Anxiety Medications List – What Works, What Doesn’t, And Should You Take Them?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Alex Leave a comment

Hey, Alex Taylor here, and thanks for checking out the anxiety medications list at my site.

I suffered with many forms of anxiety disorder for 17 years, and during that time I was prescribed several anti anxiety drugs, so I ended up knowing quite a bit about the subject. So I thought it would be a good idea to put some info together for people who are looking for advice and guidance in this area.

Below you’ll find the complete list of all the best anxiety medications, although I should point out right now that all my own experiences with drugs for anxiety were unpleasant, and I now firmly believe that the only real approach that works is treating anxiety naturally.

If you want to know more about the natural solution I used, check out my other website where you’ll be able to watch 5 free videos showing how I beat my anxiety and panic naturally.

Click here to watch the 5 free videos here to find out the natural solution to stopping anxiety and panic attacks.

Okay, so here’s the anxiety medications list I promised you.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)

SSRIs are the most common and most recent type of anti depressants. Even thought these drugs were designed and intended for the treatment of moderate to severe depression, they are also the most common medication prescribes to treat anxiety disorders.

It turns out that the same brain imbalances that cause depression also cause anxiety, and that’s why this one type of drug can be used to treat both conditions.

Most studies suggest that around one in three people with anxiety will be helped with the use of SSRIs, so most people with anxiety will not respond well to the drug.

Another think to bear in mind is that this type of medication can take up to 6 weeks to become effective, so if there is no immediate improvement it doesn’t mean that the medication will never work for you.

There are any different types of SSRI, and that’s a good thing since some can cause unpleasant side effects. If your doctor prescribes this type anti anxiety medication for you and you react badly to them, he or she will probably try several more SSRIs to find one that suits you.

Some of the more common SSRIs, and ones your doctor will probably discuss with you, are listed below with their more common brand names in brackets:

  • Citalopram (Celexa)
  • Escitaloproam (Lexapro)
  • Sertraline (Zoloft)
  • Fluoxetine (Prozac)
  • Paroxetine (Paxil)
  • Fluvoxamine (Luvox)

Over a period of about 3 years I tried several of these SSRIs, and none of them worked for me. They all caused very unpleasant side effects, and none of them reduced my anxiety.

If they also failed to work for you, or you’d rather not take drugs to help your anxiety, then please take a minute to check out a series of free videos I created to show the natural way I beat anxiety.

Click here to see how I beat anxiety: Free Videos.

Sedatives

Anti depressants are the most common anti anxiety drug, but sedatives are also often prescribes to people with anxiety problems.

The main difference is that sedatives work immediately, and within minutes of being taken they will reduce anxiety significantly. That may sound great, but sadly sedatives are not a long term solution, since taking them for extended periods reduce their effectiveness and can also form dependencies on the drugs.

Due to their drawbacks, sedatives are typically only prescribes for anxiety for one of 2 reasons.

  1. For short term use during periods of severe and unbearable anxiety, where the medications are taken as and when needed.
  2. For short term use during while you’re waiting for SSRI-style anti depressants to become effective (normally between 4 and 6 weeks).

Sleeping Pills

Even though sleeping pills are not specifically an anxiety medication, I thought I should include them in this anxiety medications list because they are often prescribed to people with anxiety during particularly severe bouts of anxiety.

And they’re generally the only medication that works for all people all the time. They’re also the only medication I’ve ever taken for my anxiety that I can honestly say have helped.

The reason they can work so well is that they don’t treat the anxiety itself (where drugs often have little effect), but instead they treat the insomnia that anxiety so often causes.

When your anxiety is severe, sleeping becomes almost impossible, and that just makes all your anxiety symptoms even worse. And that’s why taking sleeping pills and getting some good quality sleep can help so much.

Some of the more common sleeping pills that your doctor may prescribe for you are:

  • Eszopiclone
  • Ramelteon
  • Triazolam
  • Zaleplon
  • Zolpidem
  • Estazolam
  • Eszopiclone
  • Temazepam
  • Zolpidem

Sleeping pills really did help me get past a couple of very bad periods of anxiety-caused insomnia, and they may help you too. They’re more of a band aid than a cure, though, and if you want a way to stop your anxiety and panic long term, check out my 5 free videos at the link below, where I’ll share what worked for me.

Click here to watch the 5 free videos now.

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How To Correctly Choose From The Anxiety Medications List

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Alex Leave a comment

There are many different types of anxiety disorder, and which one you have will determine which drug from the anxiety medications list you choose. To help you with this, and to provide you with some basic info to discuss with your doctor, I’ll quickly talk about some of the more common anxiety disorders and how the main anti anxiety drugs work with each of them.

Okay, let’s start with social anxiety disorder, because most stats suggest that there are more people with social anxiety than any other type of anxiety disorder.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety obviously makes you intensely scared and fearful of social situations, specifically regarding talking to anyone who is not a close friend or family member. Generally, the anxiety medication most often prescribed for people with social anxiety is an SSRI, a type of anti depressant.

This type of anti anxiety medication works by correcting a serotonin imbalance in your brain, and usually takes about a month to start working.

Panic Disorder

This is a weird one. Most anxiety disorders cause severe worrying and anxiety to the extent that panic attacks can occur. But with panic disorder, the constant anxiety and worrying doesn’t happen, and instead, totally random panic attacks will strike, seemingly for no reason at all.

Like most forms of anxiety, an SSRI is often prescribed. But with panic disorder sometimes a mild sedative is also prescribed to reduce the risk of random panic attacks striking you. Your doctor will probably discuss with you if this is a good idea in your case.

Health Anxiety

Just a quick note. Health anxiety is ofter referred to as hypochondria, but both terms mean exactly the same thing.

As you’re probably beginning to notice, most forms of anxiety are treated with SSRI-type anti depressants, and health anxiety is no different. Many people with health anxiety say that their fears about their health is greatly reduced 4 to 6 weeks after taking an SSRI.

Health anxiety can also cause many physical symptoms, and for that reason your doctor may suggest that you also take a sedative type drug as and when you need it.

A mild sedative can eliminate many of the physical symptoms caused by your health anxiety in the short term, and so you may find that when your anxiety is really playing up that taking a mild sedative prevents things getting out of hand.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD can be treated by anti depressants, like all forms of anxiety. But unlike most of the other anxiety disorders, OCD often responds better to the older anti depressants, and your doctor may choose an older drug for this reason if OCD is your biggest concern.

That would mean that instead of being prescribed the more common SSRIs, your doctor may choose to prescribe a drug from the tricyclic family.

Other Anxiety Disorders

There are other forms of anxiety, of course, and each one may require a slightly different approach in terms of medication. But the general rules are these: some form of anti depressant to correct a serotonin imbalance, and occasionally some form of sedative to be taken as and when needed to cope with particularly severe episodes of anxiety. The sedatives are often prescribed in the short term to reduce anxiety while the anti depressants are kicking in, which often takes as long as 6 weeks.

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My personal story of using anti anxiety medications

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Alex Leave a comment

Here’s a really quick recap of my experiences with anxiety drugs. If you’re looking for info in this subject, and you’re intimidated by the lengthy anxiety medications list you might have come across, then I think this story will be helpful to you.

When I was about 25 I went to my doctor to ask if she thought I should start taking anti anxiety medication. At this stage, I knew nothing about drugs for anxiety, or if they would help me, but by this time I’d been living with severe anxiety and panic attacks for about 15 years, and I just wanted to try something new to improve the quality of my life.

I’d tried over the counter anxiety medication in the form of St. John’s Wort, and I’d even tried a herbal remedy for anxiety, but it had done no good at all, and after telling all this to my doctor she said to me that I might be a good candidate for anxiety medication, since I was having no luck treating anxiety naturally.

So at first my doctor prescribed a drug called Anafranil, which I took for just one day before the side effects were so terrible that I was forced to stop (the main problems were nausea and hallucinations).

My doctor told me that this was common to react negatively to this type of drug, so she prescribed me another one instead, this time Prozac. Once again, my reaction to this medication was not good, and after about a week of taking it I was forced to stop again.

Amazingly, my doctor prescribed be a third drug, this one called Citalopram. I say “amazingly” because I had no idea that there were this many anti anxiety medications, but my doctor informed me that there are dozens of them, and that because there are so many there is usually at least one for everyone that won’t cause unpleasant side effects.

I had this confirmed when I came home and did a search online to learn more, and what I found was an anxiety medications list as long as my arm!

Anyway, I started taking the Citalopram, and thankfully I didn’t have any real side effects with this one. So I continued to take it for about a year. Eventually, I stopped taking this one too. My anxiety was no better off, and the medication was starting to make me gain weight, so I just thought I was better off without it.

After an all time low with my anxiety a year or so later, I took Citalopram again for a few months. Again, it did little to help and I stopped taking it for good.

Since all this happened, I discovered some natural treatments for anxiety that have worked very well for me, so my relationship with anti anxiety medication is hopefully over for good.

If you still feel that you want more info on the types of drugs used to treat anxiety, Wikipedia, as always, have a great page packed with helpful facts. Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antidepressants

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