Thats great you are feeling better
As for me, I dont know whether I just give up or what. I'm 28 and just coming out of a decade long alcoholic/drugged up decade to realise 'I've ruined my life'. I try to put a positive spin on ANYTHING and it is very difficult because reality is that I fucked up beyond belief and ruined my life
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There comes a point where you just can't lie to yourself and convince yourself that your life is on the right track or that it feels worth living. Benzodiazepines, especially long-term use of them are known to induce problems later in life if you're dependent all the time, having been on them half my life, I got to say I am not convinced that they are the best way of dealing with the underlying conditions we all had that landed us in the benzodiazepine dependency boat, along with millions of others. I'm currently trying to eliminate them from my life, for what I hopefully believe will be the last time. I just gotta find a better way of dealing with insomnia, anxiety, panic and PTSD, all the reasons that made me allow more than a decade to go by before realizing that this shit is not helping me more than it's hurt me, the negatives in many ways have outweighed the positives, I've lost many friends to this class of chemical hand cuffs. I managed to break free for over a year, I had bad rebound symptoms that persisted the entire time I was off them, so in a moment of weakness I found myself dependent again.
I take a variety of benzodiazepines, but choose to taper primarily with diazepam because A) I don't even know if I've ever "felt" diazepam, I'd have to consume a ridiculous amount to get the state where you are truly aware of how inebrieted you are, and this keeps me more likely to stick to a steady dose since I know inebriation would mean taking weeks worth at a time. B) Placebo or not, I feel better knowing that it's anticonvulsant properties and long half life and the nordiazepam metabolite that accumulates, makes me feel of it as a "smoother" benzodiazepine, C) I'm clonazepam intolerant, as in, it does absolutely zero for me, I prefer listerine strips to clonazepam for sedation, D) Because it accumulates, with nordiazepam lasting 750 hours in many subjects, I don't have to freak out like it's life or death if I forget to dose my diazepam for a couple days, but I will begin to notice something "wrong" or "missing" after a certain point, although I have in my own personal taper now reached a point where despite panic and PTSD, I'm not taking alprazolam, or any other benzodiazepines im prescribed, which allowed for a substantial dose reduction in diazepam.
For those of you who are extremely sensitive and are at the sub-10mg/day stages, I highly recommend splitting your dosing up to further reduce discomfort by keeping steadier plasma concentrations in your body, like regardless of the dose, I would divide it into four doses, morning, lunchtime, afternoon, and bedtime, or something like that.
For those of you who are in the sub-5mg, or have needs for more precise dosing (I know how irritating it can be to use pill cutters) consider asking your prescribing doctors about liquid diazepam, they make an oral solution and a concentrate (intensol), it makes dosing much easier as they come with a precision eye-dropper.
