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What is the worst drug to have withdrawals from?

What is the worst drug to have withdrawals from?

  • Heroin

    Votes: 100 13.5%

  • Methadone

    Votes: 98 13.2%

  • Oxymorphone

    Votes: 27 3.6%

  • Tramadol

    Votes: 22 3.0%

  • Benzodiazepines

    Votes: 292 39.3%

  • GHB/GBL

    Votes: 20 2.7%

  • Alcohol

    Votes: 45 6.1%

  • Meth/Amphetamines

    Votes: 39 5.2%

  • Cocaine/Crack

    Votes: 13 1.7%

  • Ketamine

    Votes: 1 0.1%

  • SSRI/SNRI/MAOI/TCA/TeCA antidepressants

    Votes: 21 2.8%

  • Other Opiates/Opioids

    Votes: 65 8.7%
  • Total voters
    743
I was a raging drunk for about 7 years. After an ER visit, I had my "rock bottom / moment of clarity" and decided I would quit. Right then and there. Told the hospital doctor, he sent me home with a generous supply Librium. At that time I didn't have much of a benzo tolerance, so the Librium was very effective. It was a pretty painless detox/WD from alcohol. Haven't had a drink since that time, about 5 years clean.

Now, I haven't experienced an alcohol withdrawal without a comfort med, but from my understanding, it's brutal beyond words.

I've gone through opiate WD's more times than I can count. For me, at least, they're not as horrendous as I've seen described by others, at least physically. But mentally... that's where it gets me. While I was able to walk away from booze without a second though, I can't walk away from opiates. I keep on turning around, back into the warm embrace of opiates.

Sooooo for me, at least.. while neither WD's have been horrible, opiate WD is the "worst" in the sense that it's the substance I can't quit no matter how much I want to and know I need to.
 
shartito said:
I was a raging drunk for about 7 years. After an ER visit, I had my "rock bottom / moment of clarity" and decided I would quit. Right then and there. Told the hospital doctor, he sent me home with a generous supply Librium. At that time I didn't have much of a benzo tolerance, so the Librium was very effective. It was a pretty painless detox/WD from alcohol. Haven't had a drink since that time, about 5 years clean.

Now, I haven't experienced an alcohol withdrawal without a comfort med, but from my understanding, it's brutal beyond words.

I've gone through opiate WD's more times than I can count. For me, at least, they're not as horrendous as I've seen described by others, at least physically. But mentally... that's where it gets me. While I was able to walk away from booze without a second though, I can't walk away from opiates. I keep on turning around, back into the warm embrace of opiates.

Sooooo for me, at least.. while neither WD's have been horrible, opiate WD is the "worst" in the sense that it's the substance I can't quit no matter how much I want to and know I need to.
Click to expand...
I think that, with opiates, it's not realy like you can't quit no matter how much you want it, but more like you hardly ever REALY want to quit. Hell, Im clean for many months but Im still not sure how much I wanna be clean.
 
in my experience i would say opiate is worse, its that unexplainable feeling that gets me. Alcohol withdraw is a super fucking nightmare and then when your done, kinda shitty but whatever smoke a blunt and stop bitchin. Opiates are kinda...darker? mayby is the word... and when you done and into the paws phase it takes longer to get to the whatever smoke a blunt and stop bitchin phase. My experiences are almost a year of a gram a day IV h vs a year of 15 - 20 beers a day. I can say that during detox program for alcohol wd at day 3 of 5 i was doing pushups in my room. During 30 day rehab for H wd, i wasnt doing shit. Altho alcohol came later in life, i was older and strong in mind. Anyways stop being pussies and handle that shit and go do something great for the world. eat dicks, peace and love
 
I've never been in full blown DT benzo/alcohol withdrawal but I think I've come close, shakey and stuttery.

Opiate withdrawal I've been in full dopesickness many times.

I'd say the alcohol withdrawal is worse. I don't feel FEAR on opiate withdrawal, just sick and depressed and pain. Alcohol withdrawal I feel like I'm going insane.
 
Well, I've never experienced alcohol withdrawal. I have experienced mild benzo withdrawal though, but not nearly severe enough to feel like I have enough experience to say which is worse.

From what I hear, it sure sounds like alcohol withdrawal is worse. Which, as someone who's very very familiar with the horribleness of heroin withdrawal, scares the shit out of me.

Makes me glad I don't have an alcohol problem and have generally been able to control my benzo use, cause if it really is worse that heroin withdrawal.... I truly don't want to think about it.

That said, I don't think there's really much point in comparing. They are both hellishly awful.
 
In reader's opinions, how long can one use opiates before risking withdrawal? I have heard 4 days as the magic number, but is this reality or urban myth?
 
I've been through opiate withdrawal about 100 times and there were only approximately 2 times or so that I struggled severely to handle it. But out of curiosity, what are your symptoms personally from the benz? Love me my K Pins but I'm not trying to find a worse withdrawal to be captured in than the opiate variety.
 
+24 hours - maybe a bit anxiety
+48 hours - more anxiety. A strange drained body feeling. Not fatigue but more like living in gollums skin. Brain zaps and often accompanied twitching.
+72 hours - ever increasing brain zaps and twitching/ probably jolting. You can tell you lose a moment of consciousness during a brain zap, because music will skip/glitch when you experience one. It's very disconcerting and scary/weird. It makes me feel sickly thinking about it. You know the sound an old analogue television made when you switch it off? Like that loud squeak as the frequency is lost? Or a corrupt video/music file? It's exactly that. But the glitch is in your stream of consciousness, not a television broadcast. Grand mal seizure within roughly 1-12 hours, usually pretty much exactly on the 1-2 hours side..
You can probably expect more than one, and the next day in hospital.

- After effects - short term (as in previous past few days/weeks/months) memory loss, inability to walk in a straight line, severe anxiety and more twitches/jolts/brain zaps/jerking movements, lasting a few days to a week. Anxiety. Anxiety etc for up to a month/maybe more.

Timing varies depending on person/drug half life/length of use and dosage, but it's pretty much the same for everyone.

FTR a doctor told me those jerks/brain zaps (often at the same time) are very minor seizure activity in the brain . For some reason the brain zaps disgust me the most, because they are like an ominous countdown to a grand mal seizure, plus they sound/feel creepy and throw you off balance. Oh, and yeah, making music glitch. Urgh. Also FTR, they are noticeably different from MDMA/sleep paralysis style brain zaps.
 
Tranced said:
+24 hours - maybe a bit anxiety
+48 hours - more anxiety. A strange drained body feeling. Not fatigue but more like living in gollums skin. Brain zaps and often accompanied twitching.
+72 hours - ever increasing brain zaps and twitching/ probably jolting. You can tell you lose a moment of consciousness during a brain zap, because music will skip/glitch when you experience one. It's very disconcerting and scary/weird. It makes me feel sickly thinking about it. You know the sound an old analogue television made when you switch it off? Like that loud squeak as the frequency is lost? Or a corrupt video/music file? It's exactly that. But the glitch is in your stream of consciousness, not a television broadcast. Grand mal seizure within roughly 1-12 hours, usually pretty much exactly on the 1-2 hours side..
You can probably expect more than one, and the next day in hospital.

- After effects - short term (as in previous past few days/weeks/months) memory loss, inability to walk in a straight line, severe anxiety and more twitches/jolts/brain zaps/jerking movements, lasting a few days to a week. Anxiety. Anxiety etc for up to a month/maybe more.

Timing varies depending on person/drug half life/length of use and dosage, but it's pretty much the same for everyone.

FTR a doctor told me those jerks/brain zaps (often at the same time) are very minor seizure activity in the brain . For some reason the brain zaps disgust me the most, because they are like an ominous countdown to a grand mal seizure, plus they sound/feel creepy and throw you off balance. Oh, and yeah, making music glitch. Urgh. Also FTR, they are noticeably different from MDMA/sleep paralysis style brain zaps.
Click to expand...


Ugh, I'm sorry you had to go through that. That sounds terrifying. Nothing can help you prevent the siezures/brian zaps? What about other drugs that affect GABA but not as intensely as benzos.. such as gabapentin?
 
What you posted was exact the way Benzos did me, although I didn't know it was withdrawal. My husband used to ask me if I was okay and Id tell him I guess so and tell him what was happening and he didn't know it was withdrawal either because he's never touched even a Norco. Advil was his DOC.

I've never seen anyone explain it so perfectly. The brain zaps can almost drive you crazy, and having a body part that just jerks and hits something out of the nowhere was beyond scary. Not sure why my pain management doctor didn't tell me what was going on....

Mine was initially from Soma, and then Valium. I've been on Konopin constantly since then so I totally forgot what it felt like. The thought of going through that again at my age is not something I want to feel. Also, I was on Lyrica at the time and while it didn't help at all, I never had withdrawals if I just stopped taking it suddenly. I played with my medicine a lot, trying to find the perfect pain medicine with the perfect benzo that allowed me to function without tiredness but with low pain.
 
Withdrawal can be harsh, unless it?s done correctly.

I suggest a Valium taper. If done right, that is one of the smoothest withdrawals.

Valium is the gold standard to which other benzodiazepines are compaired.

The fact that you can withdrawal in doses as low as 2 mg, that?s the way to go, IMO.

Eventually you have to take the bandage off / jump off the drug, but even 2 mg pills are scored.

It may take you a while to do this, but high success rate.

Opiate withdrawal isn?t fun, but benzodiazepine withdrawal can kill you.

Switch to a comfortable dose of Valium and take your time lowering your dose.

If you don?t over think what your doing and roll with a slow withdrawal, you may not even notice the effects.

Bottom line, I would jump to Valium / diazepam and take my time coming off them.

I came off a clonazepam script in a week. I was taking 3 mg a day at the time.

Don?t do that. That?s where problems can pop up.
You can even lower whatever dose your on, slowly and taper straight off clonazepam slowly.

The slower the better. If you have to lower your dose 0.25 mg or 0.5 mg a month, so be it.

IMO.
 
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GetMeOutOfThisCRAP said:
Ugh, I'm sorry you had to go through that. That sounds terrifying. Nothing can help you prevent the siezures/brian zaps? What about other drugs that affect GABA but not as intensely as benzos.. such as gabapentin?
Click to expand...

The best way to prevent it is a long taper using diazepam, which is what I did. However, I was using a lot of etizolam powder and had to taper down to a dose that the medical service could realistically work with.

My seizures were generally caused by silly and preventable mistakes on my part. Things like taking my last dose before securing more benzos, or forgetting to dose in the morning when I got up, or letting my tolerance get up so high in the first place.

I'm unsure if gabapentin would help or not. It works at a different gaba receptor , and I genuinely don't know of it has powerful anticonvulsant properties which could prevent a benzo seizure. My experience with the other receptor gaba drugs such as phenibut and ghb is that they make me feel kind of twitchy anyway, and they might actually be able to trigger a seizure.
 
Hey there OP, let me preface this statement by saying, I understand what you're going through. I have been through pretty severe sedative/hypnotic withdrawal myself. I have never reached the state of Delirium Tremens or "D-T's", but I regularly carried around a .400 BAC when I ended up quitting. For the record, Delirium Tremens and sedative/hypnotic withdrawal are not synonymous. A lot of people believe they are, when DT's are actually a medical emergency in which death is significantly more likely.

Now, the problem with this specific thread and threads like it, is that what you are trying to do is pin the tail on a moving donkey. How a person interprets withdrawal is so highly subjective, that it is pretty much useless to attempt to illustrate to you exactly what it feels like. For instance, I know Restless Legs/Akathisia are my number one, worst symptom and this is true for many others. If you try to explain what Akathisia is to someone, even if they themselves have actually experienced it, is a crapshoot.

"It feels like ants crawling in my legs"

"It feels like ants crawling on my legs"

"It's not ants, it's more like electricity"

"Electricity? What? I just feel restless"

"It's none of that, I just can't seem to find a comfortable position to sleep in"

This is just an example of one individual symptom. This has been my real-life experience trying to relate my symptoms to other people. It is just not possible. We can certainly tell you things like, vomiting is likely; you are going to have trouble sleeping; your anxiety is going to be heightened; anon. This is the best that we can do. It always ends up being an exercise in futility and, being that we have limited space on our front page, we can't have this sort of conjecture taking up the space that is, in fact, dedicated solely to the practice and preaching of Harm Reduction principles.

I understand that you want to know exactly what you're up against, but everybody is different and you'll be lucky if you can even get a person to accurately convey their own symptoms in an understandable way. I'm sorry, but we really need to keep the front page dedicated to Harm Reduction.
 
Because I do see some value in this, I think I'm going to send this to drug culture.
 
Withdrew from 60mg diazepam, 8mg alprazolam, 10-20mg etizolam, and 1mg clonazolam (daily) at the same time while also kicking heroin/multiple strong opioids.

Felt like electricity was running through my body, and that was about the only thing I could feel because all my limbs felt like they weren't even attached to my body. Near constant spasms like I was gonna have a seizure, I'm really surprised that I didn't. Basically felt like my body was failing and I was on the verge of death. Glad that shit is over, I couldn't leave my bed for 5 days and felt superbly shitty for like 2 weeks afterwards.
 
I'm glad all of you survived this stuff. I haven't hear of etizolam's existence until a month ago, and apparently it is considered the most euphoric benzo but only findable mostly in powder form?


....


I would like to try one day ;)
 
I have a benzo script for panic attacks and (having endured benzo withdrawal in the past) I use it sparingly (no more than 2mg a day and not every day) but still have muscle twitching/jolting after I do use it. Full blown benzo withdrawals are hell. Shakiness, anxiety, nausea, brain fog and in really bad cases, hallucinations and seizures.
 
I've never experienced full benzo withdrawal but I had some rebound anxiety after using xanax for sleep for a few weeks. It felt as if 'something is very wrong here,' like 'something really bad is about to happen' with a sense of 'impending doom'.
 
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