Benzos Etizolam vs other benzos (Clonozepam)..

[kokaino]

Yeah I believe we are in agreement. I'm prescribed xanax, halcion, and temazepam funny you should mention all three. I don't know why my body doesn't recognize clonazepam, it's really unfortunate because on paper it appears to be a great alternative for anxiety, what with it being "equipotent" to xanax, with a much longer duration and half life, etc.

Lucky you get temazepam, my favorite benzo and triazolam which makes my top 5! My doctor doesn't believe in scripting two benzos at once. He only has given my temazepam twice in all the years I've seen him - once when I had severe bouts of insomnia after a suicide attempt and another when I just couldn't sleep. He first tried Ambien and I told him it didn't work then he gave me temazepam. Usually I just get Seroquel 50 mg if I can't sleep, but that isn't as common as it used to be now. Plus I'm scripted Dexedrine 10 mg IR tabs (20 mg 3x/day), escitalopram (Lexapro) 30 mg 1x/day, Abilify 10 mg 1x/day, and I'm on MMT (130 mg of methadone 1x/day).

Plus my doctor is pretty liberal about scripting things, he isn't afraid. There's this patient that goes to his office and she suffers from very, very severe insomnia. They've done sleep study after sleep study on her and she can't sleep. She used to be on 60 mg of temazepam at bedtime. He switched her to Seconals (but she gets 7 dispensed a week, she doesn't get the whole 30 capsule script at once). She's sold me a few here and there before or she'll trade 1 for 3 of my Xanax.

 

[kokaino]

This is the shit.

In response to Kokaino -

Actually doesn't sound like bad advice... I mean as far as a doctor's generic response to such a request from one of their patients goes. Iono, it doesn't sound so bad, but often I'm temped to think more along the line of, when a patient is well educated about their condition(s) and treatment(s), their requests should be given more weight than most doctors give them. Still though, raising to 1mg 4x/day first doesn't sound so bad. It just sucks it sounds like he'd make you do that for a year before jumping to the bars... seems like a long time.

But then again, given my experience with benzos (which is my own and not your, for instance), has been that I was able to use them for a relatively short period (1.5ish years) while I worked on bct shit to manage my anxiety. Not everyone has the pleasure to just use benzos as such a crutch, as I understand my anxiety was on the more moderate, and certainly not severe, side of the spectrum.

Anyhoo, life still goes one. At least it seems like your doctor kinda listens to you

No it's not bad advice, I think he's right anyway. Jumping to the bars so quickly will only raise my tolerance and then where do we go from there? My anxiety was closer to the severe side (I'd say moderately severe) when I started, but now it has drastically dropped because not only is the Xanax working, but I'm on escitalopram (Lexapro) 30 mg 1x/day and that has kind of worked well with the Xanax to crush my anxiety levels and the fluctuations that come with them.

 

[tricomb]

The thing I hated about being benzodiazepine dependent is more than the physical addiction. It is that you completely lose all psychological will to function without benzos. I became hopelessly addicted, mentally. What if there was some huge earthquake or natural disaster and I was not able to get my ~20-100mg xanax per day? What about the halcion? that shit isn't exactly forgiving. Even at lower doses, I easily could have died.

Benzodiazepines have given me symptoms of PTSD. I have extremely irrational fears about not being able to get my xanax halcion or restoril. Even though I am not dependent anymore, I never got the psychological aspect back. I am still mentally addicted to benzos. I have hundreds of grams of benzodiazepines unopened in their sealed containers just sitting there. I cannot get rid of them, I have stockpiled years worth of high dose benzos and even though I don't take them anymore, I cannot get rid of them. I cannot even explain why I am unable to part with them.

This made it even harder for me to grow as a person without benzos, I'm still dealing with some PAWS a year after stopping. But somehow, I pushed through it, and having been to hell and back I can say that I've faced more fears and grown the most as a person in this past year than in almost a decade of benzodiazepine treatment. It sort of destroyed my soul.

 

[kokaino]

The thing I hated about being benzodiazepine dependent is more than the physical addiction. It is that you completely lose all psychological will to function without benzos. I became hopelessly addicted, mentally. What if there was some huge earthquake or natural disaster and I was not able to get my ~20-100mg xanax per day? What about the halcion? that shit isn't exactly forgiving. Even at lower doses, I easily could have died.

Benzodiazepines have given me symptoms of PTSD. I have extremely irrational fears about not being able to get my xanax halcion or restoril. Even though I am not dependent anymore, I never got the psychological aspect back. I am still mentally addicted to benzos. I have hundreds of grams of benzodiazepines unopened in their sealed containers just sitting there. I cannot get rid of them, I have stockpiled years worth of high dose benzos and even though I don't take them anymore, I cannot get rid of them. I cannot even explain why I am unable to part with them.

This made it even harder for me to grow as a person without benzos, I'm still dealing with some PAWS a year after stopping. But somehow, I pushed through it, and having been to hell and back I can say that I've faced more fears and grown the most as a person in this past year than in almost a decade of benzodiazepine treatment. It sort of destroyed my soul.

I have a similar fear with my Xanax and my Dexedrine. But it's worse with the benzo because I abuse benzos - not the ones I get. I get 90 of the 1 mg blue footballs monthly and I take them as prescribed, but I am always seeking benzos from outside sources like it's not enough or something. I especially like temazepam so I'm always on the lookout, but here in the Detroit area you'll find a lot of K-pins, Ativan, Serax (oxazepam), and Xanax. So I won't buy Xanax since I already have them, I'll get K-pins or oxazepam. I've gotten prazepam and estazolam too. I also find quite a few temazepam sources, so I just like hoard them. Right now I have 9 or 10 of the green 1 mg clonazepam's, about 25 of the 30 mg oxazepam plus the Xanax I get scripted. Plus I have a friend from Windsor, ON (in Canada) right across the border who gets 60 10 mg nitrazepam's a month and he'll usually come up here and sell them to me or I go there and pick them up. It's insane.

 

[tricomb]

Yeah I know what you mean. It's like my mind can never be satisfied or have enough benzos. People always offer me shit like flunitrazepam which I can't turn down because somebody went through all the effort to bring it up from mexico, so I can't turn that down.... and diazepam is another one people always offer and I never can turn it down even though I don't consume it.

 

[Albion]

I think we're done here. You've gotten the essential conversion ratio.

Answered and closed.