I am 46 years old and have been taking benzos to sleep since I was 8 years old. My mom would drug me as a babysitter or for her convenience. I have been through many psychiatrists who have tried everything other than benzos to get me to sleep. Benzos are all that works. When I moved to BC Canada, after living in the US I was taking triazolam for sleep and xanax twice a day for anxiety. I stopped the xanax when I moved up here, living deep in the wilderness and feeling no stress vs gunshots at night and murders near my house in Utah every week. I was continued on the triazolam until my provider up and said no more. I got a hold of a LOT of xanax because that's all I could get. I was taking opiates off and on for the last few years, but not a large habit. I was hospitalized because I was taking too much clonidine after tapering down on h until I was hardly using. 5 days after the last opiate they bullied me into taking suboxone. Had I been stronger and more lucid I wouldn't have let them. Sub makes me severely depressed and worse. They started me at 12mg which is unheard of every place I've ever been. I'm down to 2mg a day after a week. I need off it asap.
The taper for the xanax was 20mg (equal to about 1mg of xan) 4 times a day. Then less 5mg each week, which even several of the pharmacists think is too fast. My 4 day hospital stay I did not sleep at all. I went back to the xanax when I got home so I could sleep, but instead of 60-80mg throughout the night 30mg worked the first night. Now I'm up to 40 again. Not sleeping is torture for me and I don't think I can survive not sleeping long term. When they cut off my sleep meds last winter we all got a giardia like illness that lasted a week for everyone, dog and cats included, but lasted 8 months in me. I've gone through such a severe vit B deficiency it almost killed me and gave me low potassium that almost killed me and terrified me with the heart arrythmia. I was taking all of 4-6mg of xanax making sleep all night in July, I started waking up after a few hours and taking more until it became a 60-80mg per night, taken in divided doses (whenever I'd wake up).
Is there any hope for me? I'm seeing a different doctor from a different practice Jan 4 and I'm going to ask him to hospitalize me and get me off the sub and a aek for a differerent benzo taper. I have all this valium that I think adding to, so I would take less xanax would probably make things worse? Since I live in such a sparsely populated area with no transportation of my own, I have fewer choices. Should I not add the valium to reduce the xanax and try to taper 10mg a week? Should I add it to take less? The doctors in my providers practice are the worst I've ever been to. The only one in the practice with hospital privileges took me from 1.4mg of clonidine to 0.1mg overnight and cut that in half two days later. My BP started going up and I was beet red, sweating profusely and shaking violently feeling like I was going to pass out and they told me it was all in my head and released me. They gave me my meds back I brought with me and I took one and it fixed it. He's put me into hypertensive crisis twice in the past.
I need help. I'm tapering off clonidine (do not have high bp in the first place), propanolol, suboxone and benzos all at once. They wouldn't let switch providers for such a long time and I hope they don't do that again. I can't and won't survive. Can someone help? I've never been so depressed in my life. We also need to leave the country as soon as we can, as immigration isn't going well.
Sorry it's so long and thanks in advance.
