Is 10 mg of Diazepam taken twice in month sensible

[Boku_]

I recently stopped drinking beer and i have been alcohol free for 19 days but to be honest i wasn't the biggest drinker going around and i always drank in moderation so i didn't really feel any serious withdrawal symptoms when i ceased drinking but it should be noted this is easily the longest period i have gone alcohol free since i became a regular beer drinker back in 2002 and i have had a few weeks before off the beer due to being admitted to a hospital acute mental health ward to change anti-psychotic medication but for those hospital visits i was also on benzo's like Diazepam so while i was treated for what could be called a psychotic break i was sitting around the hospital ward all floaty and relaxed from the benzo's. FYI i have been diagnosed as suffering schizo-affective disorder with PTSD that includes having repressed memories that can reappear in my mind at the most random of times. Needless to say i require anti-psychotic medication to cope with my mental condition, but meh what am i gunna do? i am a bad seed i am a bed seed.

Anyway on around day 7 of being alcohol free i had one of my sleepless nights that happen to me on an occasion and normally my first reaction to having a night where i can't fall asleep naturally is to make a run for my local pub and drink 5 or 6 glasses of beer to take the edge off, regardless being on anti-psychotic and drinking beer on a almost daily routine has lead to my weight blowing up and i currently have a BMI rating of 32.4 which places me well into the obese category so i decided to cut out drinking any alcohol whatsoever and attempting to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet in the name of stopping my progressive weight gain. So far after having 19 days with no alcohol i have lost 2.5 kilograms but i am fully aware it's early days.

Back to my sleepless night i decided the best thing for me to do is go to my local Doctor and explain to him my situation and ask if it is possible to get a script for a low dose of one or two tablets of Valium as that would probably take the edge off as far the anxiety i was feeling without having to resort to drinking beer. As it turned out my doctor agreed to my request and wrote a script for two Diazepam 5 mg tablets that when i took them all desire to drink alcohol went away. I must stress on most days i am able to fall asleep naturally and i have no desire at for either alcohol or benzo's thanks to being well rested.

It goes without saying i do not want to build a tolerance to Diazepam or develop an addiction to Diazepam but my main question is if i was to request a 10 mg dose of Diazepam off my local doctor once every 2 - 3 or 4 weeks as that is how often i tend to have a night where i can't sleep would my Doctor be inclined to provide me with these occasional scripts if genuinely required and as far as using 10 mg of Diazepam once or twice in a 4 weeks period would that small level of benzo use start leading to a tolerance build up that could be problematic in the long term for mental health treatment as i don't want to get to a point that Diazepam stops working and ceases being effective therapeutically as a treatment for anxiety.

If i am worrying over nothing than that is fine by me but the amount of horror stories i have read on Bluelight about benzo users digging themselves in a hole with chronic long term use of benzo's that lead to addiction and nothing good at all is a real deterrent.

 

[honeywhite]

Entirely sensible. Chronic long term cautions apply to chronic DAILY long term users. The drug accumulates and (apparently) causes steady plasma levels

 

[Boku_]

Thanks for the prompt response honeywhite

 

[Jabberwocky]

Very sensible use of benzos IMO.

 

[spacejunk]

Yep, agreed.
If it starts getting to a couple of times a week you might want to be careful, but what you're suggesting sounds pretty much exactly the 'right' (ie safest, least problematic) way to use benzos.
They can be a handy tool occasionally for anxiety or insomnia, but a shitty class of drugs when taken reguarly (in my experience at least)

 

[Keif' Richards]

Yep, agreed.
If it starts getting to a couple of times a week you might want to be careful, but what you're suggesting sounds pretty much exactly the 'right' (ie safest, least problematic) way to use benzos.
They can be a handy tool occasionally for anxiety or insomnia, but a shitty class of drugs when taken reguarly (in my experience at least)

Agreed. The devil fools with the best laid plans in terms of addiction maintenance. Once every few weeks can easily become once every few hours. It's a matter of self-control and not a matter of moral or ethical responsibility. For this reason, it can sometimes be better for people to just completely abstain from the use of drugs that they have previously had issues with. There's no judgement here. So long as you can keep the use limited to certain occasions and you're content, I say go for it.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Yeah, if kept to OCCASIONAL (even if the occasions are planned in advance for, so long as kept to, and kept occasional) they can be a godsend, abused they will drag hell up out of the toilet and shit in your eyes with an asshole full of bleach and laugh in your eyeless face as your empty sockets smoke ass-scented bleach fumes)

Whilst tolerance will be different in your circumstances, from a non-benzo-head perspective, occasional user, although also a user of another GABAa agonist drug (chlormethiazole, its an old one, one of those hard-hitters that generally seem to have gotten phased out wherever possible, but due to special effects in treating alcohol withdrawal patients in the inpatient setting this stuff got grandfathered in, or did somehow if that wasn't the reason, its a barbiturate binding site agonist at GABAa, and its got a punch like a nuke on steroids, although shockingly forgiving at least to me, for tolerance purposes. Extremely unforgiving in overdose (I.e you might sleep all day, but you'll sleep until the second coming, should there be one, and might even sleep through armageddon unfolding right up your backside. Doesn't take much to off someone either, notorious for it. I take it as an anticonvulsant, off-license (although on prescription) as seizure prophylaxis, and also as my rescue-remedy in an additional script of a limited number of 'extras' basically, since it just happens to be something I find, personally, agrees with me in that I get no side effects, its clear headed for me, doesn't fuck with my chemistry work (It'd not do, for example to take a quick cat-nap in a bath of chromyl chloride, bromine, nitric/sulfuric/perchloric/insert face-eating acid here whilst at the bench, shitfaced on my antiseizure meds), but at the same time its fast as fast as a demon chasing after a damned soul doing a runner from the front door of hell itself, so makes an ideal ultrarapid-response to a seizure I get a slight warning of, and ideally, often even, enough to open a bottle and down a couple of capsules, when I keep them on me, or on a table next to me etc. before the fucking things go paralytic and I hit the deck like a sack of lead lined potatoes and then go into myoclonic seizure full force kick up the arse afterwards and things generally end up with the shit being aimed squarely at the fan and me positioned under said fan.

But I also, as somewhat of a doctor's buggerup, still have what was meant from the getgo and my request at the time for some of what was at the time, emergency stress relief, for a longer than really ideal for benzo use, but pre-known destination end use time, got given 5mg nitrazepam BD, told take it twice a day daily. I didn't, knowing what harm benzo physical dependency can wreak, and wanting no part of it of course, having accidentally got a taste of it from a lorazepam (or might have been loprazolam, I've had both on rx, one or the other got me pretty nastily, even at a low dose. The lorazepam I think) script, ended up seizure in the doc's office, grand mal after I decided I didn't want to be on it anymore anyway and wanted to start tapering.

But, years down the line, this nitraz script (its a strong benzo with a long duration of action, a lot stronger than diazepam/valium, strong tendency towards a hypnotic 'flavour', and among the benzos its possibly, along with loprazolam, the most wallbanger-ey benzos prescribable on the NHS) was given at my request and despite the purpose coming, and going, with a better conclusion than might have happened, so no threat any longer hanging over my head, they just didn't cancel it, and instead doubled it from the original 5mg to 10mg and they just left it like that. They said nothing, I said nothing, they said nothing either. So I've still got the double script, and I use them planned for at most 3 days a week, 4 exceptionally dropping to a half to nothing, but only exceptionally, never longer in a row, other than in case of seizure really kicking off and my needing something longer acting than chlormethiazole rather than more chlormethiazole (they aren't WD seizures, just seizure-seizures of so far unknown origin), and I use it when my rx'd opiate script runs low in between refills, and generally take none at all during the rest of a week. Then I'll go through the lot in a couple of days to relieve bordering WD, to get a couple of days sleep through it rather than total suck asshole with rectal sauce and a piss-flavour dressing. And I keep to that plan, barring occasional circumstances in life, the kind that fall right out of the sky and smites you from on high with a 'hey fuck YOU', be it karma, satan, jesus, buddha or a stray asteroid with an attitude problem or a martian with a baseball bat and a crack debt.

Other than disasters of unforseeable, and definitely use-justifiable single extra day in succession type uses RARELY, as rarely as humanly possible, I stick to it like a politician clings to their favourite sucking-turd. You've got to keep a tight lid on it, don't use them if you can't, save at most, single or a very few pills rarely handed out by docs, requesting small scripts if youve got to, for genuine absolute necessity. If you need to do that but cannot, then don't use benzos, or you will have hell to pay. And hell charges a real high rate of interest on its loans.

And the bank of heaven is way too willing, for its position, to sell on loans to the buggers downstairs. Be wary, and keep self-control and iron will as your guiding philosophy if you use them. Within limits tolerance wise, they are good things, or they can be, indeed sometimes necessary even, for some people some of the time. But for anybody all or most of the time, that loan is going downstairs to the bailiffs collection dept. in a neatly packaged hand-basked addressed to a certain famous guy with horns who ain't right popular. Sure as shit stinks of indoles, that loan is going to hell, express mail if you let it do so.

And the above poster is correct. It isn't a moral wrongdoing. Its not ethical or unethical on your part (doctors can be judged differently depending on what they do, mine was pretty dumb at best and negligent at worst for doubling my nitrazepam script when I told them exactly how long I needed it, at what dose, and what for, and when I wanted to begin the taper barring circumstances removed from my control (which could have happened in my problem the script was for, which was giving me the stress and insomnia and general misery), at worst, a negligent fuckmonger with a bollock for a prefrontal cortex. But as it happens I am someone who with benzos, does have self-control, no special issues regarding maintaining it as tightly as I choose, and a good awareness of the potential pitfalls of the boon I was unwittingly on the DR's part, given me free of financial charge on an indefinite, infinite repeat, essentially I get it every time I get my other meds refilled until I say otherwise. They should NEVER have done that, even though I know I have the self control, there are many who do not and who would be plunged into the likelihood of deep, deep dog-business due to such a course of action on their part. As it is, I've got something to take the edge off whenever I run low on my opiate-tank (I've an old injury to my knee and some fucked up hips because of it, and the knee is not going to heal short of my getting the leg removed and have an opiate rx for morphine&oxy, plus some more oxy after sustaining a bloody painful base-burn to the eyeball, and at the time, although the latter has healed now, a severe burn to my cornea from the same jet of boiling hot corrosive alkali that got me smack in the face that was shockingly, brutally painful, as well as nearly blinding me permanently, I got lucky in reacting fast enough, even temporarily blinded, to run to a tap and pry my eyelids apart with fingers and force myself to repeatedly blink for a long time (didn't time it but it certainly felt like an eternity), before moving some glassware out of the way of prying eyes with sight, belonging to paramedics on their way who might have been too nosy for my own good, and going back to irrigating my eye out and washing the caustic potash, LiOH, NaOH, ammonia-spewing lithium amide and sodamide gotten wet and KOtBu going batshit out of my hair and the rest of me in the bargain), and increases for things that heal, if I don't order otherwise seem to get forgotten usually or sometimes increased if I don't truly need something, but refused or given stingily by all but one of my GPs at the practice if I do. Ironic or what!)

So it really isn't wrongdoing, its a matter of what is required for you to keep yourself healthy, the wrong that can be done, is harm to yourself or others by your own hand. Some may judge on other grounds, but they fucking shouldn't. Or if they do, ought to keep their shitstirring to themselves.

 

[spacejunk]

they can be a godsend, abused they will drag hell up out of the toilet and shit in your eyes with an asshole full of bleach and laugh in your eyeless face as your empty sockets smoke ass-scented bleach fumes)

Has anyone ever told you that you have a way with words?

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Yes. I can spew profanity in at least five different spoken languages too, and sign both in conversation and/or a torrent of offensive language too

I do for some reason seem to get told I have a way with words actually, I mean, I could simply seem eloquent but have been rather, wankered and have beshat a feculent babyfucking dicknipple with *something untranslatable on a keyboard in ASL* sauce served on the side with me gear yeh twunting scheisskopf mein gutt mann. Guten tag und ficken sie hunde..or should I just get drunk and abusive instead

Joking, of coarse..I mean, course. But I do for some reason, hell some rather eloquent people have given me their vote of confidence...(and hey, you get to know The Rettdevil (autistic activist chick) and your bound to learn a few really creative and funny as all fucking hades terms of ensnarkment. Thankfully not directed AT me, or thick skinned as I am, I'd have been sliced to the bone, such is the tongue, the motor neurons controlling said organ are attached to a brain owned by whom. You don't know THAT girl and NOT know enough hilarious snark not to have picked up a few borrowed on respectful license. (post-ictal-shitty has to be one of my favourites, of those not aimed at excoriating autism squea...ahem, speaks, and curebie gobshyte mitotic catastrophes waiting to qualify for the status of scrotum-larvae in question (mine not hers, although I'd not put worse past her. Funniest. Hottest. Fucking. Fucker. Ever. End-of-story That girl can go past 'schooling' somebody in taking them creatively to pieces and putting them back together like a halfarsed drunken amoeba would reassemble a jigsaw puzzle based on algebra and written in chinese after a 48-hour crash course in latin (and she's neither in origin) and go right to their doctorate in 'curebie got cortex-raped with a bucket of rabid razor-wire-juggling octopi via their jap's eye' Hilarity inevitably ensues.

So there are worse than me, or better, depending on which end of the tongue you are, owner/spectator or the autism sq...speaks, sorry, mea culpa festering turd being targeted for a laser-guided snark bomb accompanied by a well-thrown pencil casually and openly sarcastically 'excused' as a motor stereotypy. (yeah, the one I referenced did that, at an autism speaks rally IIRC it was. Got a way of combining the eloquent brain-sodomizing-session with just a hint, precisely targeted and timed of 'yeh wat asshat blow my autistic dick I'd have were I born with a Y chromosome and functional SRY gene thereon, fuckin' bellend' *que thrown object mid-derision*

So, don't think I'm anything special, there are far, far worse/better/both at it than a mere mortal such as I.

(although admittedly were we ever to dine out together, she and I would be rather likely to pick the roast rack of curebie as an appetizer )

But, yes, anyhow for whatever reason I get told that. Perk of an autie with a deliberately and rather exquisitely tended to, once cultivated, abject lack of shame.

Just be glad I didn't post the above when I was on too many benzos (albeit quite a rarity indeed for me, given somebody scripted chlormethiazole/heminevrin needs to be, especially a chronic pain patient the docs seem determined to also feed everlasting depressant scripts to by accident of all the be-buggered reasons) Although I admit, as an afterthought that after a couple of weeks worth of nitrazepam 10mg/dose in two days on top of my seizure meds, opioids and whatever combination of (racemic) amphetamine/ethylamphetamine/meth I might (again, not quite rarely, more occasionally) hanker for and worse still should somebody piss me off. Otherwise, its just a case of 'spazz is as spazz does' (note-latter term is not employed in an insulting tone, I'm proud of it, and so are many of the rest of us) Auties rock And we can SO blame our ripping curebies up for something akin to those dried peppered salt-beef jerky sticks you can buy on being a spazz that doesn't get curebie social mores, airs and graces (or lack of the last of the three) .

 

[Keif' Richards]

Has anyone ever told you that you have a way with words?

He's chanelling the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe.

 

[honeywhite]

Whilst tolerance will be different in your circumstances, from a non-benzo-head perspective, occasional user, although also a user of another GABAa agonist drug (chlormethiazole, its an old one, one of those hard-hitters that generally seem to have gotten phased out wherever possible, but due to special effects in treating alcohol withdrawal patients in the inpatient setting this stuff got grandfathered in, or did somehow if that wasn't the reason, its a barbiturate binding site agonist at GABAa, and its got a punch like a nuke on steroids, although shockingly forgiving at least to me, for tolerance purposes. Extremely unforgiving in overdose (I.e you might sleep all day, but you'll sleep until the second coming, should there be one, and might even sleep through armageddon unfolding right up your backside. Doesn't take much to off someone either, notorious for it. I take it as an anticonvulsant, off-license (although on prescription) as seizure prophylaxis, and also as my rescue-remedy in an additional script of a limited number of 'extras' basically, since it just happens to be something I find, personally, agrees with me in that I get no side effects, its clear headed for me, doesn't fuck with my chemistry work (It'd not do, for example to take a quick cat-nap in a bath of chromyl chloride, bromine, nitric/sulfuric/perchloric/insert face-eating acid here whilst at the bench, shitfaced on my antiseizure meds), but at the same time its fast as fast as a demon chasing after a damned soul doing a runner from the front door of hell itself, so makes an ideal ultrarapid-response to a seizure I get a slight warning of, and ideally, often even, enough to open a bottle and down a couple of capsules, when I keep them on me, or on a table next to me etc. before the fucking things go paralytic and I hit the deck like a sack of lead lined potatoes and then go into myoclonic seizure full force kick up the arse afterwards and things generally end up with the shit being aimed squarely at the fan and me positioned under said fan.

Good old Heminevrin! Another one of those benzo-style drugs that doesn't put me to sleep. My, though, it's rare to find - I get given phenobarbitone instead, to be taken for my nerves (300 mg is essentially what I've stabilised on). The effects of Heminevrin are about the same as pheno, with half life shortened - I took three times my prescribed dose, because it took its time kicking in, and I was lucky I didn't get a how-d'you-do from St Peter. Especially with diamorphine in my system - 40mgs of it. Highly silly of me. Chemistry student, btw? (I read law at Duz)

I'd stay off the moggies, but if you need them for your seizures, that's a different story.

 

[Boku_]

Is 10 mg of diazepam once a week ok?

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Aye its a bit rare to find heminevrin these days, although it was actually easier to get on for daily prevention than a benzo, and my experience with it has been a lot better. Glad I did too, at least compared to pheno. I'd love a longer half life (thats when I use the moggies, I just split a pack in half and use it at most twice (as 70mg twice over 2 days or once BD) and with very rare individual exceptions, otherwise never. Only if need forces it. I've been cynical enough about ending up in an acid bath one day because of Mr.Murphy without it happening.

And as for degree, no, autodidact really. I just can't stop sniffing for more to learn. And being a spazz, naturally some things come across as particular strengths.

And took its time to onset? does surprise me!!! because in my experience the only things I've had that acted faster were the likes of IV propofol (ICU sedation) w/fentanyl and the volatile anaesthetics, alcohol and ether orally are about as fast in my experience. As soon as the capsules burst open, bang, stuff hits me. Things I've noted most are speed of onset and lack of tolerance or dependence to it. Although thats at therapeutic dosages mind you. But mein gott, it is FAST. No AMPA antagonism like w/barbital etc either.

edit-meant to include-1x10mg use of diazepam is piss all weekly. That could be as little as a single tablet a week, since common dosage units for tablets are 2mg, 5, and 10mg diazepam.
Thats not even a recreational dose imo. Not even close. Even with no benzo tolerance, 10mg might help someone sleep, if they were tired ,already, and fortunate with sensitivity to it.

 

[Boku_]

edit-meant to include-1x10mg use of diazepam is piss all weekly. That could be as little as a single tablet a week, since common dosage units for tablets are 2mg, 5, and 10mg diazepam.
Thats not even a recreational dose imo. Not even close. Even with no benzo tolerance, 10mg might help someone sleep, if they were tired ,already, and fortunate with sensitivity to it.

Really i find no real difference in the feel good factor of a diazepam dose between either 10 mg or 20 mg? but i have very little tolerant. For me at the most i will take 10 or 20 mg of Valium once every 7 days or even 14 to 28 days between doses. For example i took 20 mg 9 days ago however yesterday i took 10 mg and i noticed no real difference.

I don't plan to use diazepam more than once every 7 days but it's not like i am getting scripts for 30 5 mg tablets at a time.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

At those levels, don't worry. The only thing to keep an eye on is frequency of use to make sure it doesn't become a habit, when it isn't starting that way. Just make sure they don't sneak up on you is all.

And at low levels like that, well, I take 70-140mg nitrazepam once or twice a week, and no problems there, so if you aren't using overmuch then something like 10-20 of diazepam isn't going to give people problems used monthly, or weekly even. Even with its long half life, thats not much at all. Thats the best way to use benzos IMO, just occasionally on a PRN basis. And unlike say, nitrazepam, my go-to benzo (I typically like nitrobenzodiazepines over any others, such as nitrazepam, nifoxipam and loprazolam), which really does pack a kick, even at a low dose like 10mg, with diazepam it just doesn't have that kind of strength. Long lasting in what it does do, yes but diazepam has never been and will never be one of the heavy-hitting monsters of the benzo world, and it'll never equal the likes of barb site ligands either, its just not built for that sort of task.

I don't really find it recreational though, at any dose level, in the case of diazepam. It is just too damn weak. Even hundreds of mg, I'd probably not find very recreational. I know I don't at 140-150mg as a single dose.