Hello,
There has been a lot in the papers recently about the new wonderful antidepressants such as Clonazepam. I take 0.5 Mg each night and been doing this for the last 6 to 8 months. Is this a cause for concern?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks
Patrick
Hi Patrick,
It’s not an anti depressant, and it’s not new.
It’s in the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines. These have been around for yonks.
In the past, they were quite commonly prescribed as tranquilisers, for stress and anxiety, but in recent times, they’ve fallen out of favour, because of concerns about addiction. But medicine, like everything else, has fashions. I still take diazepam (another drug in the same class), very successfully, for anxiety. I take only a small dose as needed. Although I always have some in the house, I don’t believe this constitutes an addiction, as I often go ages without them. I tried ALL of the modern-day, much-more-fashionable alternatives without success. Lack of effectiveness and unreasonable side-effects were a real disappointment, and I had physical problems trying to quit - which I’ve never had with diazepam. So, for me at least, newer has certainly NOT proved better, and I’m happy to have a GP who was prepared to resist all the hype, and prescribe me something older and somewhat discredited - which nevertheless works great for me.
With MS, of course, benzos are NOT prescribed mainly for anxiety, but because of their sedative muscle-relaxant properties. Since developing MS, I probably use diazepam more for spasticity and cramps than for anxiety - although it treats both.
I don’t think you are “at risk” for taking a prescription drug that’s indicated for your symptoms. If you were feeling the need to constantly up the dose, then I might answer differently. But I think needing a drug long-term because you have an incurable illness is very different from being addicted. Of course, in an ideal world, none of us would need drugs for anything. But having MS is very far from ideal, and that means we sometimes have to do things that might be of concern, if a healthy person were doing them, but are justified, in our case, by how much worse things would be if we didn’t.
I’d be shocked if a “well” person was taking all the drugs I do, but there’s no comparison, because they are not having to manage MS! So personally, I think you have to trust your doctor that they’re not going to prescribe you anything dangerous. Every drug has risks and side-effects, but that has to be weighed up against the benefits. When you have a serious condition, that isn’t going to go away, you have to juggle acceptable risks, with acceptable quality of life. Of course, you could just reject anything there’s ever been any concern about - but my bet is life then would be pretty grim. 
If clonazepam is working well for you, trust your doc, and don’t get upset about newspaper articles.
Tina
Hello Tina,
Thank you very much for the lengthy reply. Yes you have put my concerns to bed.
Once again thanks,
Patrick
Hi Patrick,
I have been taking clonazepam for over a year now on a dose of 3 mg and it has helped stablise the spasms that I had. I agree with what Tina has said, if it works for you then that’s great, for me it does. I increased the dosage by 500 micrograms up to 3 mg. I do still get spasms but nothing as bad as before. I expect if I wanted to come off of them I would have to slowly decrease the dosage, which makes sense. I hope this helps.
Janet
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