Does Propranolol or Valium aid you at all?

I'm losing all hope in being cured to the point where I can just get on with my job without nerves, IBS and unnatural paranoia. Just a quick FYI, I was prescribed 40 mg Propranolol (Inderal) and 2 mg Diazapam (Valium) 3 pills a day. So, I only started them yesterday but I had a massive presentation at work today that was being video recorded and I had to undergo a 10 minute Q&A after.

Anyway, somehow 120 mg of Propranolol and 6 mg of Diazepam in my system didn't help in the slightest. My mind still raced at a billion miles per hour, I became flustered and red, I stuttered and forgot to mention important topics due to feeling self-conscious and an utter failure. Heck, I was more useless than when I'm drug free... and that's setting the bar low.

No SSRI has ever worked or even adjusted my personality/mentality to a near normal level. My Psychiatrist said she'd try Mirtzapine next as my insomnia is back with a vengeance, but I don't even think that'll work. The only drug that ever helps is the most damaging -- alcohol. Alas, my rant is over, so please chip in with your input as I feel close to having an irreparable breakdown.

No meds have helped me.
It's a personality disorder, not a brain chemical imbalance.
The solution - find a job that works for you, instead of trying to fit yourself into a job.

i agree no meds have helped me either as its personality related.
they want to fix you with meds because your different and thats wrong imho.
do they give meds to a person that dosent like seafood or loud music no because its just there personality .why cant the pdocs see this .

and i agree alcohol is the only thing that works but that is a problem all of its own im trying to avoid.

inverse wrote:No meds have helped me.
It's a personality disorder, not a brain chemical imbalance.
The solution - find a job that works for you, instead of trying to fit yourself into a job.

Some would argue that personality disorders are simply brain chemical imbalances. The truth is that no drug is going to "cure" these disorders. Medication is the pile of dirt you can climb to reach the first rung on the ladder. It isn't a ride to the top. Medication does wonders for getting you out of a slump and offering you a CHANCE to try and make progress, when you can't bring yourself to even try anything else. They should be a catalyst toward change in your life. Once you have a grip on that ladder, you start climbing. The medication serves as the soft landing when you fall off of that ladder. I fall off the ladder all the time, but medication keeps me from breaking any bones. It keeps me out of bottomless pits and viscous cycles of depression.

I hate the side effects, I hate the whole idea of medicating, but I know that they have helped me immensely. However, they're only going to help those who are willing to use them properly toward a goal. Not as a long-term solution.

Eternal Pessimist wrote:Anyway, somehow 120 mg of Propranolol and 6 mg of Diazepam in my system didn't help in the slightest. My mind still raced at a billion miles per hour, I became flustered and red, I stuttered and forgot to mention important topics due to feeling self-conscious and an utter failure. Heck, I was more useless than when I'm drug free... and that's setting the bar low.

I take xanax when my anxiety becomes overwhelming. Generally speaking, it works and it calms me down. Sometimes the situation is so overwhelming though that it feels as though it's not doing a thing at all- I've had it on a couple of occasions and it's really not nice. They've been situations where the anxiety triggers have just kept hitting me rather than it being on specific event that's set it off, and that's generally what I've attributed that to. It sounds as though your trigger was quite full on to try to deal with and manage- and not something you could really escape from.

Meds aren't going to work on a PD, no, but they can work on some of the other symptoms, like the overwhelming anxiety.

inverse wrote:The solution - find a job that works for you, instead of trying to fit yourself into a job.

Sadly, that's often easier said than done- in an ideal world, yes, but I think most of us just take what we can get as far as a job goes. I know where I live here there's not a great number of options available.

monster77 wrote:they want to fix you with meds because your different and thats wrong imho.
do they give meds to a person that dosent like seafood or loud music no because its just there personality .why cant the pdocs see this .

But isn't the reason you would see someone in the first place that you WANT help, to handle your pd better? If I were perfectly happy as an avoidant and didn't feel like it influenced negatively in any way, I wouldn't be seeing a therapist.

I'm not a huge fan of medication and I'm very glad I can manage without it so I can't really say much about them, but I think the two people above this post said it very well.

Valium makes me sleepy. That's about it. Never tried propranolol. CBT is the best thing for anxiety imo. But psychiatrists only push drugs at people. CBT won't change your personality, but it may help you adapt so you can handle situations that produce anxiety.

Psychiatrists push drugs on people because they get kickbacks from the government..err…I mean the drug companies. If I took all the drugs my last doctor prescribed I'd probably be hunched in a corner right now, staring into space in a pool of my own saliva. As it is, the medications I'm taking make me feel fatigued and gauzy, like I'm living life through a layer of cheesecloth. They minimize my energy and ambition. Not taking them would send me soaring in the opposite direction, so I guess it's the lesser of 2 evils. Most psychiatric drugs merely palliate the conditions they are prescribed for.
I do think benzos and alcohol can alleviate some of the symptoms of anxiety disorders such as AvPD for some, but they're really little more than dangerous band-aids. For me, they make dealing with emails and returning phone calls a bit easier, but that's about it. They don't get me out of the house.

Propranolol blocks adrenaline, and noradrenaline from over stimulating your heart. So It reduces the "fight or flight" response that occurs. It's a heart medicine primarily.

It doesn't act on the central nervous system like benzos do.

It just reduces the physical, not psychological manifestations of anxiety. So if when you give speeches your heart races, and you have shortness of breath it will reduce those symptoms.

Mirtazapine, may well knock you out as it has very strong affinity for the H1 receptor...like a really strong antihistamine (sleepy wise)

I have found that Klonapin does a good job of managing my anxiety, does make me drowsy though. I am also on Paxil and while I think it helps, it does have withdraw effects, as I was warned.

I feel your pain of public speaking. I recently gave a presentation, and the preparation leading up to it had me out of my mind. If it weren't for ambien I don't know what i would have done to sleep. I wonder why I put myself though this. On the one hand i just want to walk away ( i'm nearly six years into a grad school program). It would be stupid to walk away now right? But I find the closer I get to defending my thesis, the more my anxiety is worsening.

How do you manage your work with being AvPD? I tend to just to hid at my desk, not interact much, not ideal, and i mostly feel like I'm just barely getting by.