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Benzos Benzodiazepine Alternatives?

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RandomClean3 said:
Clonidine was made to treat high blood-pressure, the other two work the same way, although tizanidine is used as a muscle relaxant so they have probably tested it better for usage unrelated to blood pressure. However lofexidine should be the best for withdrawal since they had it in mind when they made it. If you find yourself not being prescribed any of them, go to another doctor, complain of recurring muscle pain and ask for tizanidine (brand name, never drug name) specifying you've been prescribed valium and flexeril and they were WAY too sedating and last time the doctor gave you tizanidine and it worked great. Doctors like to prescribe less addictive options when you... push them in the right direction.
As for my post, it was kinda dickish look back on it and I apologize. But be careful with these drugs, they do have CNS effects as well, in fact the imidazoline receptor was discovered because of clonidine, and most importantly, they can easily cause hypotension if you double dose or mix with alcohol, even more so than benzos. Benzos really make no sense as withdrawal medications, their role with alcohol is more akin to drug replacement therapy. Baclofen is quite interesting, given it's used for cocaine, alcochol, opioids and it seems to lower cravings. Worth checking out. And although Phenibut has a very similar structure, phenibut is a weak gabapentoid in practice, while baclofen is a GABA B agonist, so very different.
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You were right it's indeed central acting, the -idines. For a withdrawal of Cannabis the dose needed is probably low and well tolerated.

But pushing dr's in the direction is not an option. Changing dr's neither, called dr shopping, as the chance you will find a dr prepared to work with you is almost non existant. And prescribing medication is not something they do over here. To bad but that is how it is. Despite the fucked state of medical care thanks for the info RandomClean3.
 
Just a quick reminder
4) NO ASKING WHAT TO SAY TO DOCTORS TO GET CERTAIN DRUGS.
Anything besides the truth is scamming, and we don't condone scamming doctors. This goes for any type of medication that is imaginable
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This includes giving advice on what to do/say to a doctor to get a certain prescription, even if it's "just" tizanidine :)
 
I've suffered anxiety for years and have been taking valium, xanax and tried a load of other benzos.. Sadly, with benzos, your tolerance goes through the roof and you need more and more to get the same effect. I have inadvertently become addicted to these medications... I didn't really notice till i went on holiday and had to go cold turkey for a few days. It was horrrible! Anxious, stressed, not sleeping etc..

I've recently been trying to kick the habit and the withdrawal symptoms are highly unpleasant. I still take 2x 10mg valium for breakfast and struggle to get through the day without munching at least 8 tablets just to keep the withdrawal away. Sometimes as many as 20.

I've found Zopiclone and Zolpidem helpful, particularly with sleeping but also with my anxiety. (These aren't benzos but they do act in a similar way)

One drug you may want to research is Kratom. It's related to the coffee plant and used / produced a lot in Thailand. There's various strains, each producing slightly different effects. Some stimulating, some relaxing. This significantly helped me reduce my dose of benzos. Not sure if it's because i'm less anxious or if the Kratom is just helping with the withdrawal. In any case, after taking kratom daily (I add it to my tea / coffee), I've managed to cut back to just a few 10mg valiums per day as required.

It's definitely worth looking into. It's helped me enormously.

Best of luck on your quest!
 
emkee_reinvented said:
It's probably 'just' the sedation and muscle relaxation that makes it more interesting as the other -idines, just being honest here.
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Understandable :p but afaik the recreational potential is rather low due to the MoA of tizanidine as an alpha2-adrenoceptor-agonist, thus having nasty side effects, especially blood-pressure-related
 
kleinerkiffer said:
Just a quick reminder
This includes giving advice on what to do/say to a doctor to get a certain prescription, even if it's "just" tizanidine :)
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My bad, I apologize, I should have realized. I guess I didn't because I wasn't thinking of ''how to get a drug to get high'' but rather ''how to get a better alternative for withdrawal''. Still, sorry...
 
emkee_reinvented said:
It's probably 'just' the sedation and muscle relaxation that makes it more interesting as the other -idines, just being honest here.
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In the end, all of them are alpha2 agonists, and what that does is decrease the amount of norepinephrine being released. For the withdrawal of alcohol, benzodiazepines, opioids and cannabis the person experience a massive excess of excitatory neurotransmitters, mainly norepinephrine and glutamate. That's why clonidine at al. are useful for opioids and cannabis, but not so much for GABAergenics, since the latter ones cause a massive influx of glutamate, and reducing norepinephrine has a very limited effect.
 
I feel more comfortable sugesting beta-blockers instead since there's more clinical data, but OP's anxiety seem pretty severe and I don't know how long they have been taking benzodiazepines, but effects like anxiety can be very long lasting so I just don't know if something milder would help them. For a milder alternative, buspirone, guanfacine (more selective alpha2 agonist) and specially etifoxine, since it is a GABAergenic but without the usual addictive and sedative properties, but it's not available everywhere.
 
kleinerkiffer said:
Sorry for getting off topic, what's your stance on the hepatotoxicity of etifoxine?
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I think it was incredibly exagerated by the FDA and EMA, they didn't follow up the research unlike the French did, who concluded that the risk was lesser than lipitor, literally the most prescribed drug in the US. Now, was it because it didn't have a patent so no pharmaceutical company would defend it, I don't know, but idiosyncratic hepatitis was basically ruled out as a side effect, and that's the excuse they used to ban it. Normally when a drug is discovered to be somewhat hepatotoxic you see restrictions, etifoxine wasn't even allowed in the market, and I don't trust the organizations that banned it.
 
This thread started off with good intentions, but has gone off topic at points and turned into a " what should I take" sort of thread.
This thread is now closed. If OP or anybody has any questions, feel free to PM a moderator.

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