Yes, I would like to get off all the meds.  Except for maybe Saphris.  It wasn't prescribed specifically for anxiety, but my anxiety began to lessen noticeably after my first month on it (last November.)  But now I feel the anxieties coming back.  I would hate to tell my psychiatrist for fear (another anxiety) that he would increase the dose.  I've been down that road with many other medications and I don't like it.  All of my anxieties were initially dampened or downright disappeared, especially social anxiety that had plagued me since I was about 8 yrs old.  During times of stress (notably mental illness symptoms) the social anxiety would ratchet up several notches.  I was afraid to enter a room that had more than one person in it.  Deathly afraid...to the point where it made me physically sick.  With Saphris, I am much more able to be in groups, go to parties, enter a crowded theater, etc.  I even feel more comfortable one-on-one. 

However, the last 2-3 weeks that old tension has started coming back.  Every time I am asked to join in a social gathering, I immediately start trying to think of a way out.  My brother called at noon and asked me to meet him and my mom at a local restaurant for lunch.  I "thought up a lie and thought it up quick" as the Grinch would say.  I told them I was waiting for an insurance adjuster to assess the hail damage on my car.  While it was true this was going to happen sometime this week, it definitely wouldn't be today.  I lied and got out of lunch with two people I love.  And I don't understand why I had to do it.  The rest of the day I have spent squirreled away in my apartment, afraid to plan anything the rest of the week.  But I have to do things.  I have to go out into the paralyzing public eye.  It feels like everyone is watching and judging me, just like the old feeling I used to have.  Eyes everywhere.  Unintelligible voices.  But I don't think it is schizophrenia or depression this time.  I think it is just social anxiety.  I do have Klonopin to fall back on, and I can take it up to twice a day, but I hate to.  It can be habit-forming.

So what do I do?  I made an appointment with my best therapist (there have been others) or at least called and left a message.  She does CBT and is very good at it.  Maybe she can help me strategize a way to move beyond this fear.  You have to ask for help from the right people at the right time, and this is both.