How do I know I'm at the right dose?

I'm new as of yesterday. I have had an Rx for 1 mg xanax for 4 months. I rarely took that much but in the last 3-4 weeks anxiety about a new health problem led me to think taking it daily for just a few weeks would not lead to physical addiction. Even tho I am still in the midst of not having answers for what could be a serious problem I decided 6 days ago to stop the xanax. I have chronic pain, was in a pain clinic for 15 years on high dose narcotics and lyrica but got off all that over a year ago and did not want another withdrawal. I don't have the body chemistry to get high off any drugs, thank goodness, so that was never an issue.

 

After stopping the xanax (and not looking up any info about it) I was totally shocked that each day that passed was harder than the one before. I had burning skin on my arms and chest and increasing anxiety plus some very negative thoughts that were foreign to me. On day 5 I started hurting all over in places I don't normally hurt. My regular pain was increasing plus my back and ribs hurt like crazy. I finally looked up how long to anticipate this process to last, thinking maybe a day or 2 more, and was totally flabbergasted to see the warnings for fatal seizures for going cold turkey. Any that the withdrawal was months, not days!

 

At that point I did panic. The first thing I did was take a Valium 5 mg tab (the dog's Rx) and start reading info here on this site. I decided I had made an uninformed decision to take the dog's med and to quit xanax CT , to put it mildly, and decided to go back to .5 mg of xanax 2x day until I felt strong enough to start a taper plan. But my 1 mg tablets won't even break evenly.

 

After the first .5 mg of xanax yesterday some of the strongest anxiety did release and over several hours the physical pain lessened considerably. My question (finally- sorry to be so wordy)- how long will it take to know if I have gone back to a dose that will allow me relief of the symptoms enough to adjust and think about tapering. I took the .5 mg this AM and after an hour or so I napped for 2 hours, totally not like me. But when I woke the anxiety was there. I feel lethargic and still having thoughts I don't like. The physical pain is there but not extreme.

 

I also wanted to ask if anyone had ever tried taking a low dose and increasing the time between doses by an hour each day? That is the only way I was able to get off Lyrica. Decreasing by 10% caused horrible symptoms. I am assuming that the short half life of xanax would prevent that method from working.

 

Would I be better to divide the 1 mg tab into 3 doses every 8 hours rather than 2 every 12 hours? I think my main desire now is to get back to the smallest dose possible to be anxiety free again and then deal with my health issue before starting to get off the xanax. Am I just justifying the use of it? I feel SO lost!!!!!

I only know about Klonopin but hope others here can help. You’ll get through this, this site is very helpful.

Hey Success, welcome to bb.  I need you to do me a favor, go back to the Homepage where your profile is and click on it, look down and you will see a place to write in your drug history, the signature section, please also add the drugs you have already tapered from, that way we can see the big picture and give you the best advice possible.  You are in a great place, we will do all we can to help.  Please do the signature.  Thanks, Mary 🍀