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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Benzos Benzo withdrawal survivors.. does it get better?

snmfmy said:
Well I was on it daily for up to 80 mg three times a day for muscle spasms that did not respond to any other drug (can't take cyclobenzaprine, the zannaflex didn't work, in the doctor did not want to raise my Diazepam dose high enough to work), and it caused horrible insomnia even during a taper. AS WELL AS CENTRAL SLEEP APNEA. If you don't know what that is, be glad. It is where the body and brain are disconnected right at the point of sleep and you literally stop breathing as you transition from wake to sleep. It happens to a non-trivial percent of baclofen users enough that it's identified as a side effect.

Ultimately, the doctor raised my diazepam dosage until my condition resolved with respect to the severe muscle spasms.

I will never touch baclofen again, but I will take Valium and Librium no problem.
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I am sorry to hear that . I strictly used baclofen in 50 mg doses (i had the 25mg tablets) when i was coming off ghb which also acts on the gaba b receptor . But still used quite alot because i abused the hell out of ghb for years and never i experienced rebound nor wd from it . And i do have very high anxiety level . But i got another guy i know who also used baclofen for longer and he described the same horrible wd as you . But baclofen no way has the 2 week mark like benzos , you need at least multiple months higher doses multiple times a day . There is also a baclofen pump which can be used indefinitely for some muscle desease i dunno which one exactly. Also i could take 70mg and it didnt even feel like 5 mg diazepam , it dit work very well for ghb wd though thats why i used it.
 
snmfmy said:
Well I was on it daily for up to 80 mg three times a day for muscle spasms that did not respond to any other drug (can't take cyclobenzaprine, the zannaflex didn't work, in the doctor did not want to raise my Diazepam dose high enough to work), and it caused horrible insomnia even during a taper. AS WELL AS CENTRAL SLEEP APNEA. If you don't know what that is, be glad. It is where the body and brain are disconnected right at the point of sleep and you literally stop breathing as you transition from wake to sleep. It happens to a non-trivial percent of baclofen users enough that it's identified as a side effect.

Ultimately, the doctor raised my diazepam dosage until my condition resolved with respect to the severe muscle spasms.

I will never touch baclofen again, but I will take Valium and Librium no problem.
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Wow. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea when I stopped taking Baclofen years ago. I hated how that crap made me feel.
 
Kizaru said:
If it is impossible to taper shorter half lifes of benzos then how do people taper baclofen with a even shorter half life then xanax ?
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I didn't say it's impossible, but it's not reasonable. Let's put it that way.
 
Kizaru said:
I am sorry to hear that . I strictly used baclofen in 50 mg doses (i had the 25mg tablets) when i was coming off ghb which also acts on the gaba b receptor . But still used quite alot because i abused the hell out of ghb for years and never i experienced rebound nor wd from it . And i do have very high anxiety level . But i got another guy i know who also used baclofen for longer and he described the same horrible wd as you . But baclofen no way has the 2 week mark like benzos , you need at least multiple months higher doses multiple times a day . There is also a baclofen pump which can be used indefinitely for some muscle desease i dunno which one exactly. Also i could take 70mg and it didnt even feel like 5 mg diazepam , it dit work very well for ghb wd though thats why i used it.
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The baclofen pump is used for multiple sclerosis which is actually what I have. Luckily my spasms did resolve and I no longer need the baclofen.

Normally baclofen does not have the increasing tolerance versus efficacy that benzodiazepines have.

It's just that dose reduction if not done very carefully results in a horrible withdrawal syndrome that you are correct in saying is fleeting.
 
Kizaru said:
Also i could take 70mg and it didnt even feel like 5 mg diazepam , it dit work very well for ghb wd though thats why i used it.
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That's because baclofen doesn't affect the same receptors as diazepam, but it does affect the GABAB receptors that GHB agonizes when taken in higher doses.

GHB does not affect the same receptors as diazepam, it affects GHB specific receptors and gaba-B Receptors when taken in high enough doses.

Benzodiazepine drugs agonize or positively allosterically modulate the GABAA receptor complex as well as the benzodiazepine sub units of the GABAA receptor complex.
 
Even though I lapsed, I can tell you that it does get better. There are the first few days of serious anxiety, a seizure on day 3 in my case. The hospital didn't believe me, thought I was trying to score benzos but I wasn't - I was coming off a bad bender and had been on benzos for a good few months, perhaps a year even. They gave me a week's worth of zopiclone which helped me sleep - sleeping and trying to eat were the most important things for me. The weirdest thing about it was the depersonalization and derealization - it was trippy, like being on a drug in itself and even though I was experiencing it, it didn't feel all that bad but I had a flat to myself and I imagine it could be a lot harder if you had company (this is why we need detox centres for all - free healthcare etc). After a while, you start to adjust and for me it was like experiencing reality for the first time in years. I felt a bit like I did at points in my teenage years when I was happy. Dunno if that was a part of it. But I was also alone for a couple of weeks which helped as I had no responsibilities. You've probably heard it all before but you have to put your recovery first - baby steps. I went cold turkey and it was like learning to walk again but having to crawl first, but in about a month I started to feel like my usual self and it got better and better until I relapsed. Now I'm back on them but I can't get off them due to having too much to do, but I will do it. All I can say is that it can be done and things can get better, but you have to give yourself a lot of time and space. Sleep really became important - I never realised it. And you have to try and eat, get vitamins in you and all that. I did drink here and there as I was recovering and it probably didn't help but it eased the anxiety at least. I wouldn't recommend it, just speaking from experience. I didn't do any planning and by the time I'd had the seizure, I thought I might as well just carry on. Next time I will take further measures to make it more comfortable and I'm sure there are good suggestions in this thread. Everyone is different too so there is no set path, hopefully you'll find a path that works for you and as I said, it does get better.

Good luck.
 
Ive been off stupid level benzos for a few months. Sleep feels like its slowly returning, mind fog goes away quick.
 
I've been off xanax for two months now. I still feel like fucking shit all the time, I think this is hardest ever quitting attempt I've made with benzos. You know its like there's never that moment you ( or I at least) get where its absolutely unfucking bearable with opioids. But the thing is it just lingers and lingers and lingers with benzos.

I still feel like I can't do a lot of basic things, I'm showering <once a week. Haven't washed any of my bedding. I'm eating nothing but rice because I'm too lazy to go grocery shopping and too lazy to cook anything more substantial and I've lost 20lbs. I have a constant chest pain, sore neck, numb feeling in my extremities, and of course anxiety but I guess that goes with saying.

I don't want to do anything other than just sit on my ass all day. And while I guess I should consider myself lucky that I've been able to get some sleep, even since the beginning, my sleep schedule is messed up. Its like this.... I stay awake for a long time... then sleep for 6-8 hours but when I wake up I need to give myself several hours to build up the will to even get out of bed. This means every day I am staying up later and getting out of bed later. Right now I'm falling asleep around noon to 3pm and getting out of bed at around midnight ( but I've already been awake for 2-3 hours). Which makes it even harder to do things because I'm only awake at night and early morning. Makes it even harder to do things.

Normally I like to go on hikes. Doing that while I'm still in withdrawal, (acute or otherwise), while its dark and freezing out... isn't very appealing. I also don't want to talk to anyone, even my family. I feel like I could break at any time. Not that being on benzos is much better, but at least it takes me away from this hell temporarily. Right now I can't even think about rebuilding my life, do I even care? It feels like I don't.
 
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It does. Took me about a year.
Now I'm on sotme other shuff which is similar but not.
The mind is phenomenal and I feel things find new paths like water.
<3
 
Well to keep it short yes but if you were a heavy abuser for years you're more than likely always going to deal with some type of PAWS

Next step being learning to manage that

I used to be on 300 mg of Xanax a day and it took me over 2 years to even resemble feeling normal
 
Even if you weren't an abuser if you take it for years it takes a long long long time to heal those receptors and even then you may never feel normal but it does become manageable in comparison to keep abusing
 
Az az érzésem, hogy a kloodiazex jó.

A stratégiám az, hogy nagy adagoból kezdjem a hosszú félélet miatt. Ezután a wd nem üt meg a következő napokban, és körülbelül 15 mg naponta elég néha (magas a tolerancia). Emellett természetesen egy rövid távú benzo, ha nagyon aggódik, és szükség van rá a funkcionalitáshoz.

Szintén ott van a tizanidine (izomlazítás nem gaba, állítólag nem növeli a toleranciát), amely növeli a hatást. És a kikapcsolódásra, egy erős cava kivonat. Aaaand! Ha a tolerancia nem magas 1 hét benzo 1 hét pregabalin/gabapetin. Lassítsa le a toleranciát.
 
Spaced said:
Well to keep it short yes but if you were a heavy abuser for years you're more than likely always going to deal with some type of PAWS



Next step being learning to manage that



I used to be on 300 mg of Xanax a day and it took me over 2 years to even resemble feeling normal

Jesus Christ! 300mg daily? I thought I took more than anyone else on the planet because when I told doctors and nurses how much I took they said wow I've never met anyone that took that much and well...lived. Not because of an overdose which is nearly impossible on benzos alone - luckily I knew not to drink with them (which I very stupidly did once <see below>) I don't remember the formula of mg/kg of body weight for Xanax but I'm sure you can find it if you care. At any rate, for me at the time it was something like 3000mg I believe



< One of the United States official medical websites explains the high toxicity of alprazolam compared to other benzodiazepines (though compared to some other categories of drugs is still very low)



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884537/ >



but the fact that you are a zombie and usually die from a fall down a flight of stairs (Which did happen to me the one time I very stupidly DID drink with them even though it was only 3 or 4 cans of <gag> Budweiser but I didn't break my neck somehow. I did, however, lose a front tooth and split my bottom lip open so badly that it looked like I put a mighty might mini firecracker in my mouth like a wad of chew. I only know because I went back to the plastic surgeon who did my surgery and she showed me a picture of what it looked like. I thought I was going to hurl). Or you get into your car and kill yourself or walk into traffic or any number of stupid things you can do. My biggest fear every morning on the rare occasions I could remember the day before was going to my car and finding a huge dent and blood all over the front because I would have absolutely no memory of it. My pot dealer at the time told me that after he smoked me out when I'd stop by to buy <he smartly made you hang out for at least an hour so people weren't coming and going every 10 minutes. When Star Trek TNG was on, there would be a group of people at his place every Saturday at 6pm> that I'd fall asleep on his couch sitting up and drool on myself. Other people told me other things I did but I no longer remember what they said, just that I did things I had no idea I was doing <imagine that>(I was taking 90 mg tid (three times a day for those not in the know) of an unknown generic Alprazolam I bought online from India from a now defunct website called MedsIndia. That was back in 2000-2001 when you could buy benzos online without a script and on this particular site Alprazolam and Valium were only $1.00 per pill. No, that isn't a typo, they were a buck each for 1mg generic alprazolam or 10mg Valium {brand}. You could buy 100 pills for $100.00 or 200 pills for $200.00. You could not buy opioids <probably due to the scheduling difference in the United States of 4 for benzos and 3 or 2 for opioids. Strangely you could buy pure codeine sulfate in, if memory serves, 15mg tabs. Luckily for me (as the combo would likely have killed me.) my body does not respond well to opiates. Codeine just gives me a weird headache similar to a sinus headache which can be lessened by lying down and/or eating but is not worth it due to the accompanying projectile vomiting every 30 minutes until my stomach is empty, usually about 90-120 minutes followed by another 3 hours of heaving up bile the way you do when you are a kid with a really bad flu. And morphine <I've only had the IV version in the hospital due to severe chronic back pain due to 9 or 10 issues thereof>. I was given 10mg/4 hours which the nurse thought was a mistake and called down to the hospital pharmacy because she never saw a dosage that high. The pharmacy verified the dose as the max amount. It did nothing for my pain but thankfully unlike oral Codeine did not make me sick in any way, it just made me dizzy for about 30 minutes and then nothing. After 3 doses I told the nurse that it wasn't doing anything. She made me laugh with the response 'Yeah, unless you're an 80 year old woman who weighs 90lbs morphine won't really do much.' I responded, 'huh.., you hear morphine and you think OH MAN!' She said 'no but now you're getting the good stuff.' I had no idea what she meant until 4 hours later when a new nurse came into my room and he asked me if I ever had Dilaud before. I hadn't. 'well, he said, you're getting 2mg' (again with the max dose...?) Not only did it eliminate the pain completely but it was the most insanely euphoric feeling I've ever had before or since. Let's put it this way; if you had the choice of an everlasting orgasm or an everlasting Dilaud rush you'd probably choose the Dilaud rush. I remember thinking 'oh my god, do it again!' Which is why people kill themselves with IV opioids. Years later I read on a drug user site that to get the kind of rush 2mg of Dilaud gives you would take a fatal dose of Heroin. I've never done Heroin in any way so I can't verify that but I definitely believe it. People who have done both say that the downside of Dilaud is that the rush only lasts about 5 minutes (which I Can verify.) and then you feel pretty much normal except for the fact that if someone cut off your finger you probably wouldn't care-the way a huge dose of Xanax would make you feel next to nothing if someone told you that your mother died. As opposed to Heroin which lasts about 4 hours. Sorry for the long tangent but for those of you who are like me and love reading experiences, you're welcome <grin> along with 500mg of Valium (Roche Brand) @ 100mg five times a day. I was also smoking an ounce of high grade marijuana (now that it's legal in the state in which I live, I'd guess about 20% thc, which in 2000 was considered kind bud. It doesn't compare to the Kush Cake I had @ 38.759% or the South Beach @ 37.632% but is still considered good pot by today's standards. Those of you who have grown your own will know that 20% is not an easy feat.) every 10 days. For those of you who have used benzos and weed together know that pot significantly increases the effects of benzos.



So to hear someone took 300mg/day unless that's a typo, I don't know how you stayed awake - amphetamines? Meth? An ounce of freebase coke daily (lol)? But I totally relate to the 2 year comment. I had cravings for 2 years myself and I occasionally still have Xanax dreams almost 24 years later. Thankfully, unlike opioid addiction the craving, for lack of a better term, goes away. I've been dependent on alcohol, pot <yes you can!>, benzos, opioids, Baclofen <acts on GABA b as opposed to benzos acting on GABA a but still causes the same withdrawal symptoms only worse and must be titrated at the same rate of no more than 10-12% every 4-6 weeks. Once you've been dependent on something, the desire for whatever it is eventually goes away with the exception of opioids. Once you've been dependent on opioids and you manage to quit you never feel whole again. Which is why I'll be on Suboxone for the rest of my life. And despite what people though and said early in its use, taking Suboxone DOES NOT mean you aren't in remission. I see an Addictionologist every 3 months via video visit and once a year in office so he can keep prescribing it and my chart (which I can access thanks to virtually all businesses and all medical clinics having portals) under conditions it lists all of them and next to OUD (opioid use disorder - today's medical parlance for opioid dependence - it states, 'in remission'

I hope you enjoyed as opposed to being annoyed by the tangents.
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Pickledlemons said:
I've been off xanax for two months now. I still feel like fucking shit all the time, I think this is hardest ever quitting attempt I've made with benzos. You know its like there's never that moment you ( or I at least) get where its absolutely unfucking bearable with opioids. But the thing is it just lingers and lingers and lingers with benzos.

I still feel like I can't do a lot of basic things, I'm showering <once a week. Haven't washed any of my bedding. I'm eating nothing but rice because I'm too lazy to go grocery shopping and too lazy to cook anything more substantial and I've lost 20lbs. I have a constant chest pain, sore neck, numb feeling in my extremities, and of course anxiety but I guess that goes with saying.

I don't want to do anything other than just sit on my ass all day. And while I guess I should consider myself lucky that I've been able to get some sleep, even since the beginning, my sleep schedule is messed up. Its like this.... I stay awake for a long time... then sleep for 6-8 hours but when I wake up I need to give myself several hours to build up the will to even get out of bed. This means every day I am staying up later and getting out of bed later. Right now I'm falling asleep around noon to 3pm and getting out of bed at around midnight ( but I've already been awake for 2-3 hours). Which makes it even harder to do things because I'm only awake at night and early morning. Makes it even harder to do things.

Normally I like to go on hikes. Doing that while I'm still in withdrawal, (acute or otherwise), while its dark and freezing out... isn't very appealing. I also don't want to talk to anyone, even my family. I feel like I could break at any time. Not that being on benzos is much better, but at least it takes me away from this hell temporarily. Right now I can't even think about rebuilding my life, do I even care? It feels like I don't.
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Yea I found it surprising how many the different symptoms were. The soul-sucking dark depression was bad one. Stupifying compared to how little benzos give in the initial intoxication.
 
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