How can it be worse than benzo withdrawal? I didn't believe it was possible for patients to seize out from gabapentin use until users started posting about it. I hope they develop a better system of drugs for combating anxiety so users don't have to worry about dying or unbelievably painful withdrawal symptoms for simply wanting to feel like a normal human being. Seems that any drug that affects gaba is almost not worth it.
Also what is the "k hole?" Lol. I thought ketamine was incredibly hard to overdose on.
I was scripted pregabalin (Lyrica) for about a month and had to taper for weeks yet despite being tapered I was unable to sleep for two weeks without using benzos, I had constant rebound anxiety, flu symptoms similar to opiate withdrawal, I was depressed the whole time, I kept disassociating, I felt like I had an IQ of 50 the whole fucking time and kept forgetting everything.
This was not from abuse, this was from being prescribed it by a psychiatrist and using it as prescribed. In fact towards the end I actually used less than the scripted dose because the dipshit psychiatrist kept trying to increase it despite me complaining of side effects.
On the other hand I also used Xanax for a good few years. I kept my doses sensible, as I did with pregabalin, and tended to have a tolerance break every month or two. Other than a bit of rebound during the breaks I got no real withdrawals at all from this type of use. My doses were usually 0.5-1mg a day, sometimes 2mg for panic attacks, but never exceeding any therapeutic limit.
When I ran out of my huge supply (had hundreds of bars stashed for years) I tapered down fully and again it was relatively painless. Rebound for about a week. Weed helped me sleep. It was pretty easy.
Pregabalin was by far the worse drug to come off.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand benzo withdrawal can be far more severe than what I experienced, but the vast majority of such cases involve abuse of high doses. I got severe pregabalin withdrawal from one month of prescribed use.
To give another anecdote, I had a friend prescribed the max dose of 600mg for a longer period of time, somewhere between six months and a year. He had to actually go to hospital to be tapered off because he legit experienced seizures and psychosis from pregabalin withdrawal.
Just please believe me for the sake of the holy HR gods, pregabalin is not a safe alternative to benzos. Only Pfizer PR says this. Ask a doctor who has seen patients have to wean themselves off it and they will tell you a very different story.
Here is a BBC documentary on pregabalin addiction in Northern Ireland. At the end a doctor tapers one of the guys off his prescribed 600mg dose and he has to be scripted a wide range of "comfort meds" from Seroquel to temazepam just to get him off the shit while still being able to sleep and without having seizures. At the beginning they show the prescribed guy going into withdrawals after running out of his script too. Mirrors my experience. Confusion, anxiety, flu symptoms.
at least what I've achieved. Never ever managed it into a true hole, independent of how much I took but what I can tell is your anxiety says goodbye much below.. 
