Anyone with severe anxiety quit Benzodiazepines with TMS help?

@entenmk, I can’t get below 7.5mg without losing it. My TMS psychiatrist said we can try another round to try to get off since I can’t cessate on my own. It’s hard because my anxiety went to like a whole other level last year with pacing around (like Akathasia, but not medication induced. I also have a movement disorder that I’ve had for 10 years under good control and it became around the clock last year. Part of me wants to accept that I have to be on Valium & the other half is like the memory loss/brain fog is unreal. I’m so fatigued every day from it. How long did you take a Benzodiazepine? I’ve read that don’t take them long-term if you can help it…due to tolerance & other issues.

Hopefully next round gets me off! I did go from 15mg to 7.5mg…I just don’t know about the movements, TMS excerbated those during, better afterwards.

@dwsthur, I wrote to you on your other post! I’m so sorry for your TMS experience. My life was saved by TMS, so I very much had the opposite experience. I had severe anxiety previously to TMS and was actually able to cut nightly Valium in half. I also had zero thoughts prior to TMS as my depression was so bad I thought I had dementia and my memory improved quite a bit (as much as one can on a daily benzo)
Have you considered other options to help yourself like Ketamine, Psylocibin trials are helping depression/anxiety, or maybe even keto (plant based & high Omega-3’s) as it’s very brain healing. TMS helps a lot of people and I wish they were able to do it with a PET scan then it would be more individualized to inhibit overactive regions & activate under active areas.

Again I’m sorry you got worse, do you think if you continued on it might have resolved and were they doing bi-lateral? Also Neurostar? I’ve heard bad things about Brainsway in regards to agitation/anxiety. Good luck on healing

Hi@dwstuhr,
OMG! That’s horrible! Again I’m sorry for your experience. I understand a little because of my experience with a Ketamine infusion that left me much worse in regards to anxiety.
Have you contacted whoever treated you to let them know what it did to you? I have read about all the folks who ramped up anxiety or had memory loss and I almost decided against it myself, but I had exhausted every option (medication class, ketamine, etc) available.

I hope you find some relief or your brain goes back to baseline. Even the benzo doesn’t give you sleep? (i know it’s not restorative sleep, I use Valium for sleep) I wonder why it does that to certain people and not others? Like I said my anxiety is how I got into major depression (along with a debilitating movement disorder) and both improved. When all other modalities made me worse.

Could you see a functional neurologist for help to find see what it did to your nervous system & if they can get it to calm down. I don’t think it’s fair to live like that when you wanted help with your brain.