Congratulations on your success with the diazepam! I'm sorry to hear you aren't feeling well still. If you are reasonably worried about your safety and well-being during these withdrawals I'd suggest you consult a doctor. It's somewhat redundant to say this, but a bunch of primarily young, motsly drug abusing forum posters is not a suitable substitute. Presuming you're not planning on consulting a doctor, as layman I'm going to point out what you undoubtedly already know more or less, ask a few questions, and then offer some opinions.
First, what you should already know. Ok, You just went through three weeks of substitution therapy for withdrawal from 10mg diazepam over 60 days. Now it's relatively common sense, and if it isn't it's something you should have picked up in this process that if you're worried about withdrawals you should taper your dose down. You didn't with the diazepam. Ok, that happens - perhaps the withdrawal symptoms took you by surprise, or you didn't pay attention to how many you had left. Life goes on. Now, you proceeded to substitute phenobarbital for the diazepam which does work, and then spent 3 weeks on the phenobarbital apparently without a taper. Are you kidding me? What part of the first lesson along with the warnings in I think the first posted response didn't you understand? You got a second chance, it was your responsibility to do it right this time and taper the phenobarbital. But, ok, some questions:
* Can you list all of the withdrawal symptoms you had ORIGINALLY from stopping the diazepam?
* Specifically how much pheno per day did you consume in the 3 weeks?
* Exactly what withdrawal symptoms are you experiencing now?
* Finally I need to ask, are you MENTAL for asking if you should use diazepam to combat the withdrawals that you are having due to the phenobarbital that you used to combat you diazepam withdrawals? You've got to see the problem there.
Now, here again I urge you to go to a doctor and get medical advise especially if you feel your life is in danger.
Ok, now that you haven't. Look, initially you stopped cold turkey off a low dose of diazepam and found that you experienced rebound anxiety (or maybe recurring anxiety if thats what you started the drugs for). Not a huge shock. Uncomfortable? yes. Expected in BZD withdrawal? most certainly. life threatening? not in the least.
Look where we are now, three weeks later and you're almost at square one. If you had bit the rebound anxiety bullet (something almost all clinical bzd detox patients do) 99 out of 100 chance you'd be more than over it by now. Hell, 90/100 chance you would have been over it in 5 days. Something about playing with fire, right?. Imo it should have stopped there. You know why people take benzo withdrawal so seriously? Because with significant enough dosages or time they can easily cause massive seizures, permanent psychosis or possibly death. It's no joke. Were you in that ballpark? Ask your doctor. But I say no way.
I just did some reading to refresh - I've been with two friends who withdrew/tapered down from large or lengthy quantities - one somewhere in the 400-600mg of diazepam bioequiv/day (primarily xanax) for most of a year, and one that took 240mg diaz equiv/day for two or three months. One had medical help but also needed support. I've also self tapered down from sporadic 120-140mg/day more than once. In all of my reading for them I didn't remember any example cases or tapers starting at 10mg that didn't involve at least a couple of years of straight use. So I just looked again. Yup, nobody talks about it. One guess why? Now start having seizures, psychosis or other major medical issues or rebound issues that last more than a couple of weeks and run your ass to a doctor. That's what there they're for. But hell son, you know what they're going to say, break the pill into quarters and take one less quarter each week until you're done.
Ok, so instead of the bullet you opted for the pheno. I did mention that pheno is often used, though now that i've read more I see they'd really prefer diazepam. But it works. Ok, so if you're going to substitute and taper you'd better replace the diaz with an equivalent amount of pheno right? a minute of google told me this: 10mg diazepam = 30mg phenobarbital (
http://books.google.com/books?id=nz...X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA230,M1 ) So right then, starting with 30mg of phenobarbital for the substitution. Now you're supposed to taper it. A reasonable amount to reduce your pheno by each time in this case according to the substance abuse handbook is... drum roll please ... 30mg. (
http://books.google.com/books?id=6L...=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA79,M1 )
It suggests a taper of 30mg/day in inpatient, and slower in outpatient. So lets be really lax and call it a week. After a week, 30mg pheno -> 0mg of pheno and you're done.
But instead you actually took the diaz you were trying to withdraw from and multiplied it by 7 times give or take to about 200mg/day (based on your comment of 50x100mg used). So now you took something and just amplified it dramatically instead of googling for a couple of minutes (first hit for "phenobarbital equivalence"). Kind of shooting yourself in the foot, no?
But no matter, even at 200mg if you want to use the taper specified, you can do it three times slower than inpatient and still end up at 0mg by now, 3 weeks later. Except you didn't taper at all right...
Hey! No worries! Want to know why? Because 200mg falls inside the theraputic dose for phenobarbital to induce sleep and is half of the standard "do not exceed in 24 hours" (
http://www.pdrhealth.com/drugs/rx/r....html&contentName=Phenobarbital&contentId=437 ). Also you took it for 3 weeks, which is right in the middle of the typical series of 2-4 weeks (
http://www.webmd.com/drugs/drug-8689-Phenobarbital+Oral.aspx?drugid=8689&drugname=Phenobarbital+Oral ). While "Phenobarbital will not work as well for anxiety if taken regularly for more than 2 weeks" that just relates to the efficacy and not physical symptoms. While it very likely would have made things easier if you had tapered your dose, you appear to be well within the normal prescription parameters for immediate cessation. But don't take a forum's word for it, ask your doctor.
Ok, so as far as I'm concerned, you're done now. You didn't do it ideally, but you just ran through the likely period of diazepam rebound with the pheno, and you just finished up what could be easily called a typical pheno series.
You say you're having trouble sleeping and need to drink a beer to go to bed? Obviously that's hardly an acute symptom. Have a beer then, right? Me, my opinion is end this now, toss and turn some and get it over with. The idea of starting back on diazepam after all of this trouble seems ludicrous to me. Catch some rebound anxiety? Choke it down and use it as something to remember why not to get here again. But be done. Or go see your doctor, but I doubt he'd say anything substantially different, though I'm sure he'd be much nicer about parts.
My bottom line advice:
* end it here
* stop ordering fucking downers over the internet, you don't seem to be a very responsible doctor for yourself. you obviously have serious issues with them - first gbl then valium then pheno then you want to start valium again? That's a great way to end up taking benzos for a year straight, and trust me you won't keep taking 10mg of diazepam the whole time. You should cut yourself off (based on your apparent double addiction in 3 months and poor willpower in terms of stopping when you want to).
* do you or your family have a history of alcoholism? That's an even better reason based on your behavior to leave these classes of drugs alone.
* Spend the next couple of months active, exercising a lot and busy at least as long as the rebound anxiety and insomnia sticks around. It helps a lot. Combats the problems you're looking for drugs to solve and is healthy as well.
* Do some reading about the dramatic issues high dosage or long term benzo users face while while withdrawing and the very long time tables they have to deal with ( just one of many possible materials:
http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/ ) and get some perspective in terms of people really suffering. And hopefully a resolve to leave it behind. (
http://www.benzo.org.uk/stories.htm )
Sorry to both you and everyone else for this being so long and so hostile, but once I saw you asking if you should take the valium up again and start all over it pushed me over the edge, and it's clear the only folks you are asking for advice are junkies (no offense folks!). I really feel you need a pretty hard slap. While your use is very light now, your behavior seems questionable, and heavy long term benzo use is one of the worst things you could wish on someone.
Ok, I'm done.
TL;DR - Wake the fuck up
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")