Stopping/Controlling Anxiety by Any Method

Forgive my ignorance, but can you do it in pill form? (I know you can inject it, but I would never do that.)

And do you mean literally heroin, or just opiates in general?

Do you speak from experience?

I see no googling of “ketamine”+anxiety!

The fact that you’re a bit of “a hypochondriac and don’t even like taking aspirin” will make it very difficult to seriously consider medicines in my honest opinion.
It seems like you’re too scared to even give the prescription drugs ample time to judge their efficacy. SSRIs should be take for a minimum of 3 months (maybe longer) to really judge their effectiveness. Here’s an e-mail I wrote to someone regarding my experience with a few of the medications, I took. The only thing I would change is I would still take the occasional use of opiates (as a last resort), if I had to, in order to function at work but no doctor will ever prescribe it for you. They would probably lose their license if they did.

1. SSRIs: The effects are subtle and you won’t notice much until ~4-6 weeks (assuming you hit the right dose) and even then, most don’t notice a big difference. That’s been my experience also. You just kinda feel like your emotional responses to anxiety-provoking situations are slightly decreased. You still feel anxious but it doesn’t bother you as much. The major side-effect is slightly decreased sex drive/function for some (I never experienced this side-effect personally).

2. Benzodiazepines: The effect is almost immediate from the first dose, assuming you take a sufficient dose. These drugs work really well and curb your anxiety almost immediately but over the long-term they lead to tolerance for many so you have to increase the dose. Even worse, sometimes they can lead to abuse, especially when you require increasing doses and the doctor is unwilling to increase the dose. Having said that, these drugs are by far the most effective drugs, at least in the short-term, for anxiety. Side-effects: You feel sleepy, tired and you will get a bit of cognitive impairment. With a high enough dose they feel kinda like alcohol without the many side-effects or as much cognitive impairment (a bit, yes, but not close to the same extent as alcohol).

3. Beta-blockers: These drugs just decrease your heart rate and blood pressure. They are primarily used for situational anxiety (e.g. stage fright/public speaking anxiety). I found them totally useless but they work for some people with mild situational anxiety.

If I could do it all over again I would have:

-sought help at an earlier age
-tried non-drug approaches first (therapy, relaxation therapy, breathing exercises, exercise, nutrition)
-if non-drug approaches didn’t work, I would have tried some non-abusive drugs first (e.g. SSRIs) along with non-drug approaches
-if the non-abusive drugs still didn’t work I would have went for the benzodiazepines along with non-drug approaches and make sure that the doctor monitored me so I wouldn’t have abused them
-as a last resort I’d try the illegal stuff (opiates)

In terms of overall side-effects I would rank opiates by far worse>>>benzodiazepines>>SSRIs.
In terms of sexual side-effects I would rank opiates far worse>>SSRIs> benzodiazepines.
In terms of cognitive side-effects I would rank Benzodiazepines>opiates>SSRIs.

My experience is also consistent with the vast majority of the literature on this topic. So if you’re scared of side-effects opiates are not a good choice. Opiates are basically heroin in pill form.

Or as Malcolm X said: “By any means necessary”.

Thanks for mentioning this. I am googling it now. :up:

This is likely true.

If the drug has a (perceived) negative effect that outweighs my (perceived) positive effect, I can’t handle it. And I recognize that my perception could be out of whack!

I was able to stick with zopiclone because I took it 1x during a stretch of insomnia, and it “just worked”.

You perception on the dangers of some prescription psychotropic drugs like SSRIs are probably almost as out of whack as is your/my perception of what a large size penis is, I think. Every single drug has some side-effects but you won’t get a realistic picture of “true” side-effects from reading Internet stuff. Sometimes even reading side-effects of medicines will make anxiety-prone guys like us experience those side-effects. My own personal opinion based on:

-the stuff I studied (pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, organic and physical chemistry, toxicology, etc.)
-personal experimentation and
-first-hand direct clinical experience (CAMH)

SSRIs are not that dangerous. The problem is they don’t often work as well as advertised. The major problem is some sexual side-effects in a sizable portion of individuals (usually some delayed ejaculation-which is actually used as a benefit in those suffering from pre-mature ejaculation). The trick with SSRIs is to start slow and build up dose slowly, because most people tend to feel worse (more anxious) before feeling better (assuming they work). The SSRIs to me are shitty pills because, they feel like I’m taking candies. No side-effects and only minor benefits. Having said that, I have seen some people who responded to them. My closest friend suffers from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and 2 of 3 SSRIs (Lexapro or Cipralex in Canada, Zoloft) worked extremely well for him. He didn’t like Paxil, though. He’s been on them for about 10 years. He still takes the occassional alprazolam (xanax) on an as-needed basis for breakthrough anxiety, though.

Benzodiazepines and particularly opiates are more risky but they also work much better. By the way, one of my psychiatrists suffered from social anxiety disorder for his whole life. He’s also a professor and head of his department. He never took any drugs for it but used exposure therapy. He said he stills has it particularly in informal small group situations (parties, weddings, etc.). It never completely disappears. He’s over 60. He feels extremely anxious in informal chit-chating situations but can give presentations in front of 100s of fellow doctors and medical students without feeling any anxiety. Weird.

I speak from experience. I don’t know if opiates in general help, I think they do though, but I think that the strength of the opiate is more important then the variate or brand of it.

In terms of facts:

Heroin directly effects the central nervous system. It “numbs” your nerves, hence its potential to calm anxiety.

You can’t get it in pill form anywhere else in the world but Switzerland as far as I know.

I know that you guys have a policy to beat anxiety by any means necessary, but the prolonged use of heroin (it being the strongest opiate out there, legal or illegal) will cause more harm then good. Hectic Saturday so I can’t type longer posts, but I will be back here with facts (both from personal experience, and from information around the medical world and Internet).

http://en.wikip edia.org/wiki/S … uptake_enhancer

http://en.wikip … wiki/Tianeptine

http://www.soci alanxietysuppor … aneptine-67135/

The way I beat anxiety was to . ( Social anxiety)

Trigger the adrenaline rush as many times as I could in one day. By thinking about the stuff that gave me anxiety.

cons:Exhaustion, that lasted a few days,very high heart rate (my shot upto 160 for a few hours),felt stressed out for the next two weeks after that,adrenaline rush is disfuncional and still is

Built up a resistance to the adrenaline rush, now it’s much more manageable

Let me at least bring up EFT.

This is a website that has some nice downloads on it:

The Tapping Solution: EFT Documentary Film | Home

Here are a few videos that will give you an introduction:

This first video will give a very good guide to find the points.

This next guy, I think gives a really great easy technique to use EFT quickly and effectively. He posts tons of free videos on Youtube, with great resources. This is a great place to start, and is enough to make it work for you.

This really doesn’t take much time to get a functional understanding of it and start making positive changes NOW.

A SHORT SUMMARY
A short overview, lets say you have a fear of snakes you want to get rid of. First, bring up the feelings as powerfully as you can (the fear, chest pressure, panic etc). Now tap through the points. Recheck the fear level by bring the memories again. Make a note of the decrease (eg if on a 1-10 scale it started at a 10 and now after one round of tapping its 5. Now repeat the procedure until its down to 0, no emotional residual at all.

Next put in a positive view. You could say while tapping the points, "they are actually kinda neat creatures, it would be kinda fun to hold one." Next, "actually, they do a lot of good in nature by keeping down the rodent population" etc. Try to think of it in a way that you feel the truth of the positive statements. Try and FEEL positive as you think and speak the words. If you phrase it an sensible way to yourself, it should be easy to feel the truth of your positive statements. So, after you take the negative emotions down to zero, you IMPLANT positive feelings. Do that until you have a positive feeling when you think of the original problem.

For many fears and neg emotions, this can be done in minutes! The key is to feel the pain of the negative emotion as completely as possible, like you are "right there". You only have to feel it for literally a couple seconds, just go straight into the tapping. Usually by even after the first round the "pain" is reduced by 50%!

Why is this important to do? Negative emotions or fears are constantly running in the "background" of your unconscious mind, using up energy and sending out a "vibration" that will reflect back to you from the Universe and life. So if you are walking around with the fear that "you will always be broke and struggling financially" that is the energy, vibration you send out into the Universe and it will reflect back to you as "reality". PLUS, the fear of it changes how you approach the solution, usually causing you to act and think in a way that will confirm your fear. Get rid of the neg programming, put in positive programming and you will change for the better.

This method will allow you to make profound changes in a short period of time. If you see the potential of this, you can make up a list of any and all negative thoughts,memories and emotions and get rid of them.

FC, I didn’t quite understand your post. Maybe there was a cut and paste issue? If you PM me how it was supposed to start, I can correct it for you. Otherwise, I do get the gist: you overstimulated your anxiety and built up an immunity to the adrenaline rush.

By the way, thanks everyone for the responses. There is a lot of great info in this thread, and lots of links and resources mentioned that I will be spending some time reviewing. :up:

I agree with you that opiates will cause more harm than good for most people. I have never taken non-prescription/very rarely prescribed opiates, like heroin. But I’m pretty sure it isn’t the strongest opiate. I believe both fentanyl and hydromorphone (dilaudid) are stronger. I’ve taken just about every prescription opiate there is including fentanyl and dilaudid. I had easy access to them.

For whatever reason, opiates alone were not that effective for my performance anxiety. Without benzodiazepines, they sometimes made me more anxious. But the combo was very effective and also dangerous. Also while a higher equivalent dose of opiate was generally more effective this wasn’t completely true for me. I tried codeine, morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl and hydromorphone. For me the oxycodone was significantly more effective for anxiety than the other opiates. Dilaudid which is arguably the strongest opiate in pill form wasn’t particularly effective for me. The active ingredient of codeine is really morphine since ~10% of codeine is converted to morphine in the body of the majority of people. A little under 10% of subjects lack the enzyme that converts codeine into morphine and in those subjects codeine doesn’t alleviate pain.

Overall, at equivalent doses of opiate, I found this scale useful for anxiety relief (when combined with benzodiazepines):

Oxycodone>morphine or codeine>dilaudid>fentanyl.

It may be different for others. Without benzodiazepines it just gives you a relaxing, spaced-out euphoria. Just my own experience. I’ve also experimented with anti-psychotics and some adjunctive anxiety medications (lyrica, neurontin). Nothing useful with those in terms of anxiety relief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)