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Benzos Diazepam Withdrawal

Tommyboy, that's an interesting method.

I have an appointment with a new doctor tomorrow and luckily I've been keeping a journal of my tapering. I'm going to see if I can't get the 2mg pills from this new doctor. It shouldn't be terribly hard to convince a doctor to give me the 2mg pills when I can show 107 days of taper logs detailing the dose and the time every day. Originally I was just keeping the log for myself but now it appears that it has an added benefit that I never thought of - getting a new doctor to trust me.

If I can get the 2mg pills, I'm going to slow my taper down. Tuesday makes 21 days since my last cut and I'm not sure I'm ready to make another cut. I seem to do the worst with the 1.25mg cuts, probably due to uneven distribution in the pills, so I'm debating on holding at 7.5mg for a month and then cutting 2.5 the next month but trying the staggering like you did.

Yeah Crampz, its ridiculous how you feel great one day and then feel like you're on your death bed the next...

Sorry to hear about your unemployment situation. I know I wouldn't be able to hold down a job of ANY kind right now. Do you have the option of filing for disability or something? I'm really hoping that I get approved on the 20th of February... I need it desperately. I don't see how I'm ever going to get better when I'm always so stressed about money. Disability would give me 1400 a month as opposed to the 175 I get right now and I would be able to do things that are currently out of reach for me like yoga and seeing a naturopath.

I always thought that I was a very heavy drinker before benzos but I now realize that it got much worse when I was put on them. In fact, while I would binge here and there, I never went on multi day benders and rarely was left with a debilitating next day when I binged whereas when I started Xanax, it wasn't long before I was drinking daily and then the next day started becoming a non-stop anxiety attack which prompted me to just keep drinking for a few days to avoid that crash. My alcohol cravings have gone pretty much to zero since I started my taper so that says something. Before benzos, I was a social drinker but I far preferred psychedelics and MDMA to alcohol pretty much universally.
 
I've been trying to reply to this for a couple of days, but whenever ive tried it says the server is too busy.... Happy new year! :)

Yeah that would be awesome if you could, but even the 2.5mg staggering is probably a much better idea than the 1.25mg. Not only about the distribution within the pills but actually getting a pill split into equal size 'quarters' is next to impossible, so the dose probably does vary significantly from day to day but jumping off at 2.5mg would be really really hard I imagine so if you can get the 2mg pills that would be a godsend!

I'll have to ask my doctor about the whole disability thing, I dont think I could hack going on 'unemployment' I was on it before and it just fucking sucked. You have to go in every 2 weeks and explain why you havent found a job and they expect you to keep a diary of all the jobs you applied for etc and if they arent satisfied you are trying they just stop your payments. The whole process is so fucking stressful.

Personally, for me, it would be unfair to blame my alcohol problems on benzos, Ive always been a drunk. In fact, I feel like a total asshole because I upset a family member by saying one of the reasons I won't ever have children is because addictions and mental health problems run in families and wmy family has a big history of both, I dont want to risk passing either on to anyone else. It is true but I should probably have just kept my thoughts to myself.
 
Yeah lol it was brutal the past couple days. I'm a moderator now and I couldn't moderate! LOL!

That was kind of my idea with the staggering. My therapy appointment actually went rather well (although I had a breakdown, I kind of needed to have it) and I see the psychiatrist on the 14th. I doubt its going to be a problem getting me on the 2's because my therapist was going to get me in for an appointment with the psych that day if I was running low on my Valium but I told her I'm fine (yet more bonus points in my book). They're probably going to try to feed me some other crap though. I suppose I can always lie and say I'm taking it. I can't take lithium or depakote which are the two that would require me to get my levels tested anyway. My therapist thinks I have undiagnosed PTSD that is underlying ALL of my problems that tracks all the way back to my childhood. We were able to make a rough timeline of when shit hit the fan in my life and we were able to directly draw correspondence between the timing of other events such as my drug abuse patterns, to things that were traumatic and could easily be associated with my childhood trauma. She's a fantastic therapist, I usually don't trust them at all so I run circles of lies around them and they never have a clue. Obviously that defeats the point of therapy though and so I flat out told her that I used to do that and I'm not doing it this time.

That's crazy that they make you go through all of that. I was on unemployment for 9 months and they never even asked to see my employment contacts log in that 9 months and I just had to sign up online, never had to go into the work center.

I'm not blaming my alcohol problem on benzos - I'm saying it got worse after I started with benzos. I was already a binge drinker but I wouldn't go on benders where I was consistently drunk every waking hour for days at a time. Instead I'd get royally tanked one or two nights a week. After the benzos though, I started putting away a 6 pack a night minimum (I would grab a random 6 pack of beer at the liquor store on my way home from work and if they didn't have a 6 pack, it was a 12 pack that I ended up drinking) and eventually I moved away from beer to hard liquor every day.

Its funny that you mention that about kids. I said the EXACT same thing. Especially with my diagnosis as being bipolar... With my luck I'd have a boy and he'd have a 90% chance of inheriting it. No thank you.
 
ha! thats uncanny, the therapist I have been seeing I told her the exact same thing, basically that I lie all the time to therapists etc. Shes been pretty helpful :). It sounds like your new one is awesome. I hope you do get the pills, at least over here when I asked for them he saw it as me trying to get off them and seemed pretty easy about switching them over (I have to wait til i pick up my next lot to see whether he has done it though).

Maybe if you explain to them that you don't really want to be on meds and you are making progress with therapy etc they won't try and put you on something. In my country in the past 4-5 years I would say there has been a swing away from just putting people on drugs. Especially SSRIs and the like, before they were prescribed for pretty much anything but now doctors seem much more reluctant.

It's interesting in that as I have gotten older, there has definately been a big swing away from me doing MDMA etc and become very dependant on alcohol/benzos to 'calm me' but when I was late teens/early 20s I was much more interested in MDMA. To be honest I abused the crap out of it, part of me wonders if that has contributed to me being so anxious all the time.

Anyway, thank god bluelight is back :D I cut to 6.25 earlier this week and the other day I just started randomly 'trembling' like miniture spasms all over my body, was very odd so I'm expecting this latest cut to really suck!
 
We have some extremely interesting parallels all the way around. That's nuts about the therapist!

Around here, we very much have the culture of "the solution to everything is to feed them more drugs" and since this is a community clinic, I'm not expecting any miracles. With that said, my skills with lying are top notch, right up there with my bullshit skills so I'll be fine either way :p

You bring up another interesting point... because that's exactly what I did. Although I started out in my teens with psychedelics then moved to MDA and MDMA later but my anxiety didn't start up until I got heavy into MDMA and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a direct correlation. My first panic attack was precipitated by smoking a bowl while I was on pills for my birthday and it still ranks as one of the worst panic attacks I have ever had. It wasn't long after that when I started having them constantly and I went on benzos and started drinking more. I never even had a panic attack from the crazy psychedelic doses that I did and I used to abuse the shit out of some extremely toxic chemicals!

Sorry to hear that your cut isn't going so well. That's why I've decided to hold my cuts for 30 days from now on. Its getting more intense with each cut and I'm afraid if I keep up the 14 day pace I'll end up with PAWS at the end and have to reinstate on a different benzo (it seems like every time I go down in dose on a benzo, if I try to go up, they stop working and I have to switch to another one - that's how its been with Xanax and Klonopin at least) or worse.
 
^ Same! To be totally honest my first ever panic attack was caused by methylone, not quite MDMA but nevermind, it was absol;utely terrifying and I had them pretty much constantly after that, like daily basis.

I think now we are down to pretty low doses it doesnt seem to bother me as much about it taking a little longer, when it was 20mg I was kinda in a rush to get off it but now it doesnt bother me so much. I would say my worst symptom is probably the really awful depression I seem to get a few days after I cut my dose. I dont know whether it is the cut or listening to what a miracle my cousin is and how he is going to start the next google and how im such a loser or a combination of the two but I feel really shitty now.

Thats awesome that you managed to get to see a therapist and psych at a community clinic, I'm not not too sure what that is to be honest haha but I understand healthcare costs over there are ridiculous. Its taken me about 2 years to get 6 CBT sessions on our health service! It is helping, more than just taking pills and hoping everything 'gets better' anyway, so hopefully this can be a new start for you too :).
 
i see. My name doesn't mean i like it or take it. I took it 1nce out of all the hype about it & we all agreed it was complete shit so never again. Yes im on a high dose at da moMent hope doc works out a taper. Best of luck 2 u :)
 
I'm hanging in there, it seems whenever I cut the dose I get extremely depressed. It seems to be really lingering now though. It usually gets better but this time it doesnt want to.

But to be honest it is prolly just much more me waking up to the absolute mess I have made of my life. I am 28 and this is the closest I have been to anything resembling sober since I reached legal adulthood and everyone else has been building lives/careers and Im just like 'great, I'm nearly 30 and I have nothing, I've just been walking around in a stupour for the past decade'. FML.
 
Yeah I'm in the same boat Crampz. I turned 29 in October and I haven't been truly sober for any significant period of time since I was 17...

I'm still at 7.5mg. I see the psychiatrist on Tuesday and we're moving on the 23rd so I'm going to hold off until we have finished moving before I make my next cut.

Hopefully I can get the liquid Valium so I can start making incremental daily micro cuts. My goal now is to be off by July so I can move to Cali and be sober when I do. I *MAY* be adding in neurontin to see how it works but in 100mg, not 300mg increments.
 
MagickalKat777 said:
Yeah I'm in the same boat Crampz. I turned 29 in October and I haven't been truly sober for any significant period of time since I was 17...

I'm still at 7.5mg. I see the psychiatrist on Tuesday and we're moving on the 23rd so I'm going to hold off until we have finished moving before I make my next cut.

Hopefully I can get the liquid Valium so I can start making incremental daily micro cuts. My goal now is to be off by July so I can move to Cali and be sober when I do. I *MAY* be adding in neurontin to see how it works but in 100mg, not 300mg increments.
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I was on 7.5mg for the last 6 months or so before I went to detox and got off of benzos for good. I know for a fact that the dose of Librium that I got in detox was way stronger than the 7.5mg of Valium, but I guess they do that so it builds up in you then slowly metabolizes out of you. I had an easier time stopping after that detox than I did with finishing my taper even after getting down to less than 0.5mg of Valium a day before trying to stop altogether. I'm sure that my state of mind going into it had a lot to do with it so your final jump may go better than mine.
 
Tommyboy said:
I was on 7.5mg for the last 6 months or so before I went to detox and got off of benzos for good. I know for a fact that the dose of Librium that I got in detox was way stronger than the 7.5mg of Valium, but I guess they do that so it builds up in you then slowly metabolizes out of you. I had an easier time stopping after that detox than I did with finishing my taper even after getting down to less than 0.5mg of Valium a day before trying to stop altogether. I'm sure that my state of mind going into it had a lot to do with it so your final jump may go better than mine.
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Yeah if I don't succeed this time, I don't know what I'm going to do. I've tried the detox thing. It doesn't work for me. I'm pushing myself really hard. I think the biggest contributing factor to my successes thus far has been the fact that I dropped all other substances, even a pack a day smoking habit since I was 17, and I've isolated myself pretty much the whole time.

That said, I've given serious thought to ending my suffering if things don't go well at my disability hearing.
 
MagickalKat777 said:
Yeah if I don't succeed this time, I don't know what I'm going to do. I've tried the detox thing. It doesn't work for me. I'm pushing myself really hard. I think the biggest contributing factor to my successes thus far has been the fact that I dropped all other substances, even a pack a day smoking habit since I was 17, and I've isolated myself pretty much the whole time.

That said, I've given serious thought to ending my suffering if things don't go well at my disability hearing.
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The thing that helped me stay off benzos after detox was momentum, meaning after a few days off I just never wanted to go back so kept moving forward with a full head of steam and I haven't looked back since. There was no way that I was going to take another benzo and restart my withdrawals after having a few days off.

I think that's why the detox worked better than the taper for me. With the detox I was given enough where my withdrawals didn't really start for like 6 days after I got out of detox, so that was 6 days clean that I didn't want to go back on. With the taper though you feel the withdrawals right away which can make it harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
 
Tommyboy said:
The thing that helped me stay off benzos after detox was momentum, meaning after a few days off I just never wanted to go back so kept moving forward with a full head of steam and I haven't looked back since. There was no way that I was going to take another benzo and restart my withdrawals after having a few days off.

I think that's why the detox worked better than the taper for me. With the detox I was given enough where my withdrawals didn't really start for like 6 days after I got out of detox, so that was 6 days clean that I didn't want to go back on. With the taper though you feel the withdrawals right away which can make it harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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I don't know what it is with me but I actually metabolize Librium and Tranxene very quickly. I feel the withdrawal within 2 days. Klonopin takes about a week for me and Valium takes about 10 days before I'm in full-blown withdrawal.

I think what's driving me this time is that I've been through the full withdrawal and I know that I'm fine. Not to mention that I actually WANT to come off this time. I was never really serious about it before (although with this most recent detox I was but it still failed miserably).
 
Crampz said:
i got drunk tonight, i fucking hate myseld
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Hang in there man. This is just a speed-bump in your road to getting off of benzos. I used to drink too, and in my eight years of being off of benzos I never thought I could live without them. It's been 6 months since I've taken a benzo now, and I have less anxiety now than I did during my last 3-4 years on the medication. You'll be alright, just stay focused.
 
I guess for the withdrawls from valium to work, you have to be on it for longer than 2 weeks with daily use right? Cause I just had a friend bring me 6 boxes from Brazil, where they are like $3 for a 10mg box of 30. and since he won't just give me them all at once(he thinks i'm going to try and commit suicide or sell them.) Sometimes when i run out, i can go a few days without it, till i get it again...but then again, I've been using dope everyday, so that's what's giving me withdrawls when i don't use it.
 
Beefy said:
I guess for the withdrawls from valium to work, you have to be on it for longer than 2 weeks with daily use right? Cause I just had a friend bring me 6 boxes from Brazil, where they are like $3 for a 10mg box of 30. and since he won't just give me them all at once(he thinks i'm going to try and commit suicide or sell them.) Sometimes when i run out, i can go a few days without it, till i get it again...but then again, I've been using dope everyday, so that's what's giving me withdrawls when i don't use it.
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With no prior use I would say that 1 month of daily use is the cutoff for most people where dependence starts to get bad. After 2 weeks you would probably experience some withdrawals, but they would mostly be rebound effects which include increased anxiety and problems sleeping.

As for foreign prescription drugs they are not always legit, especially if they are ordered online. Even if they are bought legitimately there the regulations are not as tight in other countries so you might not be getting the full amount as stated on the boxes.
 
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