Can a small dose of Alprazolam be causing my chronic mystery illness?
I will try to summarize. I was prescribed the lowest dose of prozac and xanax at the same time about 5 years ago. 10mg of prozac and .25 xanax. I would only take half a xanax (.125) once every couple of weeks for when my anxiety got a bit rough. It worked great and the prozac worked well too for compulsive thinking. Both made my life much better. But, during covid, I began drinking quite a bit. Smoking herb daily. I wasn't taking my xanax recreationally, but I would find myself taking preemptively before going out to bars or other big events. Mixing with alcohol quite regularly. I ended up being very infrequent with my prozac. Often skipping days and taking it sometimes at 10am or sometimes at 1am. This infrequency caused me to become really sick for a while and I ended up going down to 5mg of prozac. Eventually, the nausea and stuff went away and I went back to normal for a couple years and I reduced my drinking quite a bit. Fast forward to August of 2024. A normal day, then while driving on the interstate, I began having this bizarre neurological faint feeling like my brain was spazzing out. This feeling became more frequent over the next months. Then came the severe headaches. Then the occasional vertigo. In November, the vertigo became a daily occurrence. Hospital visit and CT showed nothing. Then extreme neck pain and stiffness became daily. Between January and April of 25, things went almost back to normal. In May, after having a few bad days, I decided to up my prozac back to 10mg. All hell broke lose. Couldn't drive or leave the house for 3 weeks due to insane vertigo and a many other bizzare symptoms. Ever since then, I've experienced extreme neck stiffness and pain, 24/7 dizziness, flu like malaise, sensitive to sound, tinnitus, extreme anxiety. After some time, I assumed it was the prozac. I slowly tapered off of it and have been off prozac for 8 months now. I now take .25mg xanax daily to help equalize my ears. It no longer helps anxiety. I've had every test under the sun done. MRIs are clean. ENT showed nerve issue in the left inner ear which explains the dizziness, but does not explain a cause. I now assume my neck muscles are constantly spasming and causing the vertigo. I went from a very active person who worked, rode motorcycles, made YouTube tutorials, freediving, kayaking, hiking, flying etc to a hermit who can't drive far, cant work, cant hang out with friends and can barely make it through the grocery store. 21 months of pure suffering. Now I'm starting to wonder. Could my tiny dose of xanax be causing these issues? It's the only thing left I can think of...
I'm only 33 and I want my life back.
P.S. I have been alcohol and weed free for about a year now and have zero desire whatsoever to use either.