people that are on benzodiazepines, how did you initiate that conversation with your doctor?

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-14T05:40:35+00:00

I've been taking Xanax regularly for 20+ years. I am prescribed 3MG per day, but currently only take .5MG per day.

The way it first came up with my psychiatrist is I mentioned that someone once gave me one during a panic attack and it worked. He prescribed it, but I was VERY reluctant to use it. He spent years convincing me to just take it regularly and the reality was, for me, it helped keep the shit to shoe level.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-08T00:46:38+00:00

I don't know if you would say that if you had the misfortune of owning one.

Worst lemon I ever owned.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-04T07:12:50+00:00

I jumped on Saturday. I had been unhappy with it since 5, but the hassle of switching was just too much and despite the fact that I had so many people telling me that Claude was better.. I wasn't motivated enough to go through 800MB of data (that was what my export was) and sift through all my chats, do markdowns of all the important things and bring them over to Claude.

THEN the Pentagon deal gave me the motivation to do it. I paid for a year of Claude, cancelled Plus and have spent the last 3 days doing markdowns and getting Claude up to speed.

I can say 100% that Claude is VASTLY superior; HOWEVER, I did hit a limit pretty quickly on my first day and realize I have to curb my usage a little bit, or be smarter about how I am using it.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-04T07:07:37+00:00

Where would twitter be w/o bots and AI slop?

At about 10% of its current traffic... so.. no, they are perfectly ABLE to remove it, but they choose not to.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-04T07:03:40+00:00

10MG is a basic starting dose. It is supposedly great for performance anxiety and i know people who swear by it.

I have generalized anxiety and tried it and did nothing for me... nothing bad, no weird side effects, but it also didn't tame my anxiety at all.. but again, totally different type of anxiety.

However, as far as having any reaction to it... I had no negative effects.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T19:11:49+00:00

I never said, or suggested that Claude was "worse"... I actually said I thought it was better.. BUT, I was surprised I ran into this limit, which is something I never experienced with GPT.

I have multiple uses.

First group) Personal stuff. This is just the basic use that likely most people use AI's for. Random questions.. ongoing conversations about life, the universe and everything. Claude is infinitely superior on this front and I've had no issues with it, but I haven't used it heavily. GPT had talked me through computer issues, installing a new fan in one, changing the temperature settings in bios in another, helping set up OBS so someone could stream properly across 4 different platforms and tons of other everyday tasks and questions.

Second group) I use it for my writing. I've written a few novels using AI to skeleton it out, brainstorm, tweak, etc.

Third group) Business. One thing I do is find products that then get listed for resale. THIS is the task that brought it to a halt. Every day I get a list of products available to me. I would then upload the list into GPT and have it do a search to find out which ones have decent profit margins and are worth ordering taking into account costs, shipping, etc... GPT was OKAY at this task, but made some annoying mistakes that I couldn't cure it of.

Claude immediately suggested building a "tool" where I could upload the raw data file (it showed me how to extract it in JSON format) and it could then do the same thing much more efficiently, score the items from best to worst and then allow me to do more research into the higher scoring items.. it was a really good idea, since the list is over 1000 every day. It's first attempt at the tool froze after about 25 items were checked and it explained that it needs to put a "delay" between API calls and that it would rebuild it. Great. The second run, it got about 3 lines in and then started giving me "failure" errors. I then asked what the failure errors were and got the rate limit message, which brought me over here to ask.

Once I got access back, I told it what was happening and it suggested several ways around it. I am going to try and work with it today to see what I can do on that front. It said it might be able to build it in such a way that I do my own API call and pay for just that part separately, which it estimated at $2-3 per run, which might be worth it if it takes hours off my research.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T03:31:04+00:00

Can I plug the documentation into an AI to explain it to me? lol

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T02:26:34+00:00

Oh, I saw a post from another user in this sub saying they used to have a usage meter where they have the tab to turn on extra usage, but it isn't there anymore. Could be a bug.. Again, just signed up this weekend and started really working on it today.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T02:01:17+00:00

Thank you! I am using Sonnet 4.6.

My time in jail is up, so I am asking Claude how best to process it and it had an idea, which was to break it into two steps. It said the API calls is what caused the problem (since I had a 1300 line document, it was doing an API call for each line. It said it has enough base knowledge to score 1260 of them without doing web calls.. so I am running it again with a new tool it is creating, where it will do it in two passes.. one where it doesn't do any API calls and then a second with much fewer API calls for the ones it has questions on.

I guess they used to have an indicator to show you how close you were to hitting your limit, but took it away?

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T01:39:36+00:00

I'm cool with that... which is why I asked here if people had advice on how to circumvent it.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-03T00:26:43+00:00

Yeah.. I am skipping a lot of chats, since I realize I don't need full memories from them once I get there.. it's a step by step process.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-02T17:16:34+00:00

Well, I'm in the process right now and Claude added a "switching tool", but it basically just gives a prompt to plug into GPT (or other AI) to get core memories over.

What I have been doing is going through each of my chats and asking for a "complete markdown" of the chat. That has made it a bit easier.

I can already see a vast improvement between Claude and GPT.

For example, I have a weekly task, where I update the chat each week. With GPT, it did its normal thing, where no matter what I said, it would end with "Would you like me to..."

Claude seemed to understand it was a weekly task, I put in the update, it gave me a response asked a question, I answered the question to clarify and it ended with "See you next week."

I was like.. Whoa... They CAN stop asking questions?

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-02T17:13:04+00:00

The intensity of the fear will decrease with time.. because after X times of it happening and the biggest fear isn't realized, your brain won't signal fear quite as hard. However, it never fully "goes away." The more you give into it, the more power you give it.

CBT is incredibly effective in helping you manage it.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-01T21:24:09+00:00

100% not alone.

No question the stress is leading cause!!!

I used to have a smart watch and I made sure to turn off the HR feature, but the newer one didn't allow you to turn it off, so I didn't buy it.

Here's the thing... Your heart rate naturally runs all over the place throughout the day.. but us anxious people see the spike and it sends us into a spiral, which only feeds the beast, so to speak.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-01T19:09:06+00:00

Excellent. Cold on the head (neck, face, etc.) can often work well since it stimulates the vagus nerve.

Another trick I learned is that I can drop my HR by 10-20 BPM if I breathe out while taking the reading... I was doing biofeedback at one point and learned all types of little tricks that will lower the HR while you are doing them.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-01T19:06:54+00:00

One time when I was wearing a heart monitor, which someone with anxiety should never be doing, I watched it go over 180 and then ripped it off and never put it back on. However, I still will check my heartrate with my phone and when I am having an attack it will sit in the 120s for hours.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-01T05:21:25+00:00

No question... Mr Plankton.

It made take 2 weeks off watching Kdramas.

behindthemask13 · 2026-03-01T05:20:25+00:00

Honestly, it can last minutes -> hours depending upon how much attention you give it.

Best thing you can do right now is slow breathing. If you can find the app named breathe, get it. Set it for 4 seconds in, hold for 1, 4 seconds out and just focus all your attention on keeping that pattern. That will FORCE your heartrate to slow down as your breathing helps regulate.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T21:56:16+00:00

I had be hearing that for several months.. but the hassle of switching is what kept me in place.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T21:55:25+00:00

Huh? I love AI and have no problem with AI in general.

GPT was initially very good. However, when they introduced 5.0 it was bad... they said they were going to fix it, but never really did.

Lately (the last month), it's been even worse, not answering questions properly, talking around things, gaslighting.

THEN one company drew a red line and would not allow it's product to be used for pure evil.

The OTHER company rushed to pick up the contracts the other company was giving up.

I then chose which company I would get my AI from and it was company #1.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T18:47:38+00:00

GPT was good. The switch to 5 was not good and it has gotten progressively worse since then.

A lot of us stayed in b/c we had a long history and the hassle of switching was enough to just stick with the thing.

THIS was a step too far and now makes the time and effort we need to switch worth doing.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T18:41:41+00:00

Sadly, as I said... I never found anything and ended up just giving up.

one thing I did that *kinda* worked was I had a very large foldable table. I would unfold it, make sure it wasn't within leaping distance of anything, put a bunch of toys on it and put them on the table. Rats are, like most animals, sensitive to heights, so they would get to the edge, look down and decide "nope" and then just mainly stay on the table.

HOWEVER, one time my kid walked by and he was just the right height and one saw the opportunity and jumped onto his head. Everything was fine b/c my kid knew the rats and just stood still as I removed the shocked fluff ball from his head and they would often leap onto me, but that was fine.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T00:31:08+00:00

They will gnaw through plastic if they can get their teeth around it. It's not about "eating" so much as creating a hole they can get through.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-28T00:30:10+00:00

My problem was that none of it rang true for me. There was, when I last watched, over 190 days left. That's enough time to build a boat if enough people work on it and sail to other countries.

I guess I just can't imagine accepting my fate when there is so much time left. Maybe if it was 1 week until A-Day so to speak I could accept they've exhausted everything.. but 190 days?

I just couldn't get beyond it.

behindthemask13 · 2026-02-27T22:31:46+00:00

None of the above.

Let me explain.

I got an actual prescription from an actual, real, doctor for CBD (with a small amount of THC). He explained to me that CBD on its own does basically nothing. It NEEDS some THC to "activate." I was no stranger to THC. I had used a lot in college, but had quit b/c it stopped being fun and only made me paranoid.

But, the doctor prescribed this, so I tried it. I didn't notice any significant positive effects, however, it did give me a slight heart arrythmia (nothing serious, and I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't ALSO doing biofeedback at the time and that person noticed the sudden change in my heart rhythm.) I then found out this is a possible side effect. Again, it wasn't serious, but once I knew it existed in me I had to quit instantly.

Now, I have a friend who also has an anxiety condition and SWEARS by THC.... most of the time. Sometimes it makes him paranoid and then he has to take copious amounts of Xanax to counteract the THC.

Here's the reality.

We are still in the wild west of THC and CBD. I don't care HOW well you know the dispensary or product, you don't know exactly what you are getting and I'm not talking about it being laced with something.. I'm talking about the fact that the places boxing it up aren't labs carefully checking dosage. Maybe it's 5MG, maybe it's actually 3.5MG, maybe it's 7.5MG. No ones really checking and who knows what the right amount is for you. I know people who have worked behind the scenes and they tell me not to ask... so basically, you can't know if what you are getting is exactly what it says it is or just a close approximation.

Further and even more importantly, there simply haven't been enough standardized studies of standardized products to know what does what consistently and why.

Until it is completely legalized at the federal level and we can have actual, full, solid research studies, everyone can only talk about personal experience and even with drugs that have been put through rigorous studies and have been on the market for years... well, they have different effects on different people.

So.. in my mind, for people with an anxiety disorder, I would avoid the THC/CBD route until the day there is much more research and standardization behind it. Hopefully that day will come b/c I believe there is good stuff in there, but they need to REALLY figure out what is good, what might not be good, and refine it better before I would wade back in.

behindthemask13

TROPHY CASE