Madcap86
Greenlighter
Benzo withdrawal is like being in a bad acid trip. Some times I like I'm tripping. Anyone agree with me?
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OD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic
Benzos Benzowithdrawal
- Thread starter Madcap86
- Start date
RobotRipping
Bluelighter
yeah pretty much, a big long bad acid trip. The derealization/depersonalization is strange, i was also pretty delirious for a while, goes away at least.
Trigeminal
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2009
- Messages
- 389
It was at first. Now it's just constant fear, anxiety, and insomnia. Never one fucking moment of peace. Been like this for 8.5 torturous months now. It's gotten better, but life still fucking blows. No one can even understand how shitty it is if they haven't been through it.
It's kind of funny/sad, but 6 years ago my perfect day would have been a house to myself with a gram of heroin and a carton of cigarettes. Now my perfect day would be a day without anxiety, where I am able to lay down in my bed at night, relax and fall asleep.
Benzo withdrawal steals your life.
It's kind of funny/sad, but 6 years ago my perfect day would have been a house to myself with a gram of heroin and a carton of cigarettes. Now my perfect day would be a day without anxiety, where I am able to lay down in my bed at night, relax and fall asleep.
Benzo withdrawal steals your life.
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Madcap86
Greenlighter
I'm at 14 months now things have gotten better but still a lot of anxiety, blurred vision, shaky all the time. I can't think straight. I think about crazy stuff. Like why im here and how i got here. Then other times ill forget what im doing or where i am. It has gotten better tho i didnt leave my bed or house for 4 months at first. i was coming off 10mg of Valium and i didn't tapper off well i kinda just stopped cold turkey. Not on of my better ideas. now im paying for it. and you are right no one understands how shitty it is. Its hard to explain to people that why i call it the endless acid trip. its chaos.. i just keep telling myself it will get better and i will get better thats all i can do.
tricomb
Bluelight Crew
Yep when I was getting off years of xanax addiction, I developed *SEVERE* schizophrenia like symptoms that persisted for about a month
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weekend addiction
Bluelighter
Your gonna need a lot of reefer but no cigarettes or coffee...
Visionary_Kpsycho
Bluelighter
ALWAYS TAPER OFF BENZOS
If you don't it will be hell on earth. I tried, couldent do it.
I tapered off and was way easier ( with cannabis, to help the anxiety)
If you don't it will be hell on earth. I tried, couldent do it.
I tapered off and was way easier ( with cannabis, to help the anxiety)
FnX
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2009
- Messages
- 749
Cannabis threw me into psychosis when I was withdrawing from benzos after enough sleep deprivation on top of it... I wouldn't take cannabis as it fucks with GABA too.
TheLostBoys
Bluelighter
Do people keep benzo addictions quiet compared to opiate addictions.......I mean, I know people that take opiates but only know like 1 person that takes benzos. It seems from reading through all the benzo threads, its better to have an opiate addiction any day of the week over a benzo addiction...............
RobotRipping
Bluelighter
^it's better not to have any addiction or withdrawal. I had the same idea in my head when i first started using opiates and fuck the withdrawals are terrible.
travis2600
Bluelighter
I was happy to just get it over with in a week instead of drawing it out with a long taper. I hear good things about the long taper for sure, but I'm glad I didn't do it.
To the OP, I have been prescribed clonazepam daily since the summer of 2004 after the unsettling and unexpected death of a very young and very dear friend of mine. Initially I was given 0.5mg 2x a day along with 0.5mg xanax 1x a day in the begining however since my problems persisted (even got worse) and the medication I was taking wasn't working properly my doctor told me that if I was to stay on a benzo for a long period of time (meaning more than a month or two as we originally anticipated), that I was too choose between the clonazepam or the alprazolam and once I had one in mind we could start a dose increase to find the best dose for me.
I decided to leave the alprazolam for clonazepam because of 1. its pretty well accepted that alprazolam withdrawl is more acute than clonazepam withdrawl thus harder and 2. clonazepam was something i could take anytime of the day and I wasn't fucked like on xanax, it was much more managable for me
In less than 6 months I got my clonazepam dose raised to 4mg and went into 2005 on settled on 4mg/day (2mg 2x day)
Now it is 2012, do the calculations and think it over a bit, then u will see what I mean! To be honest with you I believe that I still get an effect from clonazepam however just not even close to what it was at the begining, mostly because of tolerence. When I got my prescription in 04 I couldn't walk after taking 1mg xanax, much less think (felt like brick hit me over the head), or remeber stuff (amnesia was intense in the begining), and now I would get the same effect however from a much higher doses of xanax, probably 4-5x as much because on 2mg I can stay awake if I want to.
Anyways I agree that the potency of benzos has gone way down over the years of using but it is normal if you use benzos this long.
The best trick, esp if your doctor is cool with it, is to ask for the equivalent of any other benzo and ask to alternate to that for cases of anxiety or panick attacks or insomnia (etc) since your original benzo doesn't work that well anymore. This doesn't mean necessarily to stop the clonazepam but if ur taking 1mg a day it may be better to keep the clonazepam at 0.5mg a day or remove it completley it up to u however i find clonazepam to be the best for general relief while you can use almost anything else with a quicker onset for breakthrough anxiety/panick, there is a synergy, its like pain management where someone is on morphine time release 100mg/day and also 5mg oxycodone 3x day for breakthrough, in medical terms that means you should always wear the fentanyl patch/clonazepam in our case daily no matter what to keep your symptoms to ease and only when extremely necessary you can take oxycodone/xanax in your case to breakthrough . If it makes sense in pain management I think it should also make sense in panick and anxiety management, on the otherhand you never know with doctors.
If I were allowed to keep another benzo like I said for breakthrough/emergency situations only I would have been on a much lower dose of clonazepam and benzos in general b/c once clonazepam stops to work your pretty much in shit b/c its a strong benzo and that means most other benzos will also require a high dose to equal your clonazepam tolerance. So instead of 4mg clonazepam a day I could take 0.5mg xanax a day along with 1mg-2mg of clonazepam a day and even if I were to take both benzos it would still be the equivalent of less than 4mg clonazepam a day (1mg clonazepam = 1mg alprazolam). For example the clonazepam works IMO however it doesnt put me to sleep like xanax or others or stop a panick attack if your stressed the fuck over the line it just helps to prevent one but you can take a bunch without results.
p.s. In my experience clonazepam has a celiling dose in terms for therapeutic effects at 4mg after which increasing the dose only produces more sedation/grogginess and your going to be left with that for quite a while due to the huge half life plus a huge tolerence due to the high potency.
I decided to leave the alprazolam for clonazepam because of 1. its pretty well accepted that alprazolam withdrawl is more acute than clonazepam withdrawl thus harder and 2. clonazepam was something i could take anytime of the day and I wasn't fucked like on xanax, it was much more managable for me
In less than 6 months I got my clonazepam dose raised to 4mg and went into 2005 on settled on 4mg/day (2mg 2x day)
Now it is 2012, do the calculations and think it over a bit, then u will see what I mean! To be honest with you I believe that I still get an effect from clonazepam however just not even close to what it was at the begining, mostly because of tolerence. When I got my prescription in 04 I couldn't walk after taking 1mg xanax, much less think (felt like brick hit me over the head), or remeber stuff (amnesia was intense in the begining), and now I would get the same effect however from a much higher doses of xanax, probably 4-5x as much because on 2mg I can stay awake if I want to.
Anyways I agree that the potency of benzos has gone way down over the years of using but it is normal if you use benzos this long.
The best trick, esp if your doctor is cool with it, is to ask for the equivalent of any other benzo and ask to alternate to that for cases of anxiety or panick attacks or insomnia (etc) since your original benzo doesn't work that well anymore. This doesn't mean necessarily to stop the clonazepam but if ur taking 1mg a day it may be better to keep the clonazepam at 0.5mg a day or remove it completley it up to u however i find clonazepam to be the best for general relief while you can use almost anything else with a quicker onset for breakthrough anxiety/panick, there is a synergy, its like pain management where someone is on morphine time release 100mg/day and also 5mg oxycodone 3x day for breakthrough, in medical terms that means you should always wear the fentanyl patch/clonazepam in our case daily no matter what to keep your symptoms to ease and only when extremely necessary you can take oxycodone/xanax in your case to breakthrough . If it makes sense in pain management I think it should also make sense in panick and anxiety management, on the otherhand you never know with doctors.
If I were allowed to keep another benzo like I said for breakthrough/emergency situations only I would have been on a much lower dose of clonazepam and benzos in general b/c once clonazepam stops to work your pretty much in shit b/c its a strong benzo and that means most other benzos will also require a high dose to equal your clonazepam tolerance. So instead of 4mg clonazepam a day I could take 0.5mg xanax a day along with 1mg-2mg of clonazepam a day and even if I were to take both benzos it would still be the equivalent of less than 4mg clonazepam a day (1mg clonazepam = 1mg alprazolam). For example the clonazepam works IMO however it doesnt put me to sleep like xanax or others or stop a panick attack if your stressed the fuck over the line it just helps to prevent one but you can take a bunch without results.
p.s. In my experience clonazepam has a celiling dose in terms for therapeutic effects at 4mg after which increasing the dose only produces more sedation/grogginess and your going to be left with that for quite a while due to the huge half life plus a huge tolerence due to the high potency.
I am lucky that I have never come to the point of full blown benzo withdrawl during these years however I've come close many times.
The closest thing I can compare benzo w/d to is if you've ever taken an anti histamine or certain related plants (datura, belladona) and experienced what delierium is like you've got a small idea.
It started for me with insomnia and thus feeling depleated from staying up even though I was eating right and drinking a bit of tea/coffee to have my mind clear as it was foggy; was 3 days no sleep, and last dose being a day before at only 0.25mg alprazolam. I only had to wait 1 more day - 2 days the latest between refills. I had alcohol around to drink in order to mellow out, as well as excellent hasish and marijuana which were only making the confusion worse I only had 1 drink and 1 or 2 hits at the most so it wasn't much help or effect.
I decided to wait it out, i didnt drink nor smoke because it was hard for me to even think. Let me try to describe it, visually i felt like my eyes were hurting keeping them awake and shutting them was not gonna work (too much insomnia) and my thoughts were incredibly scrambled though i was convinced I knew what I was talking about. For instance, I needed to call a couple of friends or someone whom numbers I knew by heart and must have dialed about 5 times to find who I was looking for, mostly I never found who I was looking for and gave up not thinking anything about it or associating it with my lack of benzos, when I did find by miracle maybe say 1 out of 4 people i was trying to call, i couldn't express what I was thinking. It wasnt a matter of language I was able to talk native and english but it was very hard for me to carry out a conversation with anyone, whoever I was talking to if they didnt know said I was tripping..what did I take to that effect. During these phone calls I took a minute of reality to see what was happening as if wakened a little bit/shook up, when I sat back on my couch I realized that my thoughts were what is called delerium or at least the start of.
Delerium at this point was in that the things/actions I was doing were completley of someone fucked out of his mind yet I didnt think nothing of it and perceived my actions not only as the right things to do but the only things to do. I would try to shake myself out of it saying its the drug but I couldn't make sense with myself though Id have periods/minutes of slight lucidity mix in and come back to reality saying shit I should do something about this at least call someone and then i'd go back to being wack where i would sit in one spot watch either an episode on tv or a movie and try my hardest to pay attention to it but after only 1 min at most Id forget everything completley and not even be shocked, i would just sit like an idiot and repeat the same thing until what kind of brings you to reality and makes you say "i think i should have a benzo" is the shaking which became at this point unignorrable and Ive never had that from alcohol or anything so it was hard to ignore believe me. My hands were not yet shaking unconrolably as in couldn't hold a glass to my lips but they were shaky enough not to be able to light a pipe also the most shaky part was not hand/feet, etc but was this feeling i had in my inner self basically right in the center of the chest going up and down my throath to my stomach I felt like I was about to collapse due to such an intense agitation and tension litterraly choking me as in when I would speak during this period my words were tremmoring/shaking I would stutter the words like from being in the freezing cold a long time. As I realized how fucked the situation was in terms of being close to DTs and possibly a seizure I still couldn't think straight, I felt that sitting there and doing what I was doing (nothing) would be the best thing as I wasn't even able to think of the correct numbers to call anybody.
I finally called or he called me, a buddy whom I begged to give me one of his last xanax bars, being a good friend he hooked me up and after I took 1mg xanax it was incredible, everything was right I could add numbers I could count I could think correctly I could watch a movie or tv show and be able to comprehand it and remember it after it was done. It was crazy to think how close I come to going into a seizure....without even being able to comprehand what was happening due to delerium.
p.s. needles to say it was a scary experience, opioid withdrawl (at its most severe) is like a very horrible flue but nothing like benzo withdrawl
The closest thing I can compare benzo w/d to is if you've ever taken an anti histamine or certain related plants (datura, belladona) and experienced what delierium is like you've got a small idea.
It started for me with insomnia and thus feeling depleated from staying up even though I was eating right and drinking a bit of tea/coffee to have my mind clear as it was foggy; was 3 days no sleep, and last dose being a day before at only 0.25mg alprazolam. I only had to wait 1 more day - 2 days the latest between refills. I had alcohol around to drink in order to mellow out, as well as excellent hasish and marijuana which were only making the confusion worse I only had 1 drink and 1 or 2 hits at the most so it wasn't much help or effect.
I decided to wait it out, i didnt drink nor smoke because it was hard for me to even think. Let me try to describe it, visually i felt like my eyes were hurting keeping them awake and shutting them was not gonna work (too much insomnia) and my thoughts were incredibly scrambled though i was convinced I knew what I was talking about. For instance, I needed to call a couple of friends or someone whom numbers I knew by heart and must have dialed about 5 times to find who I was looking for, mostly I never found who I was looking for and gave up not thinking anything about it or associating it with my lack of benzos, when I did find by miracle maybe say 1 out of 4 people i was trying to call, i couldn't express what I was thinking. It wasnt a matter of language I was able to talk native and english but it was very hard for me to carry out a conversation with anyone, whoever I was talking to if they didnt know said I was tripping..what did I take to that effect. During these phone calls I took a minute of reality to see what was happening as if wakened a little bit/shook up, when I sat back on my couch I realized that my thoughts were what is called delerium or at least the start of.
Delerium at this point was in that the things/actions I was doing were completley of someone fucked out of his mind yet I didnt think nothing of it and perceived my actions not only as the right things to do but the only things to do. I would try to shake myself out of it saying its the drug but I couldn't make sense with myself though Id have periods/minutes of slight lucidity mix in and come back to reality saying shit I should do something about this at least call someone and then i'd go back to being wack where i would sit in one spot watch either an episode on tv or a movie and try my hardest to pay attention to it but after only 1 min at most Id forget everything completley and not even be shocked, i would just sit like an idiot and repeat the same thing until what kind of brings you to reality and makes you say "i think i should have a benzo" is the shaking which became at this point unignorrable and Ive never had that from alcohol or anything so it was hard to ignore believe me. My hands were not yet shaking unconrolably as in couldn't hold a glass to my lips but they were shaky enough not to be able to light a pipe also the most shaky part was not hand/feet, etc but was this feeling i had in my inner self basically right in the center of the chest going up and down my throath to my stomach I felt like I was about to collapse due to such an intense agitation and tension litterraly choking me as in when I would speak during this period my words were tremmoring/shaking I would stutter the words like from being in the freezing cold a long time. As I realized how fucked the situation was in terms of being close to DTs and possibly a seizure I still couldn't think straight, I felt that sitting there and doing what I was doing (nothing) would be the best thing as I wasn't even able to think of the correct numbers to call anybody.
I finally called or he called me, a buddy whom I begged to give me one of his last xanax bars, being a good friend he hooked me up and after I took 1mg xanax it was incredible, everything was right I could add numbers I could count I could think correctly I could watch a movie or tv show and be able to comprehand it and remember it after it was done. It was crazy to think how close I come to going into a seizure....without even being able to comprehand what was happening due to delerium.
p.s. needles to say it was a scary experience, opioid withdrawl (at its most severe) is like a very horrible flue but nothing like benzo withdrawl
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TheLostBoys
Bluelighter
Oh I agree but when someone has pain, they need to choose between catching an opiate addiction & feeling little pain or dealing with pain........I for one do not like pain so you know what I chose. As for benzos, they are great when taken when someone is definitely in need of them, not daily for me, or even weekly but when needed, they are great.
DeLee
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2005
- Messages
- 709
Oh yes indeed it can be like a really bad, tripp from hell.
2 years ago I was hospitalized for a medical problem and they cut off my benzodiazepines and I got delerium tremens.
I saw people climbing in through the hospital windows wanting to kill me,
I ripped the IV's from my arm and locked myself in the toilett before the nurses came and unlocked the door and got me out.
This happened a lot of times and I got in my head that my family was in danger by some organization that was after me and them
and I had to call and warn them all the time.
A lot of real visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations for a good 3-4 days without any sleep and finally they
sedated me with benzos and other medication.
Since that day I have been on the benzo daily and don't plan of going of them anytime soon.
I can add that it wasn't the hospital staff's fault in any way because I had illegally used benzos for a couple of years
along with heroin and it was because of a septic infection and heart condition I was admitted and I was unconscious when admitted
and were put in medical coma for some days before the withdrawals begun from both heroin and clonazepam & alprazolam.
2 years ago I was hospitalized for a medical problem and they cut off my benzodiazepines and I got delerium tremens.
I saw people climbing in through the hospital windows wanting to kill me,
I ripped the IV's from my arm and locked myself in the toilett before the nurses came and unlocked the door and got me out.
This happened a lot of times and I got in my head that my family was in danger by some organization that was after me and them
and I had to call and warn them all the time.
A lot of real visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations for a good 3-4 days without any sleep and finally they
sedated me with benzos and other medication.
Since that day I have been on the benzo daily and don't plan of going of them anytime soon.
I can add that it wasn't the hospital staff's fault in any way because I had illegally used benzos for a couple of years
along with heroin and it was because of a septic infection and heart condition I was admitted and I was unconscious when admitted
and were put in medical coma for some days before the withdrawals begun from both heroin and clonazepam & alprazolam.
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tricomb
Bluelight Crew
I had bad severe schizophrenia that lasted weeks. Crazy shit, I am glad I wasn't institutionalized or didn't kill anyone.