When you're anxious or panicking, it seems like a great idea to throw as many pills at it as you can to get rid of that feeling. However, doctors have methods to their dose instructions, of course. They are trying to give you the least mgs of drug they can while making sure it is helping. They do this for a few reasons:

1. You never know what sort of effect the drugs might have on your body.

2. They want to save the higher levels in case you develop a high tolerance.

3. They don't want you to become addicted.

This is why they typically start a patient at the .25 mg dose, which is the minimum, at three times daily. If this doesn't work, they move up to the .5 mg dose, and then up to a maximum of 4 mg total per day.

Doctors typically reassess the the dose size and how often you are to take it fairly regularly. Why do they do this? The answers lie below.

Beginning with Low Doses

Doctors generally start their patients on a low dose of benzodiazepine medications. This allows them to:

• Ensure that people who react badly to the medication have the smallest response possible

• Work up to determine the best size dose for the patient

Doctors also try to space out the times the patient takes the medication as much as possible while keeping it in the waking hours. This is usually three, but sometimes four, hours. From here, doctors can lessen the time in between doses to make sure that the patient does not experience withdrawal symptoms during the interim.

Why do doctors try to keep the doses so small?

Four reasons actually.

1. The smaller the dose, the lighter any bad reaction to it might be.

2. If they keep you on a lower dose, once you become more resistant to the drug, you can take more to increase the effect. There is only so high you can go before it becomes toxic to the body.

3. Doctors think that if the dose is small, you are less likely to develop an addiction.

1.4. Once you need to come off the medication, it takes less time to ween you off. Because of the risk of withdrawal, you can only reduce your dose by .5 mg per three days. Otherwise, you might experience a bad reaction. Other "discontinuation regimens" exist, however, there is no guarantee that any of them will work for you, so doctors try to minimize the risk and time for any withdrawal.

Does age matter?

For the most part no. Most doctors do not prescribe Xanax or other benzodiazepines to children or adolescents, though there are exceptions. However, the elderly do use Xanax, and it is thought that they are more sensitive to the drug. For this reason, though doctors usually start elderly people with the same dose as younger adults, they often wind up with a .25 mg dose or less. Doctors will reduce the dose gradually until they find the smallest amount that will be effective. This also reduces the chance of side effects from Xanax.