Posted by Rob L. on April 17, 2003, at 6:41:55
In reply to Re: Lorazepam/Ativan lost its effects, WHY ?, posted by Snoozy on April 17, 2003, at 1:04:02
Although I am surprised that you are having this problem with such a powerful benzo, I would almost say with little doubt that if you used to take the ativan regularly, it had built up over time in your blood and the blood level of ativan had gotten to a point where whenever you would take a ativan it would increase the blood level with built up ativan and the new one. Then, your blood level would be at a point in which the additional ativan triggers response from it and feel the drug's full effects. This is why doctors used to prescribe valium over the long term to get efffective anxiety treatment. If you are off of ativan and have been for some time then be most happy with that.. If you must have something for occasional anxiety, I would get something like Xanax that you could use occaisionally. Klonopin is powerful and is very effective on one dose. It has a moderate half-life in the blood and therefore wears off smoothly. Xanax is very powerful on the first dose. However, it is quickly eliminated from the blood and this will result in many people to redose because of the sudden rebound of it.
I am still struggling with over 10 years of being dependent on benzodiazepines. It started with xanax, then valium, and now for some time it has been klonopin(There are others, including ativan, but these were the main three for me). So, I am not to keen on others ending up in my position. I posted a longer version with other information about benzos, including my problems with them, earlier this morning in a reply to another about klonopin. Most if not all written in the post would apply equally if klonopin were substitued with ativan of an equal dosing conversion.(Seethe benzo equivalency page that is linked here http://www.dr-bob.org/tips/bzd.html )
So, if the ativan isn't working on a occasional dose. You would probably want to ask your doctor for something that would be more suited for this purpose. I do believe that occasional use of klonopin or xanax (higher potential of abuse with xanax though) should work fine. Occassional and low doses would be best;I cannot stress the importance of this enough no matter how obvious it may seem. Benzodiazepine addiction is horrible. Please, do read my post if you want to see alot more about what mightbe said about regular dosing of these drugs or you could go to a website about Stevie Nick's experience http://www.benzo.org.uk/nicks.htm but whatever you do if you or anyone are considering taking it daily/regularly then investigate it thoroughly and make sure that the problems surrounding these drugs and their dependency are worth it.
poster:Rob L.
thread:219932
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030417/msgs/220007.html