Dude,
I am TRYING like H3ll to save your life and prevent you from a lifetime of misery and dependence.
I have seen it, done it and been there. AND one of a very few to survive the 70's where I come from.

I just came back to the area where I grew up when I was 23.
Over the past year I have learned that MOST of the friends that I partied with and did vals or ludes and drank with, are all dead.
Some died of OD, some from organ failure, and about half from suicide. Men that were in their fifties that came from famlies that had everything,. that ended up with NOTHING because they allowed themselves to get trapped by a drug and could never get away from it. SO they shot themselves in the mouth, or in the temple, or they swallowed 100 pills and chased it with some booze.

What I am saying is that you are already displaying the classic signs of dependence. You are trying to explain why you use and what makes it ok. You are mixing things and self medicating.

I am not trying to offend you. I am TRYING to get you to open your eyes. This is a monster that will turn on you and bite your head off and you will never escape. You can regain control NOW, but in 5 yrs, you;ll will have changed your entire lifes course.

I know and understand what anxiety is and does. I was agoraphobic at one time. After a very near deadly motorcycle accident, the PTSD almost killed me with the NEED to self medicate and try different things.,
It was my dr when I was discharged from the 3 month hospital stay that advised me to seek the help of a mental health professional. That offended me,. so I experimented for the next 15 years and lost those years. I was not a "man" until I was 35 yrs old.
Kind of a late start, don;t you think?

I am telling you from experience, you CAN get over the anxiety. Pills make it EXTREMELY quick and easy. Getting past it long term is a little more difficult but its a permanent solution that will also create a confidence in you that cannot be shaken by anything because you already know what hell is and YOU survived it and moved ahead. Being able to say that and KNOWING that you did it without a pill is a tremendous leap forward and its done everyday.
Its scarey at first, but every step that you take forward without the crutch gets you closer to running at life full speed with confidence and maturity.

Look, when I was 23 I was exactly like you. Even after a couple funerals back then, I was slow to figure it out. But, I did and If I cannot pass that on to a young man today and spare him from a lifetime of doubt, insecurity, and dependence, then everything that I went thru was meaningless and I do not believe that for one second.

You ARE whats strong. its not the damm pills. Its YOU. The pills just make you THINK they are helping.
I alreqady told you the first step.
start by building your self confidence by meeting and talking to less intimidating people. Practice. Gain confidence. Then move up the social ladder....

If you learn to depend on a xanax to give you the courage to walk up to a woman that you desire, then you will have to be high 24hrs a day and that my young friend, is dependence.

I tell you all this because I KNOW that you can do better, be stronger, and succeed without going thru all that stuff that I did.
You;ll end up a better person, associating with better people and that will direct you to opportunity that you would never see if you were doing xanax or whatever crutch, all the time.

anxiety is the sensation of lack of control. fear, sometimes self esteem.
Look good, speak intelligently, behave intelligently. You will be SEEN as intelligent and THEY will then come to you!

you have to know the game and I'm telling you right now, what you are doing will never give you a half a chance of ever winning. you;ll always be watching someone else walk out with the one you wanted. trust me,. you CAN do this.

Good Luck.

Denial is a powerful thing.

If you do not want to even THINK about everything that I said to you, then everything that I have gone thru is a waste of time.

remember someday that someone tried to pull you out before the whole building fell down on top of you.....

good luck.
no more helping people.not when they are so much smarter or simply do not care!
thats why I did not go into a practice.

I feel that you are strong enough to handle it on your own because trying with any kind of crutch will slow you down.

told ya, practice and build confidence. youdo not need a pill to speak to a hottie...you might need a $200,000 car, that helps, or a big [censored] home, or some other things they like. but a sober boyfriend that is very quick with his mind is what they really enjoy.
you can do this. just TRY !

I'll weigh in on kava kava. It's one of those herbs that barely makes you feel anything. It's for the placeboists out there.

To the topic starter: I am in a very similar situation. I am a 23 year old single guy and I take benzos to help out with social anxiety disorder. And a lot of it has to do with the opposite sex for me too.

For me, Xanax works way better for talking to girls (or anybody) than alcohol does. Plus, sometimes alcohol obviously can't be used (while at work, for instance). I won't go on about how great Xanax is for social anxiety. It seems like your main concern is possible addiction.

I take Xanax (actually klonopin at the moment), but not on a daily basis. I'll take a dose if I'm going to be training some new girl at work. I'll take a dose if a co-worker invites me to play video games or something. If I were still a student I would take one before a speech for class (man I wish I had had benzos back then). I'll take a small dose if I'm invited to a bar and just sip beers when I'm there. (Yeah I know, this is controversial. There is a thread in this forum that was locked for some reason where I spoke on this.) I usually take a kpin about 3 times a week. If I feel like a tolerance is building up too much and I I'm starting to not feel the drug, I just take a week or two off.

I think it comes down to you and whether or not you think you have the self-discipline. If you have an alcohol addiction problem, don't even try ordering Xanax.

Also, look into Klonopin. It seems to be the drug of choice for most people with social anxiety disorder. I believe it has much less dependency issues than Xanax does.

Oh yeah, and about the whole "performance" thing. In my experience, I find that it's hard to perform very drunk because of lack of motor skills and lack of focus while drunk, etc. Xanax doesn't inhibit motor skills and focus nearly as much as alcohol does, so I don't think there's a problem here. The other concern I saw was that you would be just too tired to perform because of the sedative effects of benzos. Just drink a red bull or something. Stimulants + benzos is a great combination. Some people seem to think stimulants will just "cancel out" benzos, since benzos are CNS depressants, but they don't just make you calm and uninhibited because of the sedative nature of the drug. Benzos work on GABA (you can read about this other places, I'm no expert on the matter). When I take benzos and stimulants together I feel awake and very calm at the same time.

I probably would avoid taking Xanax before you go to class unless you can afford to miss that days lecture.
Xanax isnt known for it's benefits to cognition.

Let's see: grades? Girls? grades? Girls Girls Girls?
It's a no brainer.

I guess I get your point.

Sure. I wasn't advocating taking adderall and xanax or anything like that. It was a simple comment that you can drink a red bull while on Xanax if the sedative effects are too strong. What's the problem with that?



You didn't understand my post, and you don't understand social anxiety disorder. Like many other disorders, it gets the "oh, its all in your head, you don't need medication" reaction from those that don't have it.

There are people out there that have a condition that need medication. I don't know about the thread starter. Maybe medication is totally wrong for him. I just thought I would give him my thoughts about benzos and tell him about my own experience with SAD.

About the "video games," again, you just don't understand social phobia/social anxiety. From your standpoint (from the standpoint of someone that doesn't have the condition), it just seems outright silly to take medication if you are doing a "simple" social task with people. The truth is, for many people even the most simple social tasks can be extremely unbearable.

Jag, I have to disagree about "it is all in your head" people with anxiety issues usually have family members who suffer from it. Anxiety is very much a genetic trait. You can have situational anxiety but again those people have it in their genetic makeup to respond in such a way.
The only reason I put this ou there is for the people who suffer from anxiety and are still trying to figure it out. The last thing an anxiety filled person needs is the thought of "it's only in my head". This way of thinking can make someone feel like their crazy, different and alone.

Don't forget, you can expect to be knocked back by girls 80% of the time whether you're on benzos/alcohol or not. Nature is like this, not just with humans. Look at some of these wildlife programmes on the TV. Some male bird spends years building a nest, decorates it with flowers, and along comes the female he's been waiting for, she doesn't like it and trashes it!

There was a funny one on the other day called "Life: Insects", where this enormous beetle climbed 25 metres up a tree in search of a female, had a dozen or so fights with other males on the way where he had to pick them up with his huge jaws and throw them to the ground.

Finally he makes it, finds the female, has his wicked way with her, picks her up and throws her off the tree too.

If you don't have much of a problem talking to males, but have a problem talking to females, the clue to the problem is pretty much obvious. There are ways of hiding your emotions, and once that's solved, it should improve the situation enormously.

Finally he makes it, finds the female, has his wicked way with her, picks her up and throws her off the tree too.

Typical male.

Also, how easy is it to a get a scrip for a benzo? Like can you just visit a psychiatrist, tell him you have anxiety, and he gives you a scrip for some benzos? Can you tell him what kind you want, like if I was afraid of getting addicted to Xanax, and I told him I wanted something that I could take as needed, would he give it to me? Or would it be harder to convince the doc to give you anything?