• Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

Benzos I need advice on quitting Diazepam (and Phenibut)

sinan

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 18, 2014
Messages
30
I have been taking Diazepam for the last 10 months. I've been wanting to quit for the last 5 but somehow never managed to truly commit myself to it. I think one of the main reasons is I've been getting my Diazepam illegally and in bulk (I didn't have healthcare until recently) and couldn't stay focused on the tapering program.
Now that I have healthcare I'm determined to see a psychiatrist and work a taper out with him/her.
My current dosage/regimen is 10 mg once every 3 days. Sometimes more (for instance if I'm partying I might take up to 40-50 on the comedown, or take 10 mg more frequently), sometimes less (meaning I can go longer in between doses).

I also have been taking Phenibut for the last 4 months. A good month and a half of that period I took it daily. Nowadays I'm trying to apply the same regimen with Diazepam, once every 3-4 days. I don't always measure the doses accurately. There has been days I took up to 7-8 grams (maybe even more) mainly for recreational purposes, but usually it's along the lines of 2.5-3 grams I think (a reasonably full teaspoon).


Oh, and I have also been a heavy drinker for a loooong time. Nowadays I try to avoid it but when I do drink I drink a lot. There had been periods when I'd drink daily for over a month. However, I have never once experienced any withdrawal symptoms when I stopped drinking. Point is, my tolerance to alcohol is really high, and since benzos and phenibut are GABA related substances it may give a clue on my brain chemistry.


Final piece of information, a couple of months ago I went 5 days without Diazepam and the only time I felt really bad was when I drank two large cups of strong coffee.


Now, as I mentioned earlier, it is not my objective to go cold turkey. But I don't want the tapering process to be too long either, I want this shit (and Phenibut too) out of my life -the only exception being comedowns, maybe.


BUT, let's assume tomorrow I run out of both Diazepam and Phenibut.


With all the information I gave you, how bad will my withdrawals be?


Is a 10 month use combined with a 4 month Phenibut use long enough to pose serious health risks if I quit abruptly? Remember, I've been doing my best to stick to a once every 3 day regimen, and for both substances my doses are not as high as many people take.


Also remember, despite being a heavy drinker, I never experienced alcohol withdrawals even after more than a month long binges. Could that mean my GABAergic system is strong enough to handle withdrawals easier than most people?


Finally, is it a good idea to taper off Phenibut and Diazepam at the same time? Obviously I understand keeping using either of them longer means the withdrawals will be worse. My objective is to taper off Diazepam with professional help, and use Phenibut only when I feel the withdrawals coming, and lowering the dose each time.

Any advice is welcome, and thanks in advance.

 
That's enough to pose a serious health risk with the diazepam and put you at risk of seizures...

Diazepam has a really long half life so even taking them every 3 days would mean your system has had a benzo in it (diazepam breaks down into nordiazepam, temazepam and I think oxazepam) continuously for 10 months.

I'm not an expert on phenibut other than to know that the withdrawls are supposed to be brutal..not sure if they pose a health risk though...

Don't stop sold turkey on these two mate....or you will be in a world of hurt.
 
I agree. 2.5 - 3 grams of phenibut daily for 4 months, would be hell to suddenly stop.
Dangerous as well. Your bloodpressure would be through the roof.
I advice you to stop drinking & doing party drugs. At least for a few months.
Keep using the valium, but make sure you don?t take too much.
Put 10 times your daily dose in a litre bottle of water. Drink 100ml daily and fill up with tapwater. Do this 3 weeks and you can stop. You won?t feel all right all the time, but it will be managable.
After this, taper the valium. No experience, so can?t advise you on that.

Much luck,

Vazkor
 
If you Google The Ashton Manual...it's the gold standard for quitting benzos..

But hopefully your doctor/psychiatrist can set up a reduction for you.
 
Thanks for the replies.

That's enough to pose a serious health risk with the diazepam and put you at risk of seizures...

Diazepam has a really long half life so even taking them every 3 days would mean your system has had a benzo in it (diazepam breaks down into nordiazepam, temazepam and I think oxazepam) continuously for 10 months.

That is indeed true, but don't you think it's interesting that after 10 months of use 10 mg is still as effective as when I first started?

I must also add, my first 5 months or so on Diazepam I was getting them from one vendor, after that I switched to another, and I believe the first vendor's Diazepam was actually weaker, cause the second vendor's 10 mg's felt more like 20-30 mg of the first vendor. However I understand even 5 months is a long time to always be on a benzo.

But funny how I have an extremely high tolerance to alcohol yet don't need to up the dose on Diazepam.

Of course there have been times I took up to 60 mg either after rather stupid stimulant usage (luckily for me I binged on stimulants only once in my life and was intelligent enough to make the decision not to touch them ever again lol) or 30-40 mg when I wanted to get a good buzz (which I don't do anymore as I've come to learn Diazepam is not very recreational) or even when I had severe anxiety.

But as I said 10 mg every 3 days is my current regimen -months ago it was daily but after I decided to kick the habit I spaced the doses.

I'm just saying this because I hope this apparent lack of tolerance means my tapering process will not be very hard.

I don't intend to stop cold turkey. I just wanted to know how bad the withdrawals would be IF cold turkey was unavoidable (it's not).

If you Google The Ashton Manual...it's the gold standard for quitting benzos..

Oh yeah I know The Ashton Manual, and I tried following it but I just have lack of self control. That's why I'm considering professional help.

I agree. 2.5 - 3 grams of phenibut daily for 4 months, would be hell to suddenly stop.
Dangerous as well. Your bloodpressure would be through the roof.
I advice you to stop drinking & doing party drugs. At least for a few months.
Keep using the valium, but make sure you don?t take too much.
Put 10 times your daily dose in a litre bottle of water. Drink 100ml daily and fill up with tapwater. Do this 3 weeks and you can stop. You won?t feel all right all the time, but it will be managable.

Vazkor, I haven't been taking 2.5-3 grams of Phenibut daily. More precisely, I did so for something like 6 weeks at the beginning of my use, but since then I've been using it 2-3 times a week tops. But your method of quitting Phenibut seems reasonable, I'll do it but instead of drinking every day I'll drink once every 3 day. Although I must say, even imagining the taste of 30 grams of Phenibut in water makes me wanna puke :D

I haven't been partying in a long while, and on the rare occasions I do I usually don't party as hard as I used to lol.

However alcohol is still a problem. Maybe it's worth bringing up when I see the psychiatrist.
 
I?m sorry. Misread your story. 2.5 - 3 grams every 2-3 days... so your avarage intake is about a gram a day.
I would choose daily dosing (to keep your phenibut blood levels a bit constant). So, put only 10 grams in a liter bottle. Rest stays the same. You will have a faster time to be able to stop this. I think you can stop using in about 2 - 2.5 weeks.

Vazkor
 
Alcohol works on the same receptors as phenibut. You will probably (everyone is different) have problems if you keep using alcohol while stopping phenibut.

Maybe first stop alcohol, then phenibut, then valium.

If you have a psychiatrist to talk to, he/she probably has a better advise than I have. It?s probably worth it bringing it up there.

Maybe you should inform him/her about phenibut, prior to your next meeting, so he/she can read about it. Phenibut isn?t that well-known.

Vazkor
 
I can manage to not drink (or drink very rarely) for 2-3 weeks no problem. The real problem I've never been able to quit alcohol for good, and when I drink it's usually out of control, so...

But I'm trying to get the habit of using L-Theanine and Ashwagandha instead of Diazepam when I feel high anxiety coming up. So from now on Diazepam will only be used to taper, and in real emergencies like very high anxiety (I must add that although my anxiety levels can go very high I've never had a full blown panic attack except twice when I was on psychedelics).

I also switched to Phenibut FAA instead of the Hcl, and for now it seems less recreational, so that might help too.

Finally, I have some Fasoracetam. I don't know if you heard of it but it's supposed to upregulate GABA-B receptors. Not sure if it will work properly with your taper method though. Maybe right after I'm done with Phenibut it can speed up full recovery?
 
Won?t be a problem then, not to drink during your taper. For me the effect was that I felt some relief when I drunk some beers during my taper. Few hours after, I felt much worse than before the beers.

I?ve never felt an effect from l-theanine (or racetams) myself. I did read that some guy do.

When you do have a panc attack, caused by your taper, keep reminding yourself it?s just a panic attack. It will pass in a few hours. Don?t overdo the valium to combat the attack...

Vazkor
 
I find l-theanine in high doses really soothing, almost like a benzo in itself.

Don't have much experience with racetams except noopept (which isn't exactly a racetam but anyway). I really can't say if it had any effect or not, but I can definitely say it boosted psychedelics into difficult territories. 200 ug of lsd with noopept was one of the worst trips of my life, and one of the only times I had a full blown panic attack in my life (the other was with 2c-e, don't remember if I took noopept with it though).

I'm not really scared of having a panic attack to be honest. Well, of course I am scared by the idea ; what I'm trying to say is as I taper I don't think I will have a series of panic attacks because again my current dosage is not that heavy and I haven't been doing it for years and years. What I don't like, and already experience almost every day, is a constant state of mild anxiety during the day. But fuck it, I'm willing to go through it if it means I'll be off these substances.

And just this morning I realized lastly my anxiety has been worse the day after I drink, so yeah what you're saying totally makes sense now. Tonight is hopefully my last drink for a long time (I wish I could say forever but I relapsed so many times I know it's a fantasy lol).
 
Alcohol works on the same receptors as phenibut. You will probably (everyone is different) have problems if you keep using alcohol while stopping phenibut.

Maybe first stop alcohol, then phenibut, then Valium. . . . Maybe you should inform him/her about phenibut, prior to your next meeting.

Phenibut targets a different version of the same receptor as alcohol, so they're not really cross tolerant. Valium and alcohol DO target the same receptor (yes, different spots pedants). Phenibut has a bonus effect on the gabapentin receptor. All in all, they're a big gabaergic pile of depressants. And they all have nasty WD.

So your advice is pretty sound. Quit the sloppy ones first, and keep the one with the longest lifetime for last. So stop booze now, taper off the phenibut, then start discussing the diazepam. And yes, he should let his doctor know--everything there is legal.
 
^ If 10mg every 3 days holds you, you aren't dependent, physically on benzodiazepines; you could cold turkey

That makes things easier. Getting off alcohol should be first priority, and, not sure phenibut use, though reduce and taper to be safe.

Seriously 10mg dzp every days just is not physic depence, don't care if it's been a decade; cravings, sure, however if took 10mg Valium myself, would likely have multiple seizures topped off with a grand mal, and would be out of my head in a hospital after more than a couple of days; it would be like taking 15mg hydrocodone twice a week; you wouldn't need MMT, unless and until dose escalation of some form starts
 
It all depends on your drinking, really. You got to be honest with yourself, because the diazepam would be the first choice to prevent withdrawal from hooch.

If you only binge once a month, it's ok. But knock it off.

"Dependence" is getting (not semantic, contextual) here. Diazepam has a very long half-life and you wouldn't worry about WD at your use. You could just stop. I'd keep it going, because it'll help with the other two.

BUT, let's say for Lorne's sake, OP took 50mg every other day for two years. Could get away with CT, and you'd say not physically dependent. Unless you shot up with high-dose flumazenil. That'd be instant seizure, probably. So, dependent physically, in that sense.

But there's no need for a complicated taper at OP's current use, either.
 
Ok so if I hear you correctly, this is what I should do :

1st step - quit alcohol altogether
2nd step - taper off Phenibut (using Vazkor's method mentioned earlier sounds reasonable)
3rd step - quit Diazepam maybe by spacing my doses by one day every time (one dose in 4 days, next dose 5 days after, next one 6 days after etc). You think I should cut my pills in half in order to get 5 mg during the process?
 
Why not? You can make the taper as slow as your supply allows. Especially if you have problems after you've quit phenibut. These drugs have rebound anxiety that can come on a week after quitting, or longer. Low-grade anxiety and depression for a little while after you quit stuff, not part of withdrawal. So no reason to hurry everything up if you don't have to.

Oh, and yeah, that's basically the plan.
 
I think I can manage the anxiety with l-theanine and ashwagandha, I'm used to have low to mild anxiety anyway. Depression.. I've been depressed for the past 15 years and to be honest I hate everything about depression so if it gets worse I might consider getting on anti-depressants for a while cause at this stage of my life I can't afford to spend time doing nothing anymore.

Which brings me to the symptom I dread the most, insomnia. The past months my sleep schedule has gone completely nuts, I spend weeks as if I was on a meth binge, unable to sleep for 4-5 days then sleep 18 hours, or the opposite, I sleep 14-16 hours EVERY DAY. I should also add that the sleeping excessively every day part started only after I decided to take 5-htp as a supplement. I stopped it after 3 days but the sleep problems remained.

I think there's something seriously wrong with my serotonin receptors lol.
 
It all depends on your drinking, really. You got to be honest with yourself, because the diazepam would be the first choice to prevent withdrawal from hooch.

If you only binge once a month, it's ok. But knock it off.

"Dependence" is getting (not semantic, contextual) here. Diazepam has a very long half-life and you wouldn't worry about WD at your use. You could just stop. I'd keep it going, because it'll help with the other two.

BUT, let's say for Lorne's sake, OP took 50mg every other day for two years. Could get away with CT, and you'd say not physically dependent. Unless you shot up with high-dose flumazenil. That'd be instant seizure, probably. So, dependent physically, in that sense.

But there's no need for a complicated taper at OP's current use, either.

Diazepam?t1/2 is irrelevant; and at 10mg, no appreciatiable metabolites would be formed
Dzp is 1.5-2x as potent as primary metabolite, nordazepam, which is a partial agonist as well.?
At 10mg, young may eventually get 2mg of Nordazepam, which is literally like 50-75micrograms clonazepam; sane goes for Temaz, 15-20mg=10(5-7.5) dzp, or 0.5mg xanax; 2mg would be less than a a quarter mg Lorazepam, and also less than 0.1mg of alprazolam

Agree with prn use; 7.5-15ng as needed to het of alcohol and reduce phenibut;

Avoid taking it Evert day; taking 10-15mg to voor with dt?s, and then 5-10mg the nect day should not set you back, slip the next day

And try for comfort Meds, non-narcotic or low abuse/addiction potential?
 
Lorne, you need to work on your phone's autocorrect.

And why are you changing your mind about half-life? The longer the drug lasts in your system, the smoother the withdrawal. It's independent of any "duration of action".
 
Yea will work on it though in a hurry

Did not change my mind; T1/2 is irrelevant when it is 98% bound to plasma proteins and quickly resdristribted to adipose tissue

Take 80-90mg of methadone; 30-40 hours you will be SICK, never mind t1/2

Study it a bit; IV buprenorphine and oxycodone and hydrocodone same elimination, yet IV/IM bupe provides longer analgesia

And read about Tranxene;(or Nordazepam, same thing) it is recommended TID, or up to 4 times a day, and twice is the minimum, even though t1/2 can exceed 100 hours
 
The slower a drug leaves your system (ie., the longer its elimination half life) the smoother any withdrawals will be. It is a natural taper.

I'll arglebargle your opioid issue later, but came back to say:

I do NOT recommend prn benzo usage for alcohol withdrawal, you want a steady, constant level of benzo for that.

If you're already withdrawn, and you sub a benzo for a beer, that's problematic, but not dangerous like with alcohol withdrawal.
 
Top