Valium And Other Psychiatric Drugs

[Dana1010]

I've got an appointment with a psychiatrist coming up and have a feeling I might wind up with a prescription. My flashbacks and hyper vigilance are interfering with my daily life and work. I never wanted to go the pharmaceutical route but I have to work--once it gets so bad you can't work, the jig is up.

I'm wondering if anyone here has tried meds for PTSD such as Valium. Do they suppress the memories or do they just make them hurt less when they come up?

 

[TLight]

For me, it just keeps it from getting too overwhelming and stops the downward spiral. I will likely be on klonopin the rest of my life, but that's ok......I only take a tiny bit as needed.

 

[franciemarnie]

Valium is like a couple martinis. It relaxes you and things don't bother you as much. It wears off of course, and if you take it every day for two weeks, you have to take more for the same effect because you build a tolerance.

It's alright if you use it sparingly, but I could not. I could always justify taking more because I felt so awful every day. Withdrawal is hell. But if you can take it only every so often, that's great.

I took a different med thru the years so I could work. It let me sleep, which made me more stable.

The best thing would be if you could release trauma energy with someone like a somatic therapist so you would heal more and not have so many symptoms. It took me decades to even know that was a possibility.

 

[Dana1010]

@franciemarnie I've heard of somatic therapy and it sounds interesting, but it does have a too good to be true/hype feel to it IMO. If they can't literally remove the memories I have, I don't know how I could be healed. I might have a good day or two and feel like I'm getting better, but then I remember something that happened, and it's like it re-traumatizes me. I just don't see how they could make a traumatizing memory non-traumatizing.

 

[franciemarnie]

@Dana1010 - You have to investigate somatic therapy to make any judgement. It works for me and I was as cynical as they come. I read about it first and then tried it. You might pick up Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine, which explains it.

Drugs are only temporary. They are band aids for PTSD and do not heal anything. But they are necessary until you can get at the original wound. Talking therapy, which I did for 25 years, was like standing over the gaping wound and discussing it and then walking away from it at the end of every session. Drugs were like anesthesia.

Best to investigate all avenues and do research - for me anyway. Then I know I have done all I can.

 

[joeylittle]

Nothing suppresses anything, in my opinion; but the benzo class (klonopin, ativan, valium, there are others) will put distance between you and the memory; it recedes into the background. You generally want to take a dose as low as possible, so sometimes you need to do a little bit of mental work along with the meds (at least, I do); but they can make things a whole lot more survivable.

There really are a bunch of different medications that work on those anxious, hypervigilant feelings. The good news is, they work right away. So you try it, and if it helps, awesome; if it doesn't, you keep looking for what will.

Good luck!

 

[StarChild]

Hi @Dana1010, sometimes, when I'm really fed up or exhausted from being deeply sad, or want to stop that endless crying, then I take lorazepam. And the crying stops, and the sadness fades quite a bit, so that it's easier for me to manage. BUT, and I really want to emphasize this: But from my personal experience, not one of the medicaments I tried for stopping sadness or desperate crying have taken away the state / condition of sadness. What I'm trying to say is, that such medicaments only defer the sadness. - It won't go away permanently! For after I took lorazepam for three or four days in a row, I had to learn, that desperation and crying always will return even more powerful than before! And this is a quite important fact! These medicaments don't heal desperation, sadness or whatever, they just kind of numb them out for a certain time.

So I too would like to encourage you to look for other ways to manage the memories that haunt you. There are different forms of trauma focused therapy that you can try to work with... Oh, and by the way, Valium's one of the strongest of the benzodiazepines. And also bears it's side effects, which amongst being highly addictive or giving you psychosis (and lots of other side effects more , is giving you severe nightmares and even have the potential to cause severe depression. I'll put a link for in, hope it helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazepam

 

[Dana1010]

Can you describe what's actually done in somatic therapy?

I also think talk therapy is a joke for trauma sufferers. It's like they downplay the condition's seriousness by thinking you can be talked out of it. You might as well tell someone with two broken legs to get up and walk. With healers like this, who needs abusers?

I've heard of the book Waking the Tiger. Is there any real help to be gotten just from reading the book? I'm sure my insurance wouldn't cover something as hippy-dippy (in their eyes) as somatic therapy.

 

[Dana1010]

Hi @Dana1010, sometimes, when I'm really fed up or exhausted from being deeply sad, or want to stop that endless crying, then I take lorazepam. And the crying stops, and the sadness fades quite a bit, so that it's easier for me to manage.

Thanks. My issue these days isn't really crying or sadness, it's fear and anxiety. I feel under attack, like all the jerks (and worse) from my past are watching me and mocking me--not in a schizophrenic way, I don't really think they're watching me, but more in a self loathing, insecure way.

 

[Justmehere]

Have you ever worked with a trauma specialist? General therapy didn't work for me. Trauma therapy seemed hokey to me to, but it is changing my life.

My insurance and victims comp pays for somatic experiencing therapy. With zero problems. The veterans administration in the US covers somatic experiencing therapy. It's a very standard type of therapy. So is EMDR.

If somatic work or EMDR isn't for you, that's ok. Then trauma focused CBT therapy or DBT therapy might be a good direction to start in. It's NOT about talking you out of your symptoms whatsoever. If you had that experience, you had a terrible therapist.

Keep investigating it and when you are ready, I hope you really dive in and give the books and therapies a try.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I also think talk therapy is a joke for trauma sufferers. It's like they downplay the condition's seriousness by thinking you can be talked out of it.

Maybe you've just met a bad psychologist? Maybe try a trauma specialist, or just a different therapist, downplaying and minimization should never be on the cards.

 

[Dana1010]

Is somatic therapy similar to meditation? I meditate every day and for fifteen whole minutes after I'm done, I feel like a normal person. Yay.