Anxiety adrenaline waves every AM waking me from sleep.

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Thanks for you input! That makes me really sad, and I want to hold onto hope that there's a more natural solution out there instead of a sedative. But I'm also glad you found something that works for you. ❤️❤️

The psychiatrist also said that his patients with this tend to recover from the anxiety when they get up and start moving around. It takes me a while to get going in the mornings since the only time I don't have back pain is when I am in bed, so I do not get up immediately.

As you can see esikora what you are experiencing in the early AM hours is not unusual by the responses to your question. If fact, this phenomenon is gaining more attention since it is so common. I too suffer exactly what you do. Quite awful. I have a severe panic disorder, on medications and been in therapy for years. And yet, it still happens almost every AM, just like yours. My (yours ?) nervous system is out of whack and "on alert" (PTSD) and waking up in the early AM hours is part of this. The anxiety, fear, vigilance immediately gets activated via our adrenal gland and the adrenaline starts surging through our bodies. Thus, the pounding heart, fast rate, possible sweating. All related to "fear" of the upcoming day which begins in the mind, the body gets the clue & is off and running. I also tried Buspar and found it to be useless. What I do is immediately start to pray or say my mantra to "try" to calm myself down. I then roll out of bed and take my "go-to" anti-anxiety medications, sit down for the AM news with my first cup of coffee. Unfortunately I must take my medications but thankful they exist! I can't tell you the number of times I had a severe panic attack at 6 AM! To the point I thought I was dying and asking my husband to call 911. Now this rarely happens...but the upon waking anxiety shows up just about every AM - around 5ish like you. I have accepted it. Know exactly what it is. Strong prayers/mantras do help and I do try to fall back to sleep, sometimes I do...but I am up usually around 6ish and must do my morning medications routine to break this awful cycle. The cards my body have been dealt. Talk to yourself...saying things like "OK, I know what this is, etc. etc." and try not to be frightened by such feelings. It will and does pass. The best of luck to you and know you are far from alone in coping with Morning Anxiety.

Fortunately you are very lucky that you never hit tolerance and that your doctor is still willing to prescribe your benzodiazepine.

Don’t accept these early AM anxiety quirks. Not normal at all. I’m 73 and know that anti depressants like Imipramine, elavil, lexapro, etc all for relief of anxiety, will relieve you of these early morning awakenings.

I have experienced that. It’s scary. I would wake up drenched in sweat with my heart pounding and the worst sense of dread. Eventually I would wake up as my heart was starting to rev up and I would do deep breathing to get it to calm down. This went on for almost a year. I started to see a counselor who advised I don’t try and push the dread away but rather embrace it and see what it was trying to tell me. By not trying to force it away, it did lessen in intensity but I don’t know what it was trying to tell me. Thankfully the waking up with a racing heart subsided. I still occasionally wake up with drenching night sweats. I found doing breathing exercises helped.

Well, it was my job causing all the anxiety. And maybe some things that had happened all my life: Fear of what the day will bring.
I recently realized that I no longer have this problem for the most part. It went back to early childhood traumas: The same dream but as I grew older then it just turned into dreams of being lost without a phone, nor the address of where I was trying to get to!
Silly sounding, maybe totally irrelevant, but eventually I could trace it back, at least. The dreams began when I was about 5 years old.
I now take medicine for major depression, panic attacks and anxiety. And pray each time that it is NOT A HEART ATTACK! A lot of the “work” is what I needed to do for myself. And I really felt counseling takes you so far and then you must take control or it won’t stop.
Mine stopped. I realized it was because I had ended a 3 year very toxic relationship. On day I thought to myself “hey, I don’t have those dreams anymore of being helpless.”
I’m hoping this helps and is relevant to this discussion.

I have this too. I have had it for about thirty years. It’s worse now as I am dealing with Long Covid and my head gets started down that road as soon as I am awake. I have seen Endocrinologists who find nothing amiss with my adrenal glands (!!) Now, that’s hard to believe, but what I’ve been told.
Like everybody else I have had challenges in my life, but even when resolved, this fight or flight continues.
My solution is to get up and walk. After thirty minutes to an hour of walking, I feel a little tired, and can come in and get my tea, check messages, etc.
During the day I may get more waves of adrenaline but if I’m moving around it’s less disturbing.
My doctor does prescribe Klonopin for my worse days. It helps, but also increases my chronic constipation (and is a controlled substance), so I use it very judiciously.
It is a very distressing symptom. Antidepressants have not worked for me. I figure it’s something I have to endure.

I am really seeing a problem today with anxiety, it’s not an uncommon thing in our world and it’s certainly getting worse. I’m also a person with a lifelong struggle to cope with my anxiety but it’s much worse today. I truly believe that some of us have been hurt by the pandemic virus and all the stress it causes, also we are seeing more problems in the world and they truly frighten most of us. I was diagnosed with lung cancer the same year covid started, to say that I was stressed and struggling to cope would be an understatement. I have done damage to my mental and physical health by worrying all the time, I do rely on meds and I don’t want to guilt trip myself about needing them, I simply can’t cope well without them and I realize I don’t want to put more stress on myself about it. I understand that we all want to live healthy lives without using drugs but I think we’re pretty fortunate that we have meds to help us cope because we don’t have a lot of other choices at this point in time.