you got a good plan though. Chat about it with your doc not people on the internet.

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Got it from my doc…it was to get me through this move, also ton of work stuff…I just know quoting cold turkey is not ideal I want to taper off but I want to get my rest

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Xanax is the devil. Taper immediately get yourself a hotel room on your final two weeks. Getting a grip is part of being a mature, level headed person. Ive been diagnosed with GAD, and I wont touch anything the docs have prescribed. Some meditation, learning to manage my stress(I close my eyes, and envision the nicest tits in my face) until I feel better. Sounds funny but I wont touch a Soma or any of those drugs.

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A little backstory

Towards the end of last year following a fucking seven month lockdown (you can probably guess what state I’m in) I was in a bad way and was sent off to… A special farm for a few weeks that harboured many defective animals.

At this farm I learnt MANY patients are inappropriately prescribed heavy dosages of benzodiazepines for indeterminate/chronic durations of time. One guy I spoke to was on Xanax for years until his psychiatrist pulled him off cold turkey, they argued about withdraws, psych said he was okay. The guy had a seizure and nearly died…

Others were on heavy, heavy dosages of benzodiazepines, tranquilizers and the likes. I’m not referring to manic, schizoid or violent subtypes; just those who had high levels of baseline anxiety/insomnia

You’d be surprised how many physicians prescribe z drugs like zopiclone or zolpidem for long term use to treat insomnia. Aside from exceptions to the norm, doling out substances of dependence like this over the long term appears to induce more harm than good.

I’ve also noted the older you are, the easier it is to acquire these kinds of meds.

It’s sad, as the taper from benzodiazepines and associated withdrawals are known to be incredibly difficult to deal with. Paradoxically one generally has to deal with extensively heightened anxiety relative to their initialised baseline when going off benzodiazepines

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It certainly has not been easy for millions of people around the globe. Consider yourself fortunate that you live in a place managed to avoid the worst of it.

You need to take stories from people with a grain of salt. There are guidelines and procedures for these sorts of things. It is 10 years or more and thousands and thousands of hours of anguish to become a consultant level physician. They tend to avoid jeopardizing their privileges to practice medicine. So yeah old mate probably doesn’t have his story straight.

That wouldn’t be paradoxical would it?

That would actually be intuitive. Your smart you like this stuff. Your pumping your brain full of exogenous substances that act on your GABA A receptors. Physiological systems and every system in in the universe for that matter operate along concentration gradients. Your brain will up regulate the expression of excitatory neurotransmitters and receptors like glutamate, glycicine, aspartate etc and receptors like NMDA. And down regulate GABA related stuff. So you remove the stimulus that precipitated that entire shift. And now you have a brain that is predisposed for hyper excitability and now you have increased anxiety and seizure. Same principle applies to the brain of alcoholics. Thats the physiological underpinnings in a nutshell.

Now an appropriate use of paradoxical in relation to psychpharm would be to say to a patient starting an SSRI that the first couple of weeks they may feel worse before they feel better. That is paradoxical.

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Regardless, the OP knows that Xanax is fucking him up.
Xanax=bad
Coping=good
So heres what I do to stay sane(MIL lives with us)
Wake up early and exercise
Leave before everyone wakes up.
Go to work and dont accept texts or calls that pertain to home life (emergencies are the exception)
After work, go deal with your house build, and come home late. If your wife misses you make her come to you. You dont go to her. If she complains and gives you a hard time. Smile and tell her you’re extremely busy readying the nest. You have to stop being around. Be a mature, stable, fucking man or prepare to be treated like a little bitch by your wife and her family. Oh get off Xanax you’re slowly becoming a fuck up. Man up!!! Tough love is all you will get from the likes of me. Others can go on and hold your hand, and explain how your weak brain works while on benzos, opiates and barbituates. Guess what, you’re now this child who wakes up screaming for help. Ive been there and the only thing that helps is realizing that you are weak, and your wife is slowly losing respect for you(if she already hasnt) I have GAD so I speak from experience. Make your self unavailable to the shit you’re in.

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More than this was going on at the time, though the lockdown didn’t help. I will not consider myself lucky, I didn’t talk to anyone for the better part of four months… Had a family member overseas succumb to the virus and others fall seriously ill. At this point I have another close family member who I’ll never see again.

I don’t know if we are avoiding the worst of it. Our case load/fatality rate is lower, as a result eighteen months in we continually pander to inciting public fear and haphazardly snapping domestic borders shut, let alone international borders (going to NZ, leaving NZ, coming back and quarantining in NZ, coming back into Aus = 5 years jail).

I’m glad the virus didn’t run rampant, anyone with half a brain could see hospitals couldn’t keep up with the demand for oxygen overseas. But at this point in time the initiative should have been achieving mass vaccination (80%+ of the population fully vaccinated). The risks of astrazenica are substantially lower relative to actually catching covid (even if young, long covid can wreck havok), yet so much vaccine related misinformation is present here. We are purportedly behind a large portion of third world countries regarding our rollout.

Most people aren’t aware of the pharmacodynamics/pharmacokinetics relating to benzodiazepines, so I’d argue it still is paradoxical. Many use benzodiazepines in effort to curb anxiety but end up worse off than baseline.

I’d argue smoking cigarettes back in the 1970’s in an effort to be perceived as rebellious and independent but ending up a slave to vice/addiction is paradoxical too, though one could break down the pharmacology of nicotine dependence and say it isn’t.

Idk, a couple years back my mom was given like 120 tablets of hydromorphone with a repeat after a minor back op. I’ve actually seen this kind of malpractice with my own eyes, let alone the stories you hear. Should also be noted relating to my story people were open about the meds (though we weren’t supposed to be talking about the meds we took) they were taking at the time, so if someone was taking 50mg Temazepam/day and I SAW this with my own eyes I’d tend to veer towards taking the stories at face value. It should be noted SOME of these people needed to be sedated on a consistent basis (though only a minority). I suppose perhaps some people are so far gone to the point there may not be another way of going about things?

prescribing benzodiazepines/opiates on a chronic basis is becoming less common as boards are clamping down (particularly opiates). I also have a family friend who was on fentanyl (patch) at escalating dosages for around one year before being suddenly pulled off. Severe withdrawals resulted in hospitalisation, such conduct in my mind is malpractice.

If on opiates for a prolonged period of time you should be weaned off slowly.

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Aware of this… But I’m still able to net a prescription for ostarine without a valid reason for requiring said relatively novel, somewhat unapproved medication. Some people don’t care and put financial incentive far ahead of integrity.

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I was on Klonopin for 30 years then the withdrawal destroying my sleep causing low-T, it was an easy decision to come off knowing benzos can permanently screw up your memory and even cause dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Get off the Xanax now rather than later when it will be much harder to get off.

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Do you know what the word paradoxical means unreal?

It would be paradoxical if they had an increased anxiety while taking it. In your post you stated increased anxiety upon cessation and stated that was paradoxical. That is not paradoxical.

Yeah going back to your post. Did you SEE with your own eyes the doctor cease his benzo treatment and force him to cold turkey? Did you read his note?

No you only have his story and you know he is currently taking temaz. If we were in court that would be hearsay. Inadmissible.

I am not saying he is lying. I am saying I am incredibly suspicious regarding the veracity of his statements.

Not gonna say the stories you shared are untrue. As I don’t know. But I find it incredibly unlikely. I am intimately aware of how most medicine works. In practice. And even the most cooked of physicians wouldn’t do those things. There is so much oversight as well. That’s all I am going to say on the subject. Believe what you want.

I highly doubt you are being honest here.

You walked into your GP and said “Please sir I would like some ostarine?”

And they gave it to you?

If they get audited. Which happens regularly. They lose their license and may go to prison. There is no financial incentive in giving someone 20 years of age a SARM.

Unless its indicated or this person is your buddy. Or maybe you have some sort of hypogonadism and this is some off label use. I don’t know. It is only the most minority of physicians that are willing to jeopardize their ability to practice.

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So quit cold turkey?

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No. Do not take medical advice on the internet. Go to your medical doctor.

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No, twas an anti ageing clinic. Yes, that’s pretty much what happened. There are also clinics online here that’ll prescribe you ostarine, LGD-4033, GHRP/GH secretagogues and more. All it takes is for one to get bloods, have a phone consult with a physician and boom you’ve got a private script. It costs an arm and a leg and isn’t something I’d do again though. As a matter of fact I never used the ostarine.

I do, though I am on testosterone replacement therapy for this. Ostarine would be an inferior treatment protocol for hypogonadism. I’ve seen the data pertaining to the potential for SARMS being used as adjunct therapy to treat sarcopenia/age related hypogonadism but I have my qualms. I was prescribed the ostarine because “I wanted to build muscle”.

Firstly, the notion of SARMs being superior towards select demographics is in part due to the prospect of tissue selectivity. There is a lot of worry/gerrymandering going on revolving the potential effects TRT has on the prostate, as TRT may aggravate things for those with a genetic predisposition for BPH. The jury on TRT and rates of prostate cancer amongst said demographic being treated is still out, though it doesn’t appear to significantly increase risk/mortality rates associated with prostate cancer unless you initiate treatment whilst already on. There is also some interesting data indicative those who are hypogonadal who acquire prostate cancer may be more likely to have aggressive forms of the disease.

The thing is, the number of AR in the prostate doesn’t appear to be malleable as is the case with skeletal muscle. Said existing AR can be upregulated though, but only to an extent. If you don’t have the genes that allow androgenic stimulation of the prostate to reach a degree that it causes BPH/cancerous mutation chances are it ain’t going to happen.

But lets say you are prone to BPH/you’ve had prostate cancer and you have hypogonadism/associated medical pathology associated with a lack of testosterone (insulin resistance, osteopenia, loss of muscle mass, lack of energy/libido etc). nonsteroidal sarms sound great in theory as a tissue selective substrate for the androgen receptor, but in practical application they aren’t.

They don’t have affinity for the ER/5ar enzymes and on paper appear to impart highly selective effects regarding the tissues of which they bind to androgen receptors in (favouring skeletal muscle as opposed to test which binds to AR everywhere including cardiac myocytes, bone marrow, the brain etc).

But this doesn’t appear to be the case. Plenty of men/women who use injectable SARMS (or oral), even in relatively low dosages report androgenic effects like acne, hirsutism (women), occasionally androgenic alopecia etc (concerning) and more. To boot, the effect imparted on cholesterol through sarms appears on par, if not worse than c17-aa AAS. We already have anabolic steroids that have been designed to be more “tissue selective”. We know (sort of) what the long term implications associated with these meds are, SARMS are a wildcard. In the end I think they’ll be on par with AAS in terms of how dangerous they are.

In a last resort scenario you’d probably be better off giving a old person something like Metenolone. It’ll hit lipids, albeit not as harshly as SARM’s, it’s less androgenic than testosterone and although it does increase cardiovascular risk it probably does less so than an equitable dose of testosterone if we are talking like 100mg/wk (11bHSD inhibition, 20-Hydroxyeicosatetraenoic Acid release and subsequent RAAS dysregulation etc). This only accounts for those highly predisposed to adverse effects mediated through testosterone. For the majority 100mg test = safer than 100mg primo, though this equation doesn’t maintain exact proportions. I’d argue 1000mg primo is probably safer than 1000mg test, though using either drug in such a manner likely imparts long term repercussions.

I don’t know, I’m not an expert. You seem like a smart guy, let me know your opinions on the matter of age related hypogonadism/treatments (if you’re interested in having that conversation). It doesn’t appear as if sarms are the magic bullet they’re made out to be and I find it very frustrating supplement companies are marketing this stuff to kids/young adults as a safe alternative to steroids when they’re not…

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No… you have to taper down.

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How many bars are you taking?

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Yes, something that seemingly doesn’t make sense or self contradictory. For the average Joe who is oblivious towards the harms of benzodiazepines, I thought this scenario met the criteria for the use of the term “paradoxical”.

You take Xanax to treat anxiety, it works for a month… then you require escalating dosages, adverse effects may pile up. Then you either keep going down that horrible path or you withdrawl/detox, in which case you are worse off than baseline.

To me, that’s paradoxical as the initialised aim (to the individual using Xanax) was to treat anxiety, but the outcome is that of detriment. It’s contradictory, using Xanax to treat anxiety but ending up worse off. Am I wrong?

I’m willing to admit I’m wrong, I don’t see the point in arguing over something so trivial though. In the future I’ll be more careful about my word selection as to avoid making a fool out of myself :+1:

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Ok. That does cost a lot. Its the same as the CBD/THC clinics. If you fit the clinical criteria they will give it to you. That is all they need to mitigate potential for litigious consequences.

I am not saying your wrong but it certainly wasn’t clear what you are saying. I get what you mean. Intent was for benefit and the consequence is actually detriment.

But usually when people use the word paradoxical in context of drugs. It has more to do with its immediate effects. Like I give you this anti hypertensive and your BP actually goes up. Or I give you this sedative and you actually become more alert. Its usually used within the framework of responsible prescribing. Which giving increasing dosages of a benzo over a period of 2 weeks is not responsible. When they end up worse of it shouldn’t be a surprise benzos are a temporary fix because we know where they lead.

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Is it possible to do straight from Xanex to Zoloft to soften the blow?

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Love this approach :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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