I had taken benzodiazepines for 9 years, 4-6mg clonazepam a day for like 6 years, before I finally got off this. And I would never have if it wasn't for my psychiatrist who had also helped me when I quit methadone and was slowly relapsing with morphine etc. Before I took clonazepam, I took ridiculous amounts of lorazepam, and one day I simply told my previous psychiatrist that maybe it'd be a good idea to switch to clonazepam because it's longer lasting, so it'd be easier for me to get off that way. Well, it was the dumbest thing I have ever done in my life actually as in no time I was even more hopeless than ever before. And my previous psychiatrist would just keep prescribing me clonazepam, as much as I wanted, I was entering her office and she had the prescription ready. 2 minutes of talking and I was leaving with a script for 6x 30x 2mg every 2 months.
When I got to my current psychiatrist with PAWS from methadone and ended up in the detox ward getting on Suboxone maintenance program, I got it down to 4mg myself after I started seeing how stupid clonazepam made me feel along with methadone, and my previous psychiatrist wouldn't care at all if I became a vegetable one day. My dose was reduced to 2mg right away. It was painful really going through anxiety in the hospital. A week after I left the hospital and was placed on Suboxone it was further reduced to 1mg. 2 more weeks and it was 0.5mg. And later I would just get no prescription from him. I started getting clonazepam on the street and via contacts for speed etc. I felt unready and the fact that I didn't really choose to quit myself was making me even more angry. By that time I had my chemistry studies all f...ed up and my life was going nowhere. I decided to leave the country to make some money. So I got a script for clonazepam for like 3 or 4 months. I can't even remember now, benzodiazepines screwed my memory so bad. The trip abroad didn't help me at all, I came back home in the end with all the problems. It was August last year. I would just smoke weed all the time to help myself with the anxiety and I would use amphetamine and mephedrone to compensate for getting no peace from opioids because of Suboxone. Eventually I got so tired of it all that I didn't even have strength to pick up the phone and call somebody to get clonazepam. I almost got kicked out of the maintenance program because I couldn't get out, I was sleepless for nights, all shaking and sweaty in the morning not able to go to the program once every two weeks...
There was no taper schedule in my mind really, I don't know how my psychiatrist had it in my mind. And right now I don't really care. It's been a month since I took no clonazepam. I was afraid of getting panic attacks and I was afraid of getting an epileptic attack. Well, it turned out that the dose I got down to did next to nothing. It was really bad mostly mentally for like 2 weeks, weird psychotic thoughts, deep depression, and literally all the stuff you can read about benzodiazepine withdrawal (problems with senses, suicidal ideation, restless legs worse than I ever got from opioid withdrawal, paranoias, sleeplessness with terrible drowsiness, realistic nightmares, derealization, depersonalization to the point I was asking myself who I am...). And I could feel there's too little buprenorphine in my system after 24 hours, restless legs would get worse, and I would get mad at everything and everyone. I've stopped seeing people and it is still this way. I either have my phone off or I just don't answers calls. I prefer to be up at night when it's quiet, I sleep at daytime, the sleep is terrible, so I wander around tired all the time. All the past struck back at me, at times I would start talking to myself and I would get so hot from all these thoughts. But more and more often I get mentally "unblocked", like there are moments some things are so clear to me just the way they used to be. My mind was so sharp compared to where I got to. But you know what? There wasn't a single moment I would start crying out for a chill pill like I sometimes still do for morphine or just any full opioid agonist. At the beginning it was really hard, but I guess BZDs sucked so much life out of me that I didn't even care to go out and look for clonazepam, unlike with morphine or heroin when I was in W/D.
I know it's easier when you already think you lost everything, and you have to start it all anew. I wasn't worried for tomorrow, nothing mattered to me, I didn't even care for maintenance program, although I knew I would be in serious W/D without Suboxone, and any heroin is like 200 km away, so I would never get to it. Anyway, I tried slow tapering from clonazepam numerous times and it never worked. In the end I did it with no schedule and although I'm literally a wreck now, with the pain all over my body despite Suboxone, I'm glad I've done it and I don't even think I could take a single pill with a BZD now. And it really wasn't a walk in the park in my case either, 9 years, day to day, and I started it when I was 14, so basically my whole adult life were benzodiazepines. I'm sure it would all make much more sense to me now if it wasn't for depression in the first place, if I ever cared for my life while being an adult. But what I did was simply going back to the point where it all started and at that point nothing made sense to me either. However, my mind was something I cared for the most, so when I started realizing that I'm getting dumber and dumber, I felt as if I had nothing left. And it's not that I don't look good etc., as a matter of fact a lot of girls would get attracted to me, it's just that I've never trusted people generally, so I've never really seen much value in the relationships with other people. They simply used me too much, I was too naive, and instead of being assertive I ended up a social retard.
Anyway, I just wanted all of you struggling with benzodiazepine addiction to know that it really can be done no matter how deep you think you are in this shit. And I started thinking I was really deep, in fact I didn't believe I would ever get off clonazepam. I imagined myself to die in my 30s, depressed, but still on clonazepam because I thought it was making me function socially somehow, do every day things etc. But it wasn't, I saw that I wasn't functioning at all once I sobered up a bit. I'm not pointing the way to do it, I just wanted to show that even if you're hopeless about everything, it is still possible. Nothing will be better right away, but I guess at some point it can't get worse when you quit.
Good luck to you all!
