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Hi, Abby. Yes, I'd been diagnosed as bipolar once, and I have no idea why. I have clinical depression, and I definitely don't have the manic highs. Sometimes doctors know nothing. One psychiatrist put me on lithium. He kept me on it for six months, even though I kept telling him it was doing NOTHING. He got really angry and started screaming at me during an appointment, so I got up, threw my bottle of lithium at him, and walked out. The end of him.
I've been on clonazepam for ages. It's helped the panic/anxiety disorder immensely. But then I started wondering if it was really helping anymore. My psychiatrist is wonderful, and I hope he never retires (he's about 70), and I talked to him about tapering off. He was skeptical and thought it WAS helping me, but he helped me figure out a tapering-off schedule. Unfortunately, as I tapered off, the panic/anxiety symptoms I'd known but hadn't experienced in ages started coming back. So, I'm back on it. I'm on a very low dosage--0.5 mg two to three times per day--but it does help.
I've been so severely depressed in the past that, seven years ago, my psychiatrist strongly suggested that I check into a psychiatric ward. I did, and I was there for 3 1/2 weeks. Amazingly enough, it was a GREAT experience. Everyone else on the ward had severe clinical depression as well, so we all totally understood what the other was feeling. If a medication wasn't working or was having adverse effects, the docs were right there and could take us off the meds or change them immediately. I'm still on the combination of meds that they found for me at the psych ward, and I'm doing well.
Please don't even consider suicide! Yes, I think we've all been there at one time or another. But trust me: It WILL get better. It will. If you feel that you need the help of a psych ward, don't hesitate to go to one. My time in one helped me immensely, changed my life, and got me the right meds. Take good care of yourself.
Hazel
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Hello Hazel, I too have been on Clonazepam for a long time due to anxiety, panic attacks, and PTSD. I too was abused horribly as a child and I still have the nightmares. It's been 16 years since I've been on Klonopin. I also suffer from severe depression and I'm 53 and going through menopause, have chronic pain in my neck and lumbar, chronic migraines, and now developed severe Restless leg Syndrome. I'm a mess right now, and am on a lot of medication. I think the Klonopin is making my depression worse, and my Psychiatrist wants to lower the dose to 1mg but hasn't because he knows that I'm going through a divorce, so I decided to just go ahead and lower down to 1mg. I do have extra Klonopin from when he used to give me 4mgs and I sometimes use them for when I get a migraine and I need to take Excedrin migraine and I usually will take 2 mg Klonopin with that. It makes me really nervous and a previous Doctor had told me that Klonopin works well with the Excedrin migraine. I felt like you do at one time. I felt like I should just stay on the Klonopin because after all, it is an anxiety medication and I have really bad anxiety, but I read that it causes dementia and memory loss and that's when I got worried and thought about detoxing. I don't think I can at this moment though unless I do it extremely slow, but I don't believe my Doctor would be willing to help me go really slow. Can I ask how long have you been taking it?