Quitting phenibut journal

Ye
Yeah I order my own blood work usually. Electrolytes were fine. The work up was pretty extensive. Second time I've had blood calcium levels that were too high (adults shouldn't consistently have calcium levels in the blood above 10mg/dL really, regardless of the reference range). So i'm going to wait a bit, avoid dietary calcium, and retest it along with PTH and vitamin D when I'm well hydrated. If the calcium is still elevated, regardless of normal PTH (which I assume is normal), gonna have to see an endocrinologist. It may have been dehydration, my albumin was elevated which can cause phantom hypercalcemia
Yeah honestly, it’s probably dehydration and you were saying you’re feeling thirsty so I wouldn’t really be thinking about that when retesting. Some focused LFTs and I would do a fasted blood glucose. But yeah, do leave it a while before a retest.

Be good to test your BG during the day too. An MRI of the kidneys would be great. I realise these things are expensive in America though.

If only you were this side of the Atlantic I’d use you in my thesis and you’d get a full work up, MRIs galore haha.
 
How can you have your own blood work done in the states (I assume)? Isn't the system there pretty similar to Europe where only docs can send stuff to the lab? I love it here in MX that things are a bit more open, here you don't need prescription and just buy whatever analysis you want - don't know yet whether you can do the same with more complex ones like MRIs but an X-ray of my jaw was no problem, neither was bloodwork for hormone levels.
 
if you drop 25 mg a day, you'll be off of it by 160 days, less than half a year away.

In the medical field, they would surely say, oh yeah with a taper that slow no one will feel anything!

But in my experience while tapers are immensely helpful, the brain needs to heal, and once the drugs are gone, I feel it.

This winter when I went from 140 mg of methadone to subutex and a 9 day taper I was still sick as fuck for 3 weeks. I guess that's obvious that was going to happen though.

Do you have someone close to you willing to do a blind taper? Meaning they decrease your dose at random or some set way they determine and tell you it won't be more than say 1% of your dose? My methadone clinic offered blind tapers where it was a coin toss if you dropped 10% of your dose or not, and they wouldn't tell you if you did. I had 140 mg just about memorized in the amount of liquid was in the cup though so I'd eventually see it was less and my brain would tell me I wasn't getting enough. That's why I never opted into it

Best of luck Negro

Thanks man, I'm gonna start going faster. It's sort of like a cold pool, you just gotta get used to it before jumping in. That said my GABA system is kind of shot from years of benzo abuse so I'm pretty jumpy even on a stable dose of phenibut.

Yeah the blind dosing would be nice, I could have my girlfriend do it but I think its too complicated for her. When i was on methadone my clinic suggested doing blind dosing but I didnt want to do it. Instead I slowly and secretly tapered myself off of 380mg/day all the way to zero, but meanwhile I was stockpiling the extra pills (I got take homes, all in tablet form). One day I showed up and told them I was done and wouldn't be coming back. They were shocked and told me I'd be back. Never did go back but I did eventually work my way through that multi thousand pill stash of methadone 3 years after quiting.
 
How can you have your own blood work done in the states (I assume)? Isn't the system there pretty similar to Europe where only docs can send stuff to the lab? I love it here in MX that things are a bit more open, here you don't need prescription and just buy whatever analysis you want - don't know yet whether you can do the same with more complex ones like MRIs but an X-ray of my jaw was no problem, neither was bloodwork for hormone levels.

I have a few ways to do it but lately I've been using my physician friend's lab requisition forms to do it (yes, he knows about it). I can also order imaging studies (ultrasound, MRI's etc etc) but I have to be careful with not going overboard on those as I could get my friend in hot water with my insurance company if the testing seems frivolous and not medically necessary.
 
Ye

Yeah honestly, it’s probably dehydration and you were saying you’re feeling thirsty so I wouldn’t really be thinking about that when retesting. Some focused LFTs and I would do a fasted blood glucose. But yeah, do leave it a while before a retest.

Be good to test your BG during the day too. An MRI of the kidneys would be great. I realise these things are expensive in America though.

If only you were this side of the Atlantic I’d use you in my thesis and you’d get a full work up, MRIs galore haha.

Actually I recently had a MRI of the kidneys, nothing remarkable, but I have a long-standing beef with that radiologist so maybe he did see something and didn't note it 🤣 (they can't do that, although I suppose they could).
 
And that stuff about it impacting your music I would think is probably in your head? You posted that after coming down a fraction of a percent of your dose over a few weeks so likely no impact.

Yeah that did turn out to be an illusion, haven't seen an impact in terms of my music. But it does worry me.
 
Well....good ol' negrogesic fucked up a bit yesterday and I'm afraid its going to throw a wrench in the taper, at least in the short term.

So I had an important meeting yesterday for work where I thought I was going to get some bad news (ie bad news for me, professionally speaking). So I decided to take a mere 1mg of etizolam before the meeting just to level me out abit. Now, I haven't taken any benzos for over a month and as much as I enjoy the effect, I cannot take benzos with any frequency given two massive dose benzo addictions that I quit years ago, which fucked up with my GABA system so much that a nowadays if I take a single moderate sized dose of benzos (like 2-3mg of etizolam). I'll experience rebound and anxiety that lasts almost exactly 5 days. This rebound occurs in two stages: next day moderate anxiety and a weird dissociation, followed by heavier dissociation and anxiety on day 2, same in day 3 but with insomnia, then day 4 and 5 the anxiety gets a bit better, yet day 4 and and especially day 5 feature very severe insomnia and night time anxiety. Then it often goes away by day 6. This is all occurs with just a single dose of 2-3mg etizolam. A large single dose of etizolam, like 4-5mg, produce a more severe version of this, but the insomnia is much worse, with more panic. 8-10+mg will make so dissociated the next day that I pretty stop talking all together, almost catatonic.

So back to yesterday. Since it had been over a month since I had taken a benzo, I thought 1mg of etizolam wouldn't cause much of a rebound. I did wrestle with the idea though, worried it would fuck up my taper. But still i took the 1mg (i have a solution of it) and drove to my meeting. In the car though, I felt still a little on edge, so I decided, maybe I should take a little more. Although to be honest I wasnt really on edge, the 1mg worked, I just didn't have that benzo suit of armor feeling and that classic benzo swagger (which only occurs at higher doses). I was also munching on dexedrine in the car which is probably why the 1mg felt so weak.

So in my wallet I always keep a little bad of pure etizolam for emergency purposes, which of course it is impossible to eye ball. The bag is almost empty with most of the powder stuck to the bottom, so i just stick my finger and wipe the sides and lick it, maybe giving me another 1mg (the parts I wiped only had residue etizolam dust, the real powder clumps were on the bottom).

I go to the meeting and it still seemed to be working fine, although pretty mild.


Yet in the meeting none of the things that I worried would happen ended up happening.

This is where it gets weird though.

After the meeting I go to my car I then thought, "you know, you rarely take benzos, if you are going to have pay the price of benzo rebound even from this dose, you might as take an enjoyable dose". And it was true, I had none of that nice benzo disinhibition, ie. no desire to start text messages people who I haven't spoken to in years, no embarrassing posting on social media, no sliding into random girls DM's saying inappropriate things, no desire to post seminude pictures of myself bluelight, etc etc. Though i must have already been disinhibited since before I left my office, I decided to take a giant computer monitor with me, which I have no use for. I didn't steal it since i'll bring it back, but I'm not supposed to do stuff like that without checking out the equipment.

When i got to mg car i remembered I had two mini eye drop bottles in my brief case that contain solutions of etizolam and bromazolam. So i grabbed the etizolam solution. On the bottle i had once mysteriously writen "E8" on it which i think meant 8mg of etizolam was in the entire bottle (it was a tiny travel size eye drop bottle). Half was empy so i drank the other half, ostensibly containing 4mg of etizolam.

It hits fast, and then decided hey i should go buy some kratom (im trying to avoid kratom like the plague since i quit it recently and am finally over the withdrawal). I go into the headshop and by this time im now in a pretty good benzo swagger, there is a relatively attractive girl working there and i flirt her in a subtle but powerful way, much to the veiled (but clearly apparent) dismay of the two geeky guys worker there who im sure have the hots for her. Yet fortunately i exercise some wisdom, keeping in mind i just quit kratom and don't buy too much kratom, just some extract. (I took the kratom extract later and felt absolutely nothing, since I can barely feel weak opioids on benzos).

I then decide to go buy weed from a dispensary. Around this time im feeling the benzo stronger, and I go in and im slurring my speech a little. Either that finger wipe in the bag of powder was more than I thought or that etizolam liquid from the bottle has more than I bargained for. The total dose so far may have actually been closer to 10mg. I sort of fumble my order at the weed place, slurring occasionally. I leave.

Now I'll skip what happened in between (i did a bunch of random things, and even went to the gun store and purchased an old 1930s WWII Mauser k98 rifle), but most importantly some hours later I acquired a bottle of 30mg of temazepam. When i finally got home I started popping them all evening and night. Easily took a dozen over the night. Those who know temazepam, it is extremely sedating, but I tend to fight it (and all benzos) and stay awake. But temazepam is unusually and extremely disorienting, very trippy at high doses, and i took some stimulants too to help me stay awake. Thus I was up till 5am in this bizarre temazepam waking dream state making all kinds of bizarre messes in the kitchen etc.

All of that from just an initial 1mg of etizolam. That 1 fucking milligram of etizolam caused enough disinhibition that I ended up take 10mg of etizolam and 300mg+ of temazepam.

I feel fine now since the temazepam is long acting and still in my system, but its only a matter of time until the benzo rebound hits. It's going to hit hard too, since that was alot of benzos.

Point being this is gonna fuck up my taper for a bit. Man fuck benzos.

To be frank I knew I was going to take benzos in preparation of the meeting and alluded to it earlier in this statement i had made:

3,925mg last night, i think in a week from now gonna try some bigger drops 📉. Have too much going on this week to not sleep.

The truth in what I saying here was actually this: "Im going to have to take a benzo this week and will need a week to recover, then im going to try some bigger drops".

I really only planned on taking 1mg though. I woke up this morning and realized, "fuck, nice work asshole 👌". Wish me luck, the next 5 days are going suck.
 
I really only planned on taking 1mg though. I woke up this morning and realized, "fuck, nice work asshole 👌". Wish me luck, the next 5 days are going suck.
Damn dude, what a wild ride. Good luck getting through it I really hope it's not as bad as you're thinking.

Benzos always get me in trouble. When I got my dui at the end of last year, I had knowingly ingested what must have been close to 9 fucking mgs of clonazolam powder. Long story short, woke up in handcuffs at the hospital hours later after attempting to drive in a blackout.
 
Coming off (tapering) of shit is a real pita and know from experience(s) that as soon as I feel like I'm doing "good" and getting "healthy" I in some way fuck it up and have to either get back on the "path of righteousness" or just stay where I am and stagnate.
This isn't about me, brother.
I know from your posts that you are not the stagnating kind and will find your way to get back on that path. That is you. I have yet to see you say "fuck it imma just do my do". Ya may have but I haven't seen any of it personally.
I'm hating the fact that ya "lost it" for a sec and have to pay for it but loving the fact you know ya slipped, bumped ya head, got up and have the plan to get "right". Again... this is you and this kinda personality trait doesn't just go away... it is part and parcel and life long. Hope ya have many years left to encourage others and myself to at least try to be who we are.
Not sure if any of this will make sense but I am exhauseted and used the best words/phrases I could that would come close to what I am trying to explain.

Aside: How's that Mauser workin out? I had one very similar to this as a kid and we just called it the 8mm Mauser. We had a lot of fun with that rifle and have no clue where it is today. Just been too long ago.
Do ya gotta wait for the background thing or have ya tried it out yet?
 
Coming off (tapering) of shit is a real pita and know from experience(s) that as soon as I feel like I'm doing "good" and getting "healthy" I in some way fuck it up and have to either get back on the "path of righteousness" or just stay where I am and stagnate.
This isn't about me, brother.
I know from your posts that you are not the stagnating kind and will find your way to get back on that path. That is you. I have yet to see you say "fuck it imma just do my do". Ya may have but I haven't seen any of it personally.
I'm hating the fact that ya "lost it" for a sec and have to pay for it but loving the fact you know ya slipped, bumped ya head, got up and have the plan to get "right". Again... this is you and this kinda personality trait doesn't just go away... it is part and parcel and life long. Hope ya have many years left to encourage others and myself to at least try to be who we are.
Not sure if any of this will make sense but I am exhauseted and used the best words/phrases I could that would come close to what I am trying to explain.

Aside: How's that Mauser workin out? I had one very similar to this as a kid and we just called it the 8mm Mauser. We had a lot of fun with that rifle and have no clue where it is today. Just been too long ago.
Do ya gotta wait for the background thing or have ya tried it out yet?

Yeah I'll get back on track. Fucking benzos though. Absolutely did not expect it to spiral out of control from just 1mg of etizolam. I wonder what would have happened if i had just taken 2-3mg of it at first, because maybe if I had felt that initial dose strongly enough i wouldn't have tried to take more.

But man, I didn't expect this whole series of events, especially the temazepam binge, that came out of left field. Then again, with benzos everything comes out of left field.

At least I didn't embarrass myself or do anything too weird (as i sometimes do). Actually, before that whole nightime temazepam extravaganza, while on the etizolam I made a bunch of business/work related phone calls that i wouldn't have made otherwise that were very productive. One of which addressed something I've been very worried about and is now resolved after that 10mg etizolam phone call. And the other guy I called I would have never called, ever, had it not been for being on benzos. Problem is I can't remember all parts of either conversion due to the benzos.

It's funny though, while I see myself as being ultra personable and suave on benzos, particularly in large social settings, my girlfriend, who has witnessed me plenty of times in these instances, says yes its true to some extent, but sometimes I also seem almost borderline autistic 🤣, especially when I'm telling jokes or joking around with people yet have a sort of flatness/distance to me

In any event, absolutely dreading the next days.
It does sadden me that I had to include this whole thing here
 
How are you feeling today? Did the benzo binge create a lot of anxiety?

Hope you aren't feeling too funky .
 
How are you feeling today? Did the benzo binge create a lot of anxiety?

Hope you aren't feeling too funky .

Thanks for asking, I was going to update.

Oddly enough I didn't get slapped too hard by the benzo rebound, which is strange since I took alot of benzos. Perhaps because i hasn't taken benzos in 6 weeks it wasn't too bad. Mostly just dissociation, haven’t woken up at 3am in panic (although that usually happens on night #5 -- ie, tonight).

I never take temazepam, so I'm thinking perhaps the moderate duration of action let me down smoother than had I taken just a ton of something short acting like etizolam. Less intrusive thoughts this time and less suicidal thoughts as well. However I had a hard time driving yesterday, that's when i really notice benzo rebound (horrible thoughts, desire to crash ones car, etc).

Turns out however that I did do some other things during that Tuesday benzo binge that I didn't remember when I initially wrote about it. Not too bad, but kind of embarrassing. Also wishing I hadn't have bought that gun, it was too expensive. I seem to spend money compulsively when im benzo'd out.

Overall got off very easy. I have gone through such severe benzo withdrawal on the past that I have a sort of PTSD. If I try, I can still feel the invisible spider webs that I was convinced were emerging from beneath my finger nail due to some parasite I thought I was afflicted with. Experience pure terror for such a prolonged period of time changes a person. So whenever I take a benzo, especially a good sized dose, the following day I am overwhelmed with a sense of dread about what lies ahead of me in the next few days.

Last year I had a 5 day very high dose etizolam binge (20-30mg a day, perhaps more as I was smoking it too) that produced horrible rebound anxiety, worse than rebound anxiety really, more resembling a withdrawal syndrome. Felt like I was on the verge of a seizure, with severe catatonic-like dissociation and intense fear states. Sort of reverted back to a childlike state, I remember I couldn't watch anything on TV that seemed even remotely disturbing, I had my girlfriend put on cartoons.

In any event I guess I can't use benzos therapeutically. Of course I have a giant stockpile, easily a lifetime supply that I couldn't bring myself to dispose. Inevitably they will cause me difficulty in the future.

In any event, phenibut is down to 3,920mg.

Next Monday, once this shit has blown over, I will respond to the challenges people have made here and begin making larger decreases, perhaps 10mg a night or so. Maybe more. I'm very glad I made this phenibut journal, it has been more helpful than I expected and I really appreciate everyones input and the accountability it has held me to.
 
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Glad the binge didn't present too many complications. At least the gun was only misspent money. So many worse things could have happened like crashing your vehicle or falling and injuring yourself.

Monday will come and you can be back on your phenibut journey and this binge will fade away. Really glad the after effects weren't too extreme.

Not sure I like the idea of you having a lifetime supply of the stuff however. Just makes it easier to over indulge again.

Do you think you just took the benzos because you had them on hand? If you didn't have any in the house would you order any or was it because they were there?

I only ask as I have to be " out of sight and reach....out of mind" I can't keep anything in my house as I would indulge. I won't seek it out but if I have it , it's history. Not anymore, but when I used I was like that.

Keep on rockin' out your taper. I want to see you succeed.
 
Glad the binge didn't present too many complications. At least the gun was only misspent money. So many worse things could have happened like crashing your vehicle or falling and injuring yourself.

Monday will come and you can be back on your phenibut journey and this binge will fade away. Really glad the after effects weren't too extreme.

Not sure I like the idea of you having a lifetime supply of the stuff however. Just makes it easier to over indulge again.

Do you think you just took the benzos because you had them on hand? If you didn't have any in the house would you order any or was it because they were there?

I only ask as I have to be " out of sight and reach....out of mind" I can't keep anything in my house as I would indulge. I won't seek it out but if I have it , it's history. Not anymore, but when I used I was like that.

Keep on rockin' out your taper. I want to see you succeed.

No I definitely wouldn't have ordered them for that particular day. So it was availability. Aside from the large stockpile I keep maybe 50mg of etizolam powder in my wallet at all times, which is admittedly a bad practice for a potent substance that is impossible to measure via eyeballing. There is a huge difference between 1.5mg and 5mg, but they don't look a whole lot different. It is bad practice. It is bad practice to even have this stuff around given my somewhat tragic history with this class of drug (let alone carry 50 doses of it at all times).

Occasionally I have been able to use it therapeutically. For instance when i partially detached my tricep while bench pressing (the tricep sort of just rolled to the side of my arm, it was intensely unnerving) a few milligrams of etizolam was a god send. But i need to limit my access, i should put most of it in the walls (I have stashes of things in my walls behind patched drywall -- I'd literally have to break the walls open to access some of this stuff).
 
Still going down, at 3,918mg. Benzo rebound never fully did kick in, though oddly, last night was the worst, a full 6 days later, woke up to a paranoid dream where im being investigated by the FBI for a crime I didn't commit but knew I'd be proven guilty for (I am in possession of a dead body -- a person i didn't kill but it looks like i did, a reoccurring dream of mine) and I'm wide awake, tense, hot and cold. I've been up since 3am. But that is not bad at all considering how much stuff i took that day. Turns out I took other stuff too that night, including an unknown amount of 1,4-butanediol, which is nasty stuff, also interacts with phenibut to counterproductive degree.

I expected far worse, not too bad, though my girlfriend did ask "are you mad at me?", given that I was unusually quiet (which is noticeable because I'm a loud, talkative person). I wonder if she knows what was going on, I was bouncing off the walls that night. Made a huge mess in the kitchen. She's seen it before. Instead of getting sedated i get stimulated. When i got home i just had the 10mg of etizolam in my system, but was still pretty far gone. At one point I remembered about the temazepam caplets (I forgot I had even gotten them) and I started popping them at like 7pm. Temazepam is a sleeping pill, its never meant to be taken during the day, like say alprazolam or even diazepam. Temazepam is only indicated for insomnia and to be taken shortly before bed given its especially strong hypnotic properties. I remember thinking, "oh shit I also have this temazepam, lemme take some", and took 4 15mg capsules, the rest of the night is hard to remember, a series of flashes. I haven't counted how many more i took but I was popping them like candy and didn't go to sleep till maybe 3-4am.

So all in all, considering my past, and considering how ive gotten worse rebounds on 5mg of etizolam than this, wasn't so bad. But fuck benzos, I have no use for them. I'm lucky I didn't get into a fight or get pulled over, etc. All from an attempt to use 1mg of etizolam therapeutically.

These GABAergics are poison to me, and while phenibut doesn't cause any of the disinhibited behavior benzos do, its poison nevertheless. Seems to be opposite to benzos in some ways, ambition killing. In contrast benzos make me feel incredibly ambitious, but its the kind of ambition that will wind you up in prison. Phenibut makes me feel like nothing matters, pregabalin did the same but at least it was somewhat enjoyable.

The dumbest thing is that i could have fucking held out longer but after not sleeping for so long during gabapentin withdrawal i gave in after 2 months and said, "fuck it i'm gonna get some phenibut. Granted 4g/day of phenibut isnt going to ruin your life, unless you think being hungover on Phenibut every day is a ruined life (id say it is, to a degree, given that we don't live very long and ive wasted a great deal of my life anesthetized.
 
Just wanna throw good vibes your way ng. I know you can do this. I learned a lof from you all. This is an incredible blog of knowledge. Learned a lot about phenibut and benzo's from your posts. In fact I halved my kratom amount because you quit that with not many issues rather quickly. I can't take phenibut or benzos with any frequency so these posts are a good testiment to how to not get into a rut and then if you do how to get out. And you will. You are like a master at drugs. :) It seems these type drugs the gaba ones are a tough beast and longer lasting than an opiate habit that balances back quicker.
 
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