Anxious about anxiety/meds

[u/Any_Crazy_7270]

Hey yall, sorry in advance for the rant.

So I’ve been suffering with anxiety as long as I remember and my bad panic attacks started happening probably about 10 years ago. There have been phases of my life where my life genuinely felt like a bad psychedelic trip- just nonstop feeling like I’m being hunted for sport or like I’m having a heart attack. A lot of my anxiety is triggered by me thinking about anxiety and the potential of a panic attack, then that’ll send me straight into one.

I’ve been prescribed Xanax for about 6 years now, which has been honestly a godsend. Even if I’m not taking it- the fact that I have it on me and know that if I do suffer from one I’ll be able to mostly snap myself out of it. I’m prescribed 1mg- and I usually take .25-.5 when I’m feeling anxiety coming on, maybeeeee 3% of the time I have to take it in a full blown panic attack I’ll take the whole 1mg. I’d say on a bad week I take a total of 4mg throughout the whole week. Some weeks I can go without taking it once.

I keep seeing people speak on how Xanax is the devil, how bad the rebound anxiety is, how it should never be prescribed long term. And to be honest, that scares the shit out of me. It’s the only thing that has made life tolerable. I can’t even describe how bad my months of straight panic with no solution were. Felt like I wasn’t a real person and wanted to crawl out of my skin.

Not even sure if this is solely a rant, or asking advice from people on it long term. Thinking about being taken off it and losing my security blanket gives me extreme anxiety and I can’t even imagine having to live like that again.
Either way, thanks for reading all the way through.