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Benzo Timescale?

wooger

wooger

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 3, 2005
Messages
765
So I have been taking the equivalent of around 50mg of diazepam a day (5mg of etizolam a day)... after a few weeks I knew it was getting really awful so I decided to stop... but it is extremely difficult... I have managed to get down to 4mg over the space of a couple of weeks..

a lady specialist I spoke to today said it could take TWO YEARS to taper from this dose and switching over to diazepam...

do you think she is being overly cautious?! it seems a fucking long time to spend tapering considering I have only been on it for a couple of months...
 
Well, I'm no expert on diazepam, (alpralozam (sp) was my benzo of choice), but that seems like a pretty hefty dose. With benzo tapers, slower is better, especially when coming from high doses, due to the risk of very serious withdrawal symptoms. I'd heed their advice, for sure.
 
thank you for replying but still holy crap two years is a very long time! :(
 
2 years to taper of a 50mg valium dose that you have been taking for a few weeks?

She is being WAYYYY to cautious. I was taking klonopin [8mgs daily] and ativan [2mgs daily] for 8 years. I tapered down to 2mg klonopin/1mg ativan in a couple months and than hopped off. It was rough but there is no way i wanted to extend my suffering for a longer time period by doing some god awful long drawn out taper. I am 1.7 years [i think] of benzos and I am still not complete better. I still get real shaky at times, anxious, sweaty, clenching my jaw, etc. but it has gotten soooo much better but sometimes I wonder what symptoms are manifesting from my own mind or are still left over benzo w/d [which I really believe to be the case] or left over opiate w/d.

My advice would be to stop now.
 
2 years IS a LONG time

I actually have a lot of experience with benzos, not this particular one, but extremely high doses of Clonazepam. There is a really good benzo specific site at www.benzobuddies.com, not nearly as open minded or intelligent as bluelight, but it can help, and they recommend an Ashton taper. If not familiar with this you can surely read about it. I was just gonna say some people will taper 5 mg a month, some 10. I quit a terribly high clonazepam habit in June and had almost 4 months of withdrawl, ending basically yesterday. I would say tapering has to be better than what I went through. But some will say it takes 12, 13, 16 months, for me cold turkey it was just under 4. I think youth has a lot to do with it.
 
hey thanks for the advice so far... so far I have managed to taper down to 3mg a day (so like 30mg of diazepam a day)

Like the person who said they couldnt take a long drawn out taper and I really dont wanna be taking pills for months on end either.. I guess I just wanna do it like ripping off a bandage and getting the agony out of the way faster.....

do you think it would be okay to just jump off this dose (equivelent of 30mg of diazepam) without having a seizure?
 
yea, the eti label says not to take more than 3mg daily, i blew through mine over the course of a few weeks, tapered in three days--but of course about a month and a half later i am enduring an alcohol/gaba withdrawal so I'm sure some of that was masked though i did notice it.

I would err on the side of quicker, etizolam is different than the others, i could actually feel it, but when i took a bar of xanax [2mg? i think], i felt literally nothing, just the fucked up way of my gaba receptors i guess.
 
ahh thanks for your input... so ur suggestiong it will be okay to quit cold tomorow? guess i will go cold turkey tomorrow and see how things go! fucking hate taking pills now :(
 
oh one last thing... if something really ba is gunna happen such as a seizure... are there any warning signs that I should look out for before this happens? What I mean to say is there a clear warning that a seizure will occur or does it just happen spontaneously? I guess this is my biggest fear in all of this :(.
 
^ you can get an "aura" - which can be a strange feeling, deja-vu, dizziness, visual disturbances, even strange smells/tastes/feelings, but by that stage you are inevitably about to have a seizure and it can't be terminated.. Sorry, I wish I could post something more comforting! Best of luck with your taper, I don't have any expertise in this area I'm afraid so I can't really offer much advice.. <3
 
^^i noticed crankiness, and inability to sit still then tremors...go out in the cold, i've found that i shivered excessively. Take that last one with a grain of salt...i don't want you to induce a siezure, but rather am telling you what i noticed with symptoms. Mine also had headaches and arm numbing...but again i was on a polywithdrawal consisting of a slew of gabaergics.

What i found from my case was that a siezure won't hit you out of the blue, things will begin to worsen first.

do you have someone who can monitor you if you decide to go cold turkey???

-and-

have you any eti left to consider dropping to like 1mg, then cold turkey next day?
 
hmm I have a crap load left... probably over a hundred to be honest... but tapering rarely works for me because of my pathetic will power... plus I dont wanna be taking them for ages and ages... I would rather feel bad for a while rather than drag it out...

Also I have 7.5mg zopiclone tabs if sleep because a real issue but I am gunna try and tough that out too... maybe I am being fool hardy... but I havent been taking really dangerous doses have i? (or have i?)
 
Look, C/T benzos (especially a relatively unknown one like etizolam) is a BAD IDEA! You need to get back on diazepam and do a slow taper of cheat using NMDA antagonists (but that has its own consequences). Here is a great way to know if you're having a seizure ---- you're having one. That's how long it takes for a seizure to strike. The time it takes to draw four dashes on a piece of paper. Benzos are serious business. If you have that much etizolam left, I suggest you do the taper and possibly throw in an NMDA antagonist to speed the process (I dropped from 60mg of Valium to 15mg using memantine for two weeks and then Delsym for the rest - mind you I started the diazepam (coming off of Klonopin) in November and I was at 15mg stable by January). IMO the longer the taper, the more you prolong the misery. The problem is that benzodiazepines are completely unforgiving. Once that seizure hits, it hits and that's that. I went through a number of them in my bed switching from Xanax to Klonopin because my doctor didn't realize Klonopin was a steady-state plasma drug. They aren't pleasant and they can be deadly. There is a post on the second page of ADD here that talks about NMDA antagonists and tolerance and tells you how to use them (I don't do other people's homework, you go dig up the thread if you want the information) but be careful with memantine because it has respiratory depression like PCP. DXM does not but has other drug interactions.

EDIT: I'm jealous of your stash btw, I never managed to get my hands on etiz! :p

Secondly, zopiclone is another GABAergic medication. Avoid it at all costs. Try to get some trazodone. 50-200mg is completely safe and it will knock you out like a light without upsetting your already pissed-off GABA and NMDA systems.
 
lol well if i do taper how quickly do you think it can be done safely as a rough guide? even professional services I spoke to here had no clue what to say cus they have never even heard of it so they want nothing to do with me.... do you think i can taper from 3mg in like 2 weeks down to nothing??
 
If Etiz follows the standard Xanax and Klonopin equivalency schedule of an estimated 1:1 ratio then I think you can do the 3 to nothing but you'll be in hell. Most don't recommend more than a .5mg cut of a benzo every 2 weeks minimum. If you go to Benzobuddies they will probably tell you .25mg every two weeks... you'd be going down a lot more than either of those. Why are you in such a rush?
 
O just hate taking them n they dont help me at all anymore really... i just wanna be done wit h them... I can feel them ripping away my short term memory to the extreme and also the cognitive deficits are realy starting to show even on simple maths problems....

This year is the final year I have been given by my university to sort myself out, they say im in the final straw so I get the feeling its now or never...
 
oh and just for the record I think etizolam has half the potency of klonopin and xanax :)
 
Well if its half the potency for you then I don't think that 2 weeks is unreasonable but I would toss in an NMDA antagonist to be safe. Delsym (only cough syrup that will do the trick due to its 12 hour action on account of its edible plastic coating) 10-15mL every twelve hours should stave off MOST of the withdrawal. Its just about impossible to have a seizure when you have full-blown NMDA blockade going on. Memantine will do the trick too but its more like 40mg a day and that is not only expensive but it has respiratory depression properties like PCP does at that level. It also has something like a 40 hour half-life as well so if you have any reactions to it, you won't get over them quickly. It also causes massive brain fog. I took Delsym @ 40mg twice a day and didn't have any of the brain fog I had with 40mg of Memantine (20mg twice a day).
 
awesome! thans again fir the awesome advice! we dont have that product here but we do have robo overe here? i noticed it doesnt have the same duration of action so I guess you would just have to dose more?

what point should i start taking it like when i have severe withdrawals or what? would i be able to completely replace the benxos with dxm products? i never heard of anytone doing this before :P
 
Are you in Canada? <snip>. It is the only one I would recommend. The regular syrup is dextromethorphan HBr which is metabolized differently. DXM isn't the active drug. At least not for our purposes. DXO is what you want. The problem is that regular syrup gets converted to DXO too quickly. I mean if you don't have to drive or anything you can experiment with regular syrup but Delsym is 60-90mg dispensed over 12 hours. I would think with regular syrup you would have to do at least 20mg every 4-6 hours but I really don't know. And obviously DXM can fuck with you - at that dose I'd be shocked if it did anything recreationally but I can see it causing some minor brain fog and sluggishness.
 
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