I first started having attacks when I was in the military back in 1987. At the time I was anxious about where I was going to be stationed, plus going through the stress of training, and experiencing dehydration from the hot climate I was in. The military hospital determined I was dehydrated period. I made sure to drink more, but I knew that mentally something more was going on. I fought the anxiety and eventually had more attacks in the early 90's while under stress. At that point it was diagnosed as panic disorder and they gave me some
xanax and had me see a physician who put me on
buspar. The buspar gave me headaches and I was barely 30 and didn't want to be on xanax, so we moved and I got a less stressful job and was okay until perimenapause started. Then my hormones kicked into everything, which had always been there, a high strung nervous system. I started missing cycles and having constant anxiety and just went into panic attack city. I had 3 attacks in one day. I was shaking like a leaf between attacks and felt like I was going nutty. My doctor put me on
Paxil and xanax. After about a month I improved. I had xanax with me for years and took it whenever I felt anxious. I wasn't going to let myself get to the point of an attack again. I have been on Paxil 40mg since 1998. I until recently hadn't taken xanax for a good 2 years. Lately I have had increased pain in my life, as well as stress. Now I am starting to have some anxiety again and my blood pressure has been going up. It looks like it is environmentaly induced. My doctor had suggested I switch to
cymbalta from Paxil since it is better at helping with chronic pain. I know that Paxil was found to be highly effective for panic disorder and OCD. I am taking the xanax again to see if it helps with the BP as well as smoothing over the transition to cymbalta. I am afraid that cymbalta might not help with the anxiety as well. But with the way I have been feeling, I was wondering if maybe the Paxil wasn't as effective anymore since I have been on it so long, and just didn't know because I haven't been in any high stress situations to test it out.
Has anyone out there made this transition? To anyone out there having just panic, I would really recommend Paxil. I know it can be hard to get off from, but until recently it has worked great for me and I was a major basket case when I started taking it. I needed xanax too at first until the paxil started working. I had a history of an irregular cycle my whole life too, and the paxil straightened that out too, as well as high acid in my digestive tract where I had to take tagemet all the time to avoid stomach pain. Just some extra information. So my nervous system and hormones were really tied into one another and weren't not in normal sync, thus the panic nervous system wack out.