While never experiencing opiate wd, I am currently at the tail end of benzo wd.
Something to keep in mind, for most other types of wd, there is something to take to help you with your wd symptoms, and most likely it is a benzo. But for benzo wd, you are just SOL... all you can do is step down/taper off.
After 12 years of being on 70 mg of valium per day for utricular vertigo, I was cut off cold turkey, thanks to ObamaCare regs. (I am also on Medicaid.) Well, after three ER's told me that you can't just quit cold turkey like that (which I honestly didn't know, and this was after repeatedly asking my doc and also every time I switched to a new pharmacist... benzos are way safe, until you get addicted to them) they each gave me about a week's supply of valium, which lasted me until I went to 4th ER (BTW, again thanks to ObamaCare, only psychiatrists can prescribe benzos anymore, and they won't for wd symptoms). The doc there put me on a brutal 3 month step down process (brutal due to the length I was on them) that started last July, last dose of valium (or any benzo) was in October, and it wasn't until April that I was able to leave my house just to get a haircut.
If you want to look at a list of wd symptoms I went through, just hit up wikipedia's benzo wd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_withdrawal_syndrome
I, truly, experienced all but 2 or 3 of "gradual or abrupt reduction" symptoms.
But, to put it simply, what sucked the most, is that benzos are anti-anxiety meds. Which means that every frickin' anxiety you can think of, you will suffer from. I was scared of everything... afraid to leave my bed, afraid that my bed was closing in on me, afraid I couldn't take another breath, afraid to fall asleep, afraid of sounds, afraid of not being able to swallow my food. Honestly, I can't imagine feeling more afraid than I did over about an 7 month period. And truthfully, I could probably spend years writing about this and still not even come close to explaining how every single thing scared me. Unless you have experienced it, you will not understand.
So, while I read that opiate wd have a lot of similar symptoms, I've yet to read one that suffered anything close to the I-have-no-clue-how-I-survived-anxiety wd of benzos. And I look at the flu-like symptoms of opiates and just laugh. Also, from the long period of time I was on them, I easily have another year of mild symptoms to go. I still have about 2 days a week in which my heart beats way too fast, or I just feel like I can't get my breath. Tastes of food changes on a daily basis. It really sucks.
Oh, and a BIG I should mention... if you are suffering from opiate wd, you can go to about any wd clinic in the country and you will get help. But I could not even find a single clinic that treated benzo wd, not even the Betty Ford clinic. Basically, benzo wd is too long term of a thing to deal with and nobody has insurance that will last that long. (This info was what caused the 4th ER doc to actually put me on step down dose. He didn't believe this until he made a few phone calls.)
One more thing to add. Like I said, my benzo addiction was do to vertigo, so I never felt the need to take another benzo to feel better from my wd, it wasn't a recreational drug for me... even though it made me feel better, i.e., no vertigo, it wasn't that much better than norm. So, even though I can't imagine a more brutal step down process, I was so pissed off that the benzos were doing this to me, that I never want to take another one again. I don't know if this is normal with benzo wd. But with opiate addictions, I know people definitely can't wait to get back on them... even years later. So, that is one thing that, for me atleast, isn't as bad when it comes to benzos vs opiate wd.
