I didn't start using bzd's until my head finally blew as a result of the 90's - 9/11 finished me off (I was so paranoid I thought I was going to get drafted into WW3), as the episode came at the end of an August that 1; saw my first long term relationship (3 years) end, then 2; the week after one of my closest friends and colleagues (another RMN) was busted after naively admitting in a police interview that he went raving with his wife and gave her the odd ecstasy tablet (4 year prison sentence for supllyng Class A despite only being physically caught with 1/2 oz. of weed), with the week after that 3;ending with another close friend and colleague dropping dead at work from a massive heart attack (he was 42).... so when it became obvious that smoking more weed and doing even more whizz and pills was not exactly helping the situation and I finally reached the point where most people grow up and stop doing drugs... a neighbour of my recent ex and mine presented me with a strip of his boyfriends Mogadon, something he had just discovered as the perfect antidote for rave / stim hangovers and a few days later, now living back with my ma and pa, I nervously decided to take one of the 10mg pills and having just begun to accept the fact that I was a screaming neurotic, I could not believe the total bliss as every negative thought and psychosomatic symptom completely melted away. It is the only drug that I can say I became instantly addicted to following the first dose and while I have just about managed to avoid a physical dependence through a combination of genuinely responsible use and by taking forced tolerance breaks during periods of completely irresponsible overuse I was and remain hopelessly psychologically dependant on them.
Once the nitrazepam had gone I would never come across the drug again until this summer but with one of my best friends monitoring the situation, he soon disclosed to me that during a recent period of problematic insomnia, his mother had given him 2 tablets of diazepam one night (as a middle aged Midwife and RGN on the wrong end of a troubled marriage she had shedloads of them prescribed) and after helping himself to a bottle, he allowed me to engage in a Saturday night of targeted psychonaughtistry - why his mother had thought that 2 tablets were a suitable answer for an acute attack of insomnia soon became somewhat baffling as they were 10mg. Although they did not feel quite as 'cozy' as the ni-pam it became instantly obvious that they were just as effective and after qualifying the following autumn I soon found that thanks to the ridiculous wastage of unused medicines brought into the hospital I had a limitless supply of diazepam, chlordiazepoxide and lorazepam, rescued from the box on the wards treatment room that contained items marked, but not monitored or audited, for destruction.
Things got a little tighter after I got a new job as a CPN, with my little raids on the medicine bin confined to the odd bank shift I would do on the wards but then we were sent anew Staff Grade doctor, a Dutch lunatic who would carelessly leave half smoked spliffs in his office and who had both bizarre ideas and prescribing habits. When a client of mine, a dual diagnosis patient who's drug habit was so poorly controlled he had to have his diazepam supervised by the local chemist 6 days a week along with his methadone, wanted to go away for the weekend at the last minute on a Friday I asked the doctor how he could possibly take his Rx with him. The doctor then introduced me to 'a drug for epilepsy, which I can give him a prescription for as despite being very similar to diazepam is not something many pharmacists are familiar with - its called Rivotril and although the literature will say otherwise, I find that the 0.5mg tablets are the same as a 7.5mg dose of diazepam'. When the doctor was finally fired, it soon became apparent that he had been prescribing huge amounts of it to all of his patients and it was with their safety genuinely in my mind when I suggested to our manager that she remove all of the unwarranted tablets from the patients home. It was only after I was given this task that I realised what I had done and by the time the pharmacy had destroyed all the crap I had brought them I had rescued no less than 600 2mg Rivotril clonazepam tablets, a stash that lasted me over 18 months and saw it become my new bzd of choice, having more bang for the buck than diazepam.
But despite my dependence on and obsession with bzd's, having tried any compound I have been able to get my hands on (although I prefer long acting brews to avoid multiple daily doses from rebound anxiety, I find midazolam and temazepam particularly lush) I have never managed to get Flunitrazepam in any fashion and despite being a regular user of diazepam for over 18 years, I have only ever had UK and foreign generic diazepam - while I cannot think of a crap product (every diazepam tablet has had an identical effect as opposed to the Auden clonazepam I usually get, which while it does the job fine never seems quite as good as the Roche or Galenika 'Rivotril') I have never taken or even physically seem in real life an actual Roche 'Valium' tablet in any dose.
Fin`