Ok...my pdoc just had me start xanax xr for GAD. He's starting me really low because of how sensitive I am to meds. So far I've done 3 days at 0.25mg.

Well...about 5 hours before I was due for my second dose (Sat. night), I had a complete mental breakdown and flew into this intense rage after an argument with my parents. I ended up hyperventilating for a little over an hour, couldn't stop crying, and put a hole in the wall (along with completely loosing it). The hole was a complete accident though. I slapped it with an open palm (like you would slap down on a desk), but didn't realize the strength behind it. Anyways, it took what little control I still had of myself to keep from destroying the house.

Behavior this intense is not like me at all! Yeah...I'll get angry and yell, but I haven't gotten physically angry since I was a teenager and that never got to the level like it did on Saturday night. I have complete control of how I outwardly express my emotions. And as it was all happening, in the back of my mind I was wondering why I couldn't seem to stop myself. Quite scary.

Could it be the little xanax I took that helped contribute to me loosing all control and having a breakdown? Other than this episode, the xanax has totally been relaxing for me. I'm feeling very well rested when I wake up and am not feeling any sedating effects. I was on Buspar before this and that made me extremely tired, but did nothing for the anxiety. This stuff works, but if it contributed to this event it may not be safe for me to take. Could even this low a dose of xanax have caused me so much disinhibition that I flew off the handle and had no control?

Anyone else experience anything like this while taking a benzo?

Ive never experienced anything like that on xanax. Thats not to say it couldnt be responsible, though your dose is very low.

I'd keep a note of the incident, and talk to your dr about it next time round.

It could just be that you are releasing some previously hidden emotional pain.

Well, I got an email back from my pdoc today about the incident. He said I could just be vulnerable around 4-6 hours before my next dose is due or else it is just the "disinhibition" that people can experience on Xanax. So we might add 1/2 a dose somewhere to get me through the vulnerable period and keep a close eye to make sure I'm not getting that "disinhibition" effect. Hopefully, I won't have another episode like that again!

I just seem to react really strange when it comes to meds!

Just in case anyone ever does a search and wants to know what happened to me....

After some more describing, my doctor said it was a classic "mini-withdrawal" I experienced. I did a search on the internet and found this explanation on quite a few sites. I guess I reacted like a veteran w/PTSD sometimes does when on a benzo....

"Mini-withdrawal syndrome between doses: Benzos differ from each other mainly in their pharmacokinetics, that is, how fast they go into the body and how fast they leave. Mini-withdrawal reactions are particularly likely to happen with the benzos that leave the body quickly, such as Halcyon (generic name: triazolam). This is why people who take this drug for sleep often wake up in the middle of the night because they are in the withdrawal phase. Though Xanax does not leave the body quite as fast as Halcyon, it is particularly prone to giving mini-withdrawals between doses. My observation has been that many combat vets on Xanax have periods of anxiety and irritability during each day that do them great harm, and which, in my view are mostly mini-withdrawal reactions between doses.

Possible dangerous peculiarities of Xanax in PTSD during withdrawal: The staff of the in-patient PTSD unit at the American Lake VA in Washington State have published a paper reporting extreme violence by combat vets treated for long periods with Xanax and then taken off of it. This was apparently more frequent and more severe than what they found taking their patients off of other benzos, such as Valium. Several Vietnam combat veteran peer counselors whom I respect very highly, feel that Xanax has done a lot of harm. Xanax has some unique properties among its cousins in the benzodiazepine family. In lab tests Xanax acts the opposite at low blood levels of how it acts in the larger amounts actually used in medical practice. When you think about it, everybody passes through a low blood level twice when they take a pill -- once when the pill is just being absorbed in the body and once when the body is almost done getting rid of it (unless, of course, the person takes the same pill again, before the first one is completely gone). Whether this is what causes the problems with Xanax is not clear right now."

Very interesting if you ask me....