advice with med's

 

I have suffered from a panic disorder for 20 years, from the first attack I then expierienced depression.  After years on med's, I found one that worked great it changed my life. After going on 10 mg a day on paxil I felt normal, most people wouldn't know what that really means, but some of you may.  It can be a minute to minute struggle through life and when you finally feel good, life again is good.  The problem associated with paxil was sexual disfunction, not something a man wants to encounter.  I weighed the options and felt I must stay on paxil, as other med's just didnt do it.  After about three years I felt I had to try something else so my Doc put me on clonazepam, well after about 10 days the sexual side affects were gone.  I felt really good about that, but I now have bouts of depression, to many dark thoughts on a regular basis.  So I am thinking about taking the paxil with it, start with 5 mg.  What do you think?  Am I at any risk?  I also read that taking clonazepam for a period greater than 3 months can cause liver problems, is that true?

Thank you so much.

Well you need to talk to your doctor. The primary concern with a low dose of clonazepam would be dependency, not liver problems. To my knowledge it is pretty common to take both paxil and clonazepam together, but you need to talk to a doctor about what your dosages should be.

Clonazepam is a CNS depressant and one of the known side effects is depression. If you just started, stick with it a while and most of the time it's supposed to go away unless you had underlying depression to begin with. This is also something you'll want to discuss with a doctor. If the depression is very serious then you should talk to a doctor sooner than later, of course.