Heh, he brought up the hip fractures.
He's really reaching here, reminds me of the now removed triazolam (yeah, goodbye Halcion, glad I had you only once at least) that really focused on the dangers to the elderly etc. We're all aware of this here.
RC Benzos are more a good thing than a bad thing. It keeps me from being in that damn cycle I was in because I am underdosed (on purpose, I could ask for a raise, well, more like a switch, more likely to Bromazepam 6mg x3 a day to compensate the 20mg valium a day, I don't think he'd want to put me on 30mg of valium a day) and sometimes life's circumstances, especially things I cannot change, overwhelm me so much because well, now I know, thanks to clonazepam putting a stop to my panic disorder from 2007 to 2010, it made me think things through and find other ways to calm myself and also be able to think in different processes that allows for one not to be trembling in fear due to a feeling of lack of control/imminent death/country 'A' as the FBI calls it going all Samson on us when the eventuality the rest of the world gets sick of their barbarity inevitably happens. It helped me put away my fear of close contact with people of the opposite gender, I used to push away girls, even the pretty ones who would show interest in me, clonazepam helped me in so many ways. It was like a pause button for my brain which was stuck watching a horror movie.Then when I felt the addiction wasn't worth it anymore, because I felt TOO carefree and kinda zombified at 3.5mg a day, I asked, to the surprise of my psychiatrist, to be tapered down using diazepam, but I got stuck at 20mg because we didn't exactly use the Ashton manual, and then, it had been 3 and a half years I had been on ever increasing doses of clonazepam, after using for more than a year, there's no way that when I decide to leave the diazepam behind, from where I'm at, it's going to be 1mg at once every 2-3 weeks, and even have pauses in reduction, again if necessary.Thankfully the dosages of valium pills allow for 1mg reductions which is a plus. 3.5mg of clonazepam was converted to 55mg of valium for a week, 50, 45, 40 etc. and I thought I could do it. Something traumatic happened when I got to around 25mg in my life (just had to happen right then, didn't it?), well it happened to everyone's life, but it's not like they ever noticed,most of em anyway. So when I dropped to under 20mg of valium to 15mg, the drop in dosage was way too much and I had to call in sick and go to the ER to have things sorted out, had to tell the ER doc about all the antidepressants I took and why I stopped them(to his insistence). When he heard about my Paxil mania, he said, okay, we'll put you back on 20mg until you meet your psychiatrist again.But the whole time he was telling me "Anxiety is treated with antidepressants, ALWAYS". 8).
So right now, at 20mg, on a threshold dose to feel ok and sleep okay, I do get bad days and good days too, where I take less, split a 10mg in 2 and have 15mg a day, or 10. The supplemental benefits of professionally (it is possible to know how professional X vendor is, I can't tell you how one can do this here, it would count as sourcing) of having these on the market for me to buy freely and take responsibly for those damn days where I needed 30mg to get by, or 25...I tell you never again do I want to live in a state of cold turkey benzo situation because a)can't refill b)can't go to the ER and hope to be helped, i'd have to invent stuff about losing my script etc. and at some point, I did that too often so I didn't go to an ER in years now (3) so that I won't be treated like the last time I was in benzo CT withdrawal due to not taking my script exactly as scripted (which is illogical like i said, the fact the dosage is rigid is what causes problems like this). Yeah, last time I went in because I had 4 days left before I could renew, the extremely stuck up female doc I happened to meet (not saying all female docs are like her, but they happen to be more strict and protocol abiding in all cases, which is a female trait) who said, "go back in the waiting room and wait until you seize out, I'm not not helping you. You abuse your script and I will tell your doc."
They keep me and others from annoying these sanctimonious ER docs when experiencing the hell on earth that is benzo withdrawal. And with valium I endure it, because it's an endurable torture. Back when I was on clonazepam, at the dosage I was, and the fact I seem to metabolize it faster than usual,it does have a large range of metabolization, from the top of my head it was about 35 to 110 hours. Considering the vast majority of people who use benzos out there, don't take them everyday, and use them purely in utilitarian fashion, I say yeah, it's still better that you use that, than an opiate or alcohol to put yourself to sleep after using stimulants,psychedelics etc. Or just the occasional insomnia, without the insane annoyance that is of having doctor's appointments and trying to convince them that is not trazodone for occasional next-day delibitating insomnia. Before I got on that benzo train, my old school doc, who now unfortunately retired last fall, back in the early '00s he was scripting me Seconals, I would tell him how many exams I was scared of failing which happened in the morning the next day, and script me one dose for every night before such exams, such a trust was wonderful. When the feds removed all barbs except for a 2, useless for sleep, he used Placidyl for my educational anxiety caused insomnia, Placidyl was removed in 2006. I was using OTC Promethazine 50mg pills,diphenhydramine 50mg and all the shit things I could get when all those were gone, never asked for a benzo, until I was scripted 0.25mg xanax by him before sleep. 0.25mg didn't do much, 0.5 just calmed me but did nothing like what we wanted, so I got a script to the best z-drug we had, Starnoc (Zaleplon), used that for the occasional insomnia, especially as my issue is falling asleep, once I do, i'm a brick. Canada removed Zaleplon because I guess it came in gelcaps, which contained a snortable powder (yeah you could do that with Zaleplon, I'm sure americans here knwo that from whenever they had some Sonata). It would give this wonderful psychedelic euphoria and suddenly lights out, so of course you had to be in bed when it started to kick in. We only had Zopiclone and that thing is useless and tastes like what I imagine alien drugs taste like and we didn't have zolpidem until like 2 years ago, tried it, its not covered by my province's insurance so 44 dollars for 15 10mg sublingual pills, which also taste so horrible, I don't know what they were thinking, and its the only form in comes in, Sublinox 10mg Sublingual. It didn't even help me sleep when out of my mere 20mg of valium.
So benzos kill 2 birds with one stone....I could have lived with just one stone for one bird though and do as I did in the past with my anxiety issues, deal with it. Now I can't. So RC benzos are welcome to all the poor souls that have to live with benzo addiction, something that is brushed off as almost non existant by many doctors, or just a mere annoyance that goes away rapidly. It's just not so. Or else I'd be off them. That's why there is such demand, my case is surely not unique...
And, I have the official Health Canada benzo conversion + info charter from 2009 here, still contains outdated info like Halcion being there, but other than that, clonazepam is approved for anxiety issues. It says it's not ideal for insomnia (I agree), because you wake up still on it and that it is useful for some nevralgic pain. Which is why I first got it from a neuro, who told me, it's also used in psychiatry so I won't refer you to a psychiatrist," this + the Topamax will take care of your pain issue and also your anxiety issues (which were worsened by that damn medical problem not being found out for years, went through surgery, removal of perfect wisdom teeth and about 5 neurologists before they found out what was going on. That'll also make you doubt your sanity, if you believe in sanity anyway.
You're lucky you can still get a couple days refill early P_A, the pharmacy I go to (now, since the opiate addiction incident, where I go take my suboxone and have to fucking stand there like an idiot for 5 minutes for the pills to dissolve and due to my jaw and nerves being fucked, i can't even show them the underside of my tongue out very well, it won't go up as much as other people would), they're also hardasses (except for the owner, who I am so happy when he is the one working, that if in a worst case scenario, like last year, when I lost my bottle of valium commuting in the bus from my girlfriend's apartment to mine and was like 15 days in advance, I was lucky that when I called he was the one at work. The ghost looking ginger will not under any circumstances renew my valium script before the exact date and she's there all the fucking time. And the 2 new female, again, girls were most likely told "this one's on suboxone" so they never wanted to either.
At my old pharmacy before I was forced to switch, I was able to renew days in advance, especially when I was still on my mom's insurance and not the government's, I was still a student past 25, but her insurance didn't cover for such a situation, so it got more difficult then and even more later because as you must know, only certain pharmacies have the liquid methadone...which is the same brand name Metadol for pain except in liquid. Now that I'm on subs i could switch pharmacies, but my old one is now owned by a different person and he switched all the staff so I got no idea how they run the place. There's a smaller pharmacy not too far where I could switch, but they certainly would not have suboxone in stock and would need to order it. So when I do switch, it's gonna have to be a perfectly coordinated op.