Hello Toothpastedog! Thanks for your post. I'm now 32 years old, and have been drinking steadily since the age of 18. Over the past 12 months, I would binge drink at least three times a week, consuming 15 to 20 standard drinks a session. Strangely, I rarely get hangovers anymore. As for my diazepam use, well, that started in 2013, when my psychiatrist Rxed me 20mg a day. At first, I could feel the effects of diazepam at a dose of 10mg. However, those days are long gone. Fast forward to the present, and I now need 100mg to feel the effect, but I can never recapture the same effect I got from taking 10mg when I first started.
I take 100mg of diazepam twice a week, and most of the time run out of Valium before my next appointment with my psychiatrist. Furthermore, I think the long-term diazepam use has come to kick me in the ass. I sufferer from rebound anxiety. For instance, I will wake up in the morning and feel a tightness in my chest and feel short of breath. I can alleviate these symptoms by either laying back down in bed, or taking more diazepam.
Ideally, I would like to abstain from all drugs; so no more opioids, no more booze, no more benzos. Having said that, while I do wish to stop taking benzos, I'm scared of having panic attacks and not having something to alleviate them. I take propranolol, but it does very little. So, I'm not sure where to go from here ... Any tips/advice would be appreciated. Thanks all!