Tapering (Diazepam) No matter how slow I go, it’s just not enough...

[MagickalKat777]

I don’t even know why I am posting this right now. I guess I am coming here trying to prevent myself from making a stupid decision and throwing away 2 1/4 years of tapering, 2 1/2 years without alcohol, 1 1/2 years without nicotine, and somewhere around 6 years without other drugs.

I have been prescribed benzos since 2004 for panic disorder (and later, agoraphobia and generalized anxiety disorder). Started off with Xanax, hit 8mg a day and cut over to Klonopin, hit 6mg a day and it stopped working entirely, been on Valium since 2010 in the 20-30mg range with the occasional extra pill for serious anxiety.

I have managed to taper down from the 20mg I started on to a current dose of 1.6mg. The first 14mg was all dry cuts and I have been liquid tapering with my own solution for this last 6mg. when I first brought the taper plan up to my psychiatrist, I told her I expected to be off 6/2019. That obviously was way too optimistic. Fortunately, she has been patient with me as I navigated the waters of doing a liquid taper behind her back when she declined to give me liquid diazepam to do it.

Never in my life would I have thought anything could be so hard. I mean my withdrawal symptoms are so intense that my other mental health disorders (like my bipolar) don’t have enough time to manifest because I’m so exhausted. My anxiety has always been debilitating and I used to drink alcohol just to be able to leave the house and be somewhat productive but ever since I hit 2mg, it’s been exceptionally rough. I can’t even begin to put into words the things that go on but people who have been through benzo withdrawal know - the tinnitus keeps me up at night, the chest pains and nerve pain and sensitivity to hot and cold, the nonstop feeling that everything in the world is wrong, being so lost in the midst of all of this that your therapist sees you literally pulling yourself back from spiraling into dissociative states right there in her office (which you can only visit once a month at the most and have to prepare the entire month for, other times having to cancel and do a session or two over the phone), the agoraphobia, the intense irrational fear, the total inability to recognize the person you see in the mirror almost to the point of immense rejection, oh and the scrambled thoughts like this jumbled mess of text I just tapped out...

I kind of lost my point here... I have found that I am far stronger than I ever would have imagined previously but this is destroying me and I’m trying to hold on to some hope that I can come out on the other side of this and actually be able to have a sober, productive, and happy life that I know I deserve but it’s really hard to see that far ahead when things are going so awful right now. My current taper plan has me going down .005mg per day, which at my current 1.6mg comes out to 4.375% per 2 weeks. Everything I have ever read said this is more than slow enough but it doesn’t seem to be the case for me.

What has me really freaked out is that my roommates and I are planning to move next June and my SSDI review should be somewhere around February next year. I can’t seem to convince myself that as long as I am participating in therapy and working with my psychiatrist that I won’t lose my SSDI and it’s pushing me to push myself to go quicker. It’s also not helping that I am so unable to function that I spend my life with King of the Hill in Kodi on shuffle play for background noise on the TV while I sit all day on my phone. None of these things are healthy and I don’t know how much longer my mental state will support me being cooped up in my room putting all of my energy into tapering.

Fuck! I know all of that was a mess and I’m sorry but I’m not in a state of mind where I can fix it right now... :/

I don’t know what I am looking for with this post or what I need. I just really hope that I can make it to the end. It’s looking very unlikely that my taper will be over before October 2021 and from what I understand, thats when the actual healing begins so I’ll have even more years stuck in my room. I don’t know that I’m that strong... I quite frankly don’t know how I’ve even made it this far. A look through my posts here would probably make anyone wonder how I’m even still alive, I know I sure do..

 

[KetamineFean]

fighter

 

[cdin]

I just got done with a brutal valium taper. Finally jumped at .5 mg. tinnitus, shakiness and other things still an issue, but I am sleeping, the chest/heart problems have subsided (at 7mg I entered ER w 140/110 bp and 130 pulse, walls crawling, auditory hallucinations). I've done it over a 5 month period. What made it possible was doses of amanita muscaria. Amanita dreamer - explains what is going on with it. muscimol is the only gaba-a agonist that truly acts as a receptor ligand (everything else is allosteric modulator, voltage modulator including ethanol, diazepam etc. etc.) - Additionally, a friend of mine who runs an ibogaine clinic in Mexico reported they were using them to get people off before ibo. He also reported having access to FMRI and functional changes observed in benzo addicts pre/post muscimol. I can say anecdotally in my experience this seems to be the case. went from every .5 being like dropping a handle of whiskey to a relatively smooth drop. I will say, i ate it for too long a period once and had some slight weirdness, but in one off dosages or every couple of days during active taper it is an absolute godsend. I have been a longtime drinker (retired) and abuser of just about every kind of gaba chem. I never really effed w diazepam on a daily basis til a close friend died. That, as they say, was that. 6 most later I am still trying to put the pieces back -- but I feel stable, able to think, and like I am healing. You can do it.

 

[scruffy-ninja!]

You're doing really well. It sounds as though you have had a pretty heavy benzo dependence for years so getting off them is going to be incredibly hard. Maybe you should start planning for the eventuality that you're taper will take you into next year; so you're emotionally prepared and don't see it as a failure. I can see why you're frustrated but just remember you're doing an amazing job. You have a target and you're sticking to it. Continue and don't beat yourself up.

 

[MagickalKat777]

I just got done with a brutal valium taper. Finally jumped at .5 mg. tinnitus, shakiness and other things still an issue, but I am sleeping, the chest/heart problems have subsided (at 7mg I entered ER w 140/110 bp and 130 pulse, walls crawling, auditory hallucinations). I've done it over a 5 month period. What made it possible was doses of amanita muscaria. Amanita dreamer - explains what is going on with it. muscimol is the only gaba-a agonist that truly acts as a receptor ligand (everything else is allosteric modulator, voltage modulator including ethanol, diazepam etc. etc.) - Additionally, a friend of mine who runs an ibogaine clinic in Mexico reported they were using them to get people off before ibo. He also reported having access to FMRI and functional changes observed in benzo addicts pre/post muscimol. I can say anecdotally in my experience this seems to be the case. went from every .5 being like dropping a handle of whiskey to a relatively smooth drop. I will say, i ate it for too long a period once and had some slight weirdness, but in one off dosages or every couple of days during active taper it is an absolute godsend. I have been a longtime drinker (retired) and abuser of just about every kind of gaba chem. I never really effed w diazepam on a daily basis til a close friend died. That, as they say, was that. 6 most later I am still trying to put the pieces back -- but I feel stable, able to think, and like I am healing. You can do it.

That’s a rather interesting idea. I actually used to be fascinated by amanita muscaria but never got around to trying it. Unfortunately I am terrified to try anything at this point. I was having paradoxical reactions long before I started tapering. My psychiatrist has been trying to help me along with various prescriptions but I never take them and always lie and tell her they didn’t work for whatever reason. I asked her for 7.5mg mirtazapine last time, something that used to work very well for me when I have been in benzo withdrawal before (I believe I have kindled which is complicating the taper quite a bit - lots of attempts to get off this crap over the years) but I have just had so many issues with tachycardia with meds that I am scared to try it. I am glad to hear that you are recovering though.

You're doing really well. It sounds as though you have had a pretty heavy benzo dependence for years so getting off them is going to be incredibly hard. Maybe you should start planning for the eventuality that you're taper will take you into next year; so you're emotionally prepared and don't see it as a failure. I can see why you're frustrated but just remember you're doing an amazing job. You have a target and you're sticking to it. Continue and don't beat yourself up.

It’s so weird how heavily dependent I became considering I never actually abused my benzos. I would have thought that quitting drinking and smoking would have made things much easier but that obviously helps with the tachycardia and BP and not much else.

It does seem like I will unfortunately have to push the taper out and just do it. I think a lot of the stress centers on my disability review next year. If I lose my SSDI, it’s going to be the end of me. I know in my mind that I am way too smart and proactive to ever lose my benefits but the subconscious part of my brain won’t accept it. I am going to drop my dosage to a fixed rate of 4% and see if that helps the symptoms. It’s insane how much tiny little doses of diazepam affect withdrawal symptoms weeks down the line.

Thanks for the replies. I actually finally feel a bit rested after I crashed last night. Getting everything going on in my head typed out helped me to let go of a lot of it. I know I have a lot of work to do but if I have gotten this far, there’s no way I could let myself give up now. I wish I knew benzos were this bad though because I would have gotten a gym membership and a therapist. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can’t change the past so I’ll just have to keep focusing on the future.

 

[cdin]

i totally understand, I was in same boat, heavily kindled -- CBD, GABA supplements etc all made things exponentially worse. The amanita can straight sub for valium, no problem. I was shocked at the effects, but can confirm, you just feel your gaba receptors filled up and the come off is much different, not sure why it is so much more forgiving, but that's my experience. Totally understand if you're too traumatized to try anything atm, but I'm tellin ya - godsend.

 

[MagickalKat777]

i totally understand, I was in same boat, heavily kindled -- CBD, GABA supplements etc all made things exponentially worse. The amanita can straight sub for valium, no problem. I was shocked at the effects, but can confirm, you just feel your gaba receptors filled up and the come off is much different, not sure why it is so much more forgiving, but that's my experience. Totally understand if you're too traumatized to try anything atm, but I'm tellin ya - godsend.

Was it like an intoxicating level of dose needed? I know it sounds crazy from someone who used to be a hardcore psychonaut like myself but I kind of have been enjoying not being intoxicated. I have money in the bank, excellent credit scores, and I haven’t had to worry about being homeless for doing stupid crap lately. The taper is AWFUL like I never could have imagined and I am seeking relief for sure so I will investigate it, I just need to start gathering all of the info.

 

[cdin]

absolutely not. Average intoxicating dose is 10 - 15g. I was taking 1 - 3g doses. At that level it has no other effects than the gaba agonism, no deleriant or intoxicating effects. It would make my muscles and breathing smooth, colors not bright, tachycardia in check and allow me to drop .5mg at a time and then stabilize for a few days before repeating. I used it like that to rapidly go from 7mg down to 1. the last mg was a pain in the ass, but I'm finally off of it. It was night and day difference and seemed to provide enough background agonism to allow my receptors to even out without triggering a cascade of negative effects (like would happen if i tried a little background alcohol or barbiturates)

 

[MagickalKat777]

Thanks for the info. I doubt I’ll be able to find any until the fall but I’ll do some research on it in the meantime. Even overdose/poisoning literature mentions bradycardia rather than tachycardia so it might be okay for me.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

OP- don't lose heart you have done so well, keep going and you will get there. I'm going to give my opinion on this situation, please dont be in any way offended by this because it represents something different to what you have done and most other people are talking about.

Personally I have never understood why people engage in such long drawn out tapers. Ok sure, going nice and slow at the patients own speed is absolutely the right way to do a benzo taper. However, if you're down to 10mg or less where the risk of seizure is minimal and it's fairly 'safe' to do so, why not just jump off and be done with it if the taper is not actually working to allow you to come down comfortably anymore? It will most likely be a week of lying in bed feeling a little bit rough and then you're basically done with the acute withdrawals. Not to say it's a walk in the park but for me it was not terrible to jump off at 10mg. I do understand that in some very care cases there are environmental factors that make it impossible to organise a week in bed. I also understand that you have been on them for a long time and that will make things a little harder than for someone who had been on a similar dose for a shorter duration. However for some people the end of the taper process will just never be comfortable and it becomes this lingering drawn out and painful affair.

I hear many stories of people getting really stuck in this long drawn out process of coming down super slowly and feeling slightly off key for months and months and months. Last benzo detox I did I came down from 200mg to 10mg over the course of the year and by the end I was so fed up of never quite feeling ok and the constant anxiety i jumped off there and ten days later I was superficially fine. Whilst it sounds like your everyday levels of anxiety are much higher than mine, you might find that actually if you detoxed then after the acute withdrawal things might be easier. I feel like you may be in a situation where you're taking an amount of diazepam that is never quite enough and that is adding on top of the natural level of anxiety you experience rather than fixing it. People who dont suffer from anxiety normally at all often develop it while tapering, so it stands to reason that it may well be making things worse rather than better at the moment.


Anyway.....that's just another perspective for you to think about. If I was in your situation then 100% I would be looking to prepare all the goodies I could to make a detox more comfortable and then just getting it over and done with. Whichever route you go I wish you strength, you CAN do it

 

[nznity]

Y not just stay on it for life? :S

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

Loads of reasons.

Not saying it isn't sometimes the right thing to do, but staying on it for life then means that for the rest of your life obtaining and consuming benzos will be your priority above anything else, and that is no doubt a shit way to live that should only be entertained if all other avenues have been exhausted.

 

[MagickalKat777]

OP- don't lose heart you have done so well, keep going and you will get there. I'm going to give my opinion on this situation, please dont be in any way offended by this because it represents something different to what you have done and most other people are talking about.

Personally I have never understood why people engage in such long drawn out tapers. Ok sure, going nice and slow at the patients own speed is absolutely the right way to do a benzo taper. However, if you're down to 10mg or less where the risk of seizure is minimal and it's fairly 'safe' to do so, why not just jump off and be done with it if the taper is not actually working to allow you to come down comfortably anymore? It will most likely be a week of lying in bed feeling a little bit rough and then you're basically done with the acute withdrawals. Not to say it's a walk in the park but for me it was not terrible to jump off at 10mg. I do understand that in some very care cases there are environmental factors that make it impossible to organise a week in bed. I also understand that you have been on them for a long time and that will make things a little harder than for someone who had been on a similar dose for a shorter duration. However for some people the end of the taper process will just never be comfortable and it becomes this lingering drawn out and painful affair.

I hear many stories of people getting really stuck in this long drawn out process of coming down super slowly and feeling slightly off key for months and months and months. Last benzo detox I did I came down from 200mg to 10mg over the course of the year and by the end I was so fed up of never quite feeling ok and the constant anxiety i jumped off there and ten days later I was superficially fine. Whilst it sounds like your everyday levels of anxiety are much higher than mine, you might find that actually if you detoxed then after the acute withdrawal things might be easier. I feel like you may be in a situation where you're taking an amount of diazepam that is never quite enough and that is adding on top of the natural level of anxiety you experience rather than fixing it. People who dont suffer from anxiety normally at all often develop it while tapering, so it stands to reason that it may well be making things worse rather than better at the moment.


Anyway.....that's just another perspective for you to think about. If I was in your situation then 100% I would be looking to prepare all the goodies I could to make a detox more comfortable and then just getting it over and done with. Whichever route you go I wish you strength, you CAN do it

I understand why people would think that such a jump would be advisable but it’s well known that in people like myself that actually needed the drug and weren’t doing anything recreational with it, we end up in severe protracted withdrawal. My brain already wasn’t functioning properly when I started taking the benzos and the fact that benzos and alcohol are the only things I have ever found that allowed me to go out and live life without having to deal with the full brunt of panic (in the case of alcohol, once I was good an inebriated it was near impossible to have a panic attack unless I mixed stimulants into the situation), it seems very likely that my anxiety has been GABAergic from the start.

I am not concerned about seizures. I never have been concerned about seizures. What I am concerned about is ending up in the ER and having to reinstate to the full 20mg I was on before and throwing away 2 1/4 years of my life. I already had one taper blow up in my face when my doctor at the time demanded I go on carbamazepine. I was down to 5mg and a week on carbamazepine I went into full blown withdrawal and was unable to salvage my taper. Ended up right back where I started.

I also have sedative-hypnotic kindling which makes this even more critical for me to be successful. My last time drinking was from 12/31/2017 to 1/2/2018 and I remember how sick I got. I was actually going into withdrawal while I was intoxicated and when I came off the end of that bender I spent two days popping 5-10mg of diazepam every few hours because I was shaking so bad, my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t breathe. I was in DTs territory despite my consumption being FAR lower than what I used to drink. Basically, I have been on so many different sedatives and been through abrupt withdrawal so many times whether it was a drinking binge that ended abruptly or me ending up in the psych ward and essentially getting CT’d off my benzos and over time that causes you to become more sensitive to the withdrawal period. Its very likely that I won’t ever be able to drink or take a sedative again once I am done with this taper.

Keep in mind that many of us who are on these tapers have tried numerous methods to come off these meds unsuccessfully before. I’ve tried rapid taper; I’ve tried medically assisted taper; I’ve tried cold turkey; I’ve tried using DXM, memantine, ketamine, tiagabine, gabapentin, and many other drugs legal and otherwise; and I’ve previously tried a drawn out taper where I was dry cutting. This is the last effort for me before I decide to punch out permanently so it’s quite literally life or death at this point. It’s extremely likely that me jumping off early would result in PAWS and me killing myself.

 

[MagickalKat777]

Y not just stay on it for life? :S

Well because they don’t work anymore? People don’t normally seek to get off of something that is working for them. I am completely immune to Xanax and Klonopin - I have taken 10 of them and felt absolutely nothing - and diazepam is getting to the point that it doesn’t do anything for me either. If I chose to stay on it and hike my dose to the 40mg or so range I would need, it wouldn’t be long before it would crap out entirely and I would have to turn to barbiturates to not end up dead.

Benzo withdrawal is nasty fucking business. When I was in Louisiana and I got sent to the psych ward, they did a three day rapid taper off my Klonopin and I rapidly deteriorated. This place used ziprasidone shots to take down unruly patients and I remember ripping my shirt off because I was on fire and begging them to give me a ziprasidone shot so I could sleep. They obliged and all it did was make my pupils blow (along with some mild visual distortions) and take away some of the burning sensation. They couldn’t believe that my scrawny ass didn’t get knocked out cold. The next day I had another episode and they gave me two shots and it did *zero* - I gained a complete tolerance to it. I was in there until day 10 when they kicked me out because I was in my room unable to eat, unable to go to group. My pulse was 205 and my BP was 170/87. I remember sitting there waiting for the cab to take me home and I had the nurse pass me my belongings. They took all of my Klonopin but they missed some of my Valium so while she wasn’t looking, I popped 5mg. About 10 minutes later I felt my heart rate go down. I got back to my dad’s place and took another 5mg while watching Breaking Bad with him and then I headed out to the cottage and took another 5mg and I was able to go to sleep. Woke up the next day and found a doctor nearby who happily wrote me a script for 20mg a day and I was fine until I tried tapering a year later.

I have been labeled a lifer by multiple doctors but I am not getting any positive effects from it. If I actually updose, I have increased anxiety and panic when it hits me about 40 minutes later. The higher the dose, the worse the anxiety goes. It’s not at all uncommon for people who are heavily benzo dependent to have paradoxical reactions such as this so I really don’t have a choice but to go down.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

I feel your pain, I

I understand why people would think that such a jump would be advisable but it’s well known that in people like myself that actually needed the drug and weren’t doing anything recreational with it, we end up in severe protracted withdrawal. My brain already wasn’t functioning properly when I started taking the benzos and the fact that benzos and alcohol are the only things I have ever found that allowed me to go out and live life without having to deal with the full brunt of panic (in the case of alcohol, once I was good an inebriated it was near impossible to have a panic attack unless I mixed stimulants into the situation), it seems very likely that my anxiety has been GABAergic from the start.

I am not concerned about seizures. I never have been concerned about seizures. What I am concerned about is ending up in the ER and having to reinstate to the full 20mg I was on before and throwing away 2 1/4 years of my life. I already had one taper blow up in my face when my doctor at the time demanded I go on carbamazepine. I was down to 5mg and a week on carbamazepine I went into full blown withdrawal and was unable to salvage my taper. Ended up right back where I started.

I also have sedative-hypnotic kindling which makes this even more critical for me to be successful. My last time drinking was from 12/31/2017 to 1/2/2018 and I remember how sick I got. I was actually going into withdrawal while I was intoxicated and when I came off the end of that bender I spent two days popping 5-10mg of diazepam every few hours because I was shaking so bad, my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t breathe. I was in DTs territory despite my consumption being FAR lower than what I used to drink. Basically, I have been on so many different sedatives and been through abrupt withdrawal so many times whether it was a drinking binge that ended abruptly or me ending up in the psych ward and essentially getting CT’d off my benzos and over time that causes you to become more sensitive to the withdrawal period. Its very likely that I won’t ever be able to drink or take a sedative again once I am done with this taper.

Keep in mind that many of us who are on these tapers have tried numerous methods to come off these meds unsuccessfully before. I’ve tried rapid taper; I’ve tried medically assisted taper; I’ve tried cold turkey; I’ve tried using DXM, memantine, ketamine, tiagabine, gabapentin, and many other drugs legal and otherwise; and I’ve previously tried a drawn out taper where I was dry cutting. This is the last effort for me before I decide to punch out permanently so it’s quite literally life or death at this point. It’s extremely likely that me jumping off early would result in PAWS and me killing myself.

Whatever route you take then good luck. I too have done many benzo detoxes and tapers and I hope I never have to do another one.

For me dealing with day after day of continued is what was going to kill me, I needed to be off rather than deal with the slow grind. Hopefully things will settle down the rest of the way for you and you'll get it done this time. Benzos are the drug i fantasise about more than anything else because they quiet the unrest in my head, but life for me is definitely better without them.

 

[MagickalKat777]

I feel your pain, I


Whatever route you take then good luck. I too have done many benzo detoxes and tapers and I hope I never have to do another one.

For me dealing with day after day of continued is what was going to kill me, I needed to be off rather than deal with the slow grind. Hopefully things will settle down the rest of the way for you and you'll get it done this time. Benzos are the drug i fantasise about more than anything else because they quiet the unrest in my head, but life for me is definitely better without them.

It’s a delicate balance honestly. If it drags out for too long and I can’t overcome the agoraphobia enough to be able to at least get out to see a movie or go to a restaurant once in awhile, eventually I’ll end up giving up but when I have windows with no symptoms, I get a glimpse at life on the other side and get excited.

Also lying in bed with tachycardia right now and trying to do my best to push through it is a strong reminder of why I can’t just jump off. The tachycardia eventually gets so bad that I end up unable to calm myself down. The diazepam dose I’m on now doesn’t do much for the anxiety but it’s still enough to keep my tachycardia from going much past 120. Diazepam has always been very effective at keeping me from having my heart rate go obscenely high. I also still get a sedating kick once in awhile after I take my daily dose which tells me it’s definitely still active for me.

I am going to go try to distract myself from this mounting panic attack. I really need to get sleep tonight.

 

[cdin]

thanks for treading some stuff before me. I was wondering silently when I might have a drink or two. Seems like "never" is the appropriate answer here. My whole family (mom, sis, myself) have always been very nervous/anxiety prone, solved by alcohol and we all get DT's extremely easily. Before this benzo incident, if I drank > 6 drinks in an evening for 2 nights in a row, I would most certainly be shaking on that 3rd morning, tachycardia, sweats, not hallucinations but... crawling walls, increased colors/light -- almost like the worlds most evil and awful LSD come up. pretty much the worst feeling I have ever felt until this nonsense w the bads. sorry bout the panic attack. I really relate on the tach. like i said - er 140/110 140 pulse. most uncomfortable I've ever been. I was down, like you are getting to .5 - 1.5mg a day and that's basically what it was doing, keeping my pulse under control. BUT, here I am - in the last 9 days I have had .5mg of valium one day when I got a PTSD attack (I was burned, severe PTSD sufferer as well) -- they are so similar I could not tell it apart and took a small extra dose, which did make things better for the moment but I did have to spend a couple more days while that nails on chalkboard scratched its way out of my system. I am SO VERY RELEIVED, even with the slight elevated tension to know that I am ok without valium in my body. the relaxation from that greatly outweighs the small amounts of physical effects I have left.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

It’s a delicate balance honestly. If it drags out for too long and I can’t overcome the agoraphobia enough to be able to at least get out to see a movie or go to a restaurant once in awhile, eventually I’ll end up giving up but when I have windows with no symptoms, I get a glimpse at life on the other side and get excited.

Also lying in bed with tachycardia right now and trying to do my best to push through it is a strong reminder of why I can’t just jump off. The tachycardia eventually gets so bad that I end up unable to calm myself down. The diazepam dose I’m on now doesn’t do much for the anxiety but it’s still enough to keep my tachycardia from going much past 120. Diazepam has always been very effective at keeping me from having my heart rate go obscenely high. I also still get a sedating kick once in awhile after I take my daily dose which tells me it’s definitely still active for me.

I am going to go try to distract myself from this mounting panic attack. I really need to get sleep tonight.

Honestly, I know it may sound ridiculous to you but just make sure you're not dismissing the idea of detoxing sooner without considering it properly. For me part of the pain of the taper was just having such a long period of never knowing when I was going to be ok and when I wasn't. With jumping off yes it was more acute but I could prepare myself mentally, I knew it was going to be shit and uncomfortable both physically and mentally but like they say in boxing it's the blows that you don't see coming which knock you out.

It may not be the right option for you at all, just don't dismiss it without consideration is what I'm saying. So often I see people doing long tapers at low dosages and even though they are finding it really difficult never even consider a fast detox when I believe for many people that would actually be the more tolerable option.

Have you tried using a non-benzodiazepine sedative to help deal with the tachycardia? Obviously have to be very careful adding substances in to a taper but there are easily available substances like promethazine that could help take the edge off that without fucking with your GABA system either during the taper or when you do get to detox. Probably won't solve the problem completely without taking a counter-productively large dose, but a little may help reduce it to a level whereby it doesn't set off the panic response. Don't know what country you are in but here in UK you can buy that otc.

 

[MagickalKat777]

Honestly, I know it may sound ridiculous to you but just make sure you're not dismissing the idea of detoxing sooner without considering it properly. For me part of the pain of the taper was just having such a long period of never knowing when I was going to be ok and when I wasn't. With jumping off yes it was more acute but I could prepare myself mentally, I knew it was going to be shit and uncomfortable both physically and mentally but like they say in boxing it's the blows that you don't see coming which knock you out.

It may not be the right option for you at all, just don't dismiss it without consideration is what I'm saying. So often I see people doing long tapers at low dosages and even though they are finding it really difficult never even consider a fast detox when I believe for many people that would actually be the more tolerable option.

Have you tried using a non-benzodiazepine sedative to help deal with the tachycardia? Obviously have to be very careful adding substances in to a taper but there are easily available substances like promethazine that could help take the edge off that without fucking with your GABA system either during the taper or when you do get to detox. Probably won't solve the problem completely without taking a counter-productively large dose, but a little may help reduce it to a level whereby it doesn't set off the panic response. Don't know what country you are in but here in UK you can buy that otc.

I never said that I felt it was a ridiculous idea. I have wondered about what good I am doing myself with prolonging the taper as well. I ordered some amanitas last night after doing a lot of reading and it certainly looks promising. There has never been a report of dependence with them either so I am going to try that and see if I can’t jump off sooner.

I am in the US and the only thing that ever worked for preventing tachycardia spikes for me besides benzos was clonidine but taking a super potent BP med for panic attacks is not exactly a great idea either and they can be just as dangerous when discontinued.

Last night was one of the worst panic attacks I have had in recent memory. I even ended up with my head pounding and I never get headaches. I managed to not take a rescue dose but just barely. Slept like crap and still feel on edge so that’s great.

I just don’t feel confident that jumping off now would work for me. Hopefully the amanitas give me that little boost to be able to do it.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I don’t even know why I am posting this right now. I guess I am coming here trying to prevent myself from making a stupid decision and throwing away 2 1/4 years of tapering, 2 1/2 years without alcohol, 1 1/2 years without nicotine, and somewhere around 6 years without other drugs.

I have been prescribed benzos since 2004 for panic disorder (and later, agoraphobia and generalized anxiety disorder). Started off with Xanax, hit 8mg a day and cut over to Klonopin, hit 6mg a day and it stopped working entirely, been on Valium since 2010 in the 20-30mg range with the occasional extra pill for serious anxiety.

I have managed to taper down from the 20mg I started on to a current dose of 1.6mg. The first 14mg was all dry cuts and I have been liquid tapering with my own solution for this last 6mg. when I first brought the taper plan up to my psychiatrist, I told her I expected to be off 6/2019. That obviously was way too optimistic. Fortunately, she has been patient with me as I navigated the waters of doing a liquid taper behind her back when she declined to give me liquid diazepam to do it.

Never in my life would I have thought anything could be so hard. I mean my withdrawal symptoms are so intense that my other mental health disorders (like my bipolar) don’t have enough time to manifest because I’m so exhausted. My anxiety has always been debilitating and I used to drink alcohol just to be able to leave the house and be somewhat productive but ever since I hit 2mg, it’s been exceptionally rough. I can’t even begin to put into words the things that go on but people who have been through benzo withdrawal know - the tinnitus keeps me up at night, the chest pains and nerve pain and sensitivity to hot and cold, the nonstop feeling that everything in the world is wrong, being so lost in the midst of all of this that your therapist sees you literally pulling yourself back from spiraling into dissociative states right there in her office (which you can only visit once a month at the most and have to prepare the entire month for, other times having to cancel and do a session or two over the phone), the agoraphobia, the intense irrational fear, the total inability to recognize the person you see in the mirror almost to the point of immense rejection, oh and the scrambled thoughts like this jumbled mess of text I just tapped out...

I kind of lost my point here... I have found that I am far stronger than I ever would have imagined previously but this is destroying me and I’m trying to hold on to some hope that I can come out on the other side of this and actually be able to have a sober, productive, and happy life that I know I deserve but it’s really hard to see that far ahead when things are going so awful right now. My current taper plan has me going down .005mg per day, which at my current 1.6mg comes out to 4.375% per 2 weeks. Everything I have ever read said this is more than slow enough but it doesn’t seem to be the case for me.

What has me really freaked out is that my roommates and I are planning to move next June and my SSDI review should be somewhere around February next year. I can’t seem to convince myself that as long as I am participating in therapy and working with my psychiatrist that I won’t lose my SSDI and it’s pushing me to push myself to go quicker. It’s also not helping that I am so unable to function that I spend my life with King of the Hill in Kodi on shuffle play for background noise on the TV while I sit all day on my phone. None of these things are healthy and I don’t know how much longer my mental state will support me being cooped up in my room putting all of my energy into tapering.

Fuck! I know all of that was a mess and I’m sorry but I’m not in a state of mind where I can fix it right now... :/

I don’t know what I am looking for with this post or what I need. I just really hope that I can make it to the end. It’s looking very unlikely that my taper will be over before October 2021 and from what I understand, thats when the actual healing begins so I’ll have even more years stuck in my room. I don’t know that I’m that strong... I quite frankly don’t know how I’ve even made it this far. A look through my posts here would probably make anyone wonder how I’m even still alive, I know I sure do..

You’re doing well! Don’t be so hard on yourself.