Just call me Cat. I'm confused about this forum. When I have questions, where do I post? Does it depend on the type of questions? Does someone always answer? For instance, where do I ask this question: When I do my activity tracker and mood tracker, does it matter if I change meds or take certain meds off and on, as needed, to improve mood? Whether I take Lexapro is not an issue in the short term, because whether I take it or not doesn't ever seem to matter. In the long term, it might matter a little, but probably not more that 10 to 30%. That is, it doesn't stop depression, and if it did reduce it, it wouldn't be by very much, but I take it in case it helps some. I honestly don't know if it does. With that said, the real issue I have is that, because Lexapro doesn't work or work much (and the same goes for all the other antidepressants I have tried), I resort to using an anti anxiety (Klonopin) when my depression becomes overwhelming. I was originally told to use it all the time for anxiety because antidepressants didn't work for me for anxiety. However, my anxiety was dramatically reduced with cognitive behavioral work, so I stopped taking it unless I had a time of unusual stress that caused some extra anxiety. What I eventually realized was that the Klonopin could pull my mood from quite depressed to almost normal (I could still feel sad, but not paralyzing, and was able to have some motivation and hope). I still don't use it, though, unless I really am struggling more than usual. Right now, I am struggling more than usual, so I'm inclined to throw in the towel and use Klonopin regularly or maybe every few days in order to keep from going into that place of total hopelessness. On the other hand, taking this sporadically certainly will effect my mood, so will it basically nullify the results of my mood tracker and my activity tracker? My choices are to 1) not take Klonopin at all and be more miserable than necessary, or 2) to take Klonopin every day, even when I don't need it, in order to keep from making it difficult to tell if my mood is improving due to med changes or due to the program here (but risk becoming too dependent on it and have to increase dosage, which I don't want to do), or 3) my preferred method, to continue to take Klonopin as needed, and just notate when I do and don't take it in my notes, and try to weed out the difference between when my mood improves temporarily due to taking a med and when the overall mood improves over the long haul due to this program? Sorry to make this sound complicated, but I don't know how to explain it in a more succinct manner. When I participated in a cognitive behavioral program for anxiety in the past, they didn't want someone to keep changing meds in the middle of the program so as to not make things confusing. On the other hand, I really don't want to become used to taking Klonopin, even though I've never developed a dependence on it and am not the dependent type. I really just don't like meds, but I also have learned it is better to use something that works, even temporarily, than to stay too low or to crash. So on which forum do I ask this? Thanks for any help from whomever sees this.
