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Benzos Diazepam Withdrawal

Thanks^ - It is just so fucking depressing thinking I should have been using my 20s to get a degree/build a career etc instead of getting fucked up everyday. |It is probably too late to turn it around now, Im nearly 30. :(


Trust me a lot of us in our mid-late 20s feel like this
 
^^

Yeah it's a very common thought. You have to let that go though.. can't live in the past and play the "what if?" game. You'll drive yourself nuts. Whatever happened, happened. Focus on what you can change.. the present and the future.

/words of wisdom.. Hah.
 
Thanks^ - It is just so fucking depressing thinking I should have been using my 20s to get a degree/build a career etc instead of getting fucked up everyday. |It is probably too late to turn it around now, Im nearly 30. :(

Past has gone now. What are you going to NOW???? Who's to ssy you can't get a degree in your 30s?

Instead of living your life through regrets of what could have been, makes them realities of what WILL BE.

Good luck.
 
Well... I have to say... That I'm extremely positive that I did the right thing. Today was moving day... And if I had continued my taper on the schedule I had set, it would have been disastrous. I ended up having to move hundreds of pounds of things today. I moved at least 50 boxes... and some of them more than once. I jacked up my back something fierce. But even when I couldn't catch my breath after moving the roommate's bed in and I thought I was going to panic and that my heart would never slow back down... It did. I didn't have a panic attack today. Even running on 2.5mg (my morning dose), I maintained.

I'm on cloud nine right now. Today was a huge test. I'm in so much pain... and I've never worked that hard in my life... but I have a friend who doesn't have panic attacks and who regularly leaves his house and leads a normal life, never smoked, doesn't drink... He was DYING... He collapsed a few times from carrying shit that was MAYBE 50 pounds while I'm tossing around 3-400 pounds a minute like a boss. We both have similar builds but he just couldn't hang. Keep in mind I was a smoker pretty much non-stop at a pack a day from 17 until just before my 29th birthday in October minus maybe 9 months that I have quit total over the years, I was drinking so much that I should have been dead a long time ago, and yeah... Seriously... Wow.

As for the wasted years... I think everyone feels that to some degree, drugs or not. And honestly I don't regret anything. I have lived and experienced and that's what we are here for at the end of the day, right?
 
Cool stuff! You should be pleased with yourself, I actually just had a similar feeling, something kinda personal just happened and in the past I would be totally and royally fucked up by now. Instead I just managed to talk myself into 'some things arent meant to be and it doesnt really matter all that much' which in reality, is totally true :).,
 
I fucking totally fell off the wagon with this recently, I have been taking 30mg a day about twice a week for the last couple of weeks :|
 
I fucking totally fell off the wagon with this recently, I have been taking 30mg a day about twice a week for the last couple of weeks :|

Was thinkin about you yesterday man. Sorry to hear it.

Did you decide not to taper anymore or just throw in the towel for now?

Remember its never too late to try again. I don't think the success rate is very high the first few times you do it, just like with tobacco. Took me a good 10 tries to finally kick the shit for good.

I am still at 7.5mg. My new psychiatrist wants me to "stabilize." I don't think she realizes that I won't ever stabilize on diazepam. She also added Lamictal (lamotrigine) the other day. I took it one night and it knocked me out. I have my disability hearing on Thursday so I decided its not best to mess with my meds until AFTER I see the judge because if I miss that, I'm screwed.
 
^ yeah, this last week I have just been taking 5mg a night, which is what I was on before.

The most ridiculous part is that it was over something so stupid too, I met a girl who I kind of liked and was hanging out with, but I was so fucking nervous around her I was taking stupid amounts of diazepam to calm me down. I realise this is ridiculous and its hardly the 'real me' shes getting to know if I am just dosed up on diazepam.

So I have not been hanging out with her/texting/calling and yeah, I doubt we will be hanging out anymore which I guess is a relief in that I wont be taking ridiculous amounts of pills anymore but still I'm really kicking myself about this.

Hows it going with the hearing? did you get all the papers and stuff that you need?
 
Now you see why I've cut out my dating and general social life while doing my taper... Shit will do a number on you fast man :/

Hopefully she'll understand when everything is all said and done. If not, she wasn't good for you anyway.

Hearing is Thursday and I'm stressed the hell out but I've got all my shit in order and we've got a VERY solid case. Although reading the physician summaries, I was so depressed that I wanted to get fucked up... Reading comments from 6 different doctors all echoing the same diagnoses over and over and over is extremely depressing but it makes for a rock solid case, especially since two of them were paid for BY disability to make sure I wasn't faking it. We've got a slam dunk case but it doesn't make it any less nerve racking, you know? Plus seeing bipolar, agoraphobia, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, insomnia, borderline personality disorder, and all the other crap they've labeled me with over the years... Seriously.

Moving is what really did me in. I overexerted myself to the point that I still haven't gotten my energy back 12 days later. Fuck. Me. Ugh.

Hang in there man. It should be relatively easy to go back down since you've done it before and you haven't been "off the wagon" for all that long. Given the scope of time that we've been taking these meds, its just a drop in the bucket. :)
 
I agree about the success rate. I can't even count how many times I was writing myself a schedule that I never followed. When you're feeling bad, try thinking about the progress you've already done and think of it as your capital. This is ridiculously banal, but it does help. It is so much better to be off that I can't even stress it enough. You gain back so much will to live and start seeing what life has to offer. I'm also now convinced that my addiction partially felt so bad because of benzodiazepines, and when I got on Suboxone and couldn't get peace of mind from opioids much any more, I began getting addicted to other drugs I earlier used to dislike. It's now gone and I'm beginning to see a lot more sense beyond drugs. No matter how many times you fail, it is worth to keep trying. It can be done and I think it's a great thing people may gather at one place and even if only for a second feel less lonely in their problem. The first big obstacle is seeing things are wrong when you're dependent on the pills, the second big obstacle is getting off. The closer it is to get off, the harder it gets and you more often get nervous and think about taking a pill so it'll pass, but also more often it comes to your senses you don't really need it as much as you think you do. During the worst period I was completely resigned about everything, but there was this thought lingering that no matter how hard it gets, it'll be better in the end, because I'm so fed up with the life like this it can't go any more worse. So don't stop, Crampz.
 
I fucking totally fell off the wagon with this recently, I have been taking 30mg a day about twice a week for the last couple of weeks :|

If it was just twice a week for a couple weeks then it shouldn't be that bad getting back down to where you were at just before that.

Was thinkin about you yesterday man. Sorry to hear it.

Did you decide not to taper anymore or just throw in the towel for now?

Remember its never too late to try again. I don't think the success rate is very high the first few times you do it, just like with tobacco. Took me a good 10 tries to finally kick the shit for good.

I am still at 7.5mg. My new psychiatrist wants me to "stabilize." I don't think she realizes that I won't ever stabilize on diazepam. She also added Lamictal (lamotrigine) the other day. I took it one night and it knocked me out. I have my disability hearing on Thursday so I decided its not best to mess with my meds until AFTER I see the judge because if I miss that, I'm screwed.

My first taper had ended in June 2011, and after that failed I didn't try again until July 2013, and that's the time that I successfully stopped. So yea, don't get too discouraged as it's never too late to get back on track to get off of benzos.

^ yeah, this last week I have just been taking 5mg a night, which is what I was on before.

The most ridiculous part is that it was over something so stupid too, I met a girl who I kind of liked and was hanging out with, but I was so fucking nervous around her I was taking stupid amounts of diazepam to calm me down. I realise this is ridiculous and its hardly the 'real me' shes getting to know if I am just dosed up on diazepam.

So I have not been hanging out with her/texting/calling and yeah, I doubt we will be hanging out anymore which I guess is a relief in that I wont be taking ridiculous amounts of pills anymore but still I'm really kicking myself about this.

Hows it going with the hearing? did you get all the papers and stuff that you need?

Do you think that your nervousness towards the girl was as severe at you made it out to be, or do you think you hyped it up in your head a lot? Like how bad do you think it would have been if you hadn't taken those high doses to talk to her?
 
I was actually more nervous when I was seriously addicted to clonazepam. I know it's almost impossible to notice it when you take BZDs every day, but it's true. One day tolerance hits the level when BZDs stop relieving anxiety and all you can achieve with them is blacking out, but it takes more and more as well. It got so bad in the last year that I even calmed myself down with amphetamines, I'm not joking, it did calm me down, but then I would have to snort every day. Clonazepam did nothing for me, so I often took alprazolam or something else for the comedown. Things may become sick.

A dangerous thing is when you're anxious all the time and start being afraid of various situations that aren't scary. When similar situations happen again, you eventually start associating the anxiety with these situations, definitely not pills, because how can anxiolytics cause anxiety, right? I began thinking through stupid things like waving a hand to kids on the street when I was waiting at crossroads, because I was thinking how it looks to other people. For God's sake, I'm never going to make such a prisoner of myself.

"To live in fear is to be a slave." (Seneca the Younger) <- I just love that and finally I can live by that. I suffered a lot because I was thinking what other people think, I was retreating from every possible argument, because I was tired of stress in my life. Certainly it all affected my personal life, but no matter how much I may need other people as a human, there's no way I will ever let myself suffer again because of a girl or any other person. My mind may be warped as hell, but you can't survive without experience.

I must add I can remember how I took my first temazepam pill because I couldn't stand the situation with a girl in the middle high school. And for years I wouldn't admit that, because it was so embarrassing, so I perfectly know the feeling. Eventually I ended up being perceived as a guy treating girls like objects, I so tried to show how much I don't care.
 
To be honest, I probably did build it up in my head to be way more than I needed to, I dunno.

But after about a week of being on the 5mg I didnt get a single wink of sleep last night, I'm exhausted! and Thanks Adder, this is actually my second attempt, i Tried before around the beginning of last year and I actually failed around this time last year, I didnt get down to anything like 5mg a day though so this is waaay better than previously!

I just thought I'd check in, I will write more when I am more coherent but right now I really just need to get SOME sleep, I have been away for about 36 hours now so yeah!
 
One of the biggest problems I remember during my very, very rapid benzodiazepine taper - I had two-and-a-half months to get off two years' daily use of three benzodiazepines; fuckin' doctors - was the insomnia. I have always suffered with insomnia, but, save psychiatric complications, I have always been able to stop, drop, and catch some zees after forty or so hours of inhospitable open-eye. I went a week without sleep whilst "tapering" off my benzodiazepines. My normal psychotic symptoms were nothing to the delirious, demented nonsense that my mind began to throw up towards the end of that week. I call it my "week in hell". Thank fuck I was in a psychiatric hospital at the time, or I may have seriously hurt somebody. I feel your pain on the insomnia front, Crampz. Good luck with the brother of death tonight.
 
I'm suffering from rebound REM sleep which makes dreams very realistic to the point that sometimes when I wake up from a nightmare or just a very strange dream, my whole day is weird as if I was still dreaming. Often when I wake up from a weird dream or nightmare and then I fall asleep again, it continues. Recently I've been stopping myself from falling asleep as I started being afraid of falling asleep. :/ Having little to no sleep has a terribly negative impact on the mood. It adds to the feeling that everything is weird and depersonalization and derealization are easily augmented.

Still I'm somehow very happy of my change. There are days I'm very nervous and on a two occasions I smoked weed and snorted mephedrone, and both made me feel bad in some way. I don't feel like taking anything any more except for the cravings for morphine way. But it's manageable with Suboxone. I wish I could start studying my beloved chemistry right away, because sitting alone at home is very bad on my mind. I'm thinking about some language course, so I get myself busy now.

One upside of that psychotic feeling is you can create some weird art using your creativity which definitely comes back after getting off BZDs. No matter how bad it is, I still believe it's worth it, I haven't left anything that I needed to live, on the contrary I've left things that made my life harder. Thinking that it can't get any worse helps a lot.
 
^ Try trazodone. The stuff is a miracle pill. I have had fucked up sleep for a few weeks now... going to sleep at 8AM and waking up at 5PM. I've been so scared to mess with any other drugs that I refused to even take a trazodone. Well I caved last night. I took one around 4AM this morning, was out by 5AM, woke up at 12:30PM to take my 2.5mg dose of Valium and I've been up since.

I feel a little bit tired but that's more the residual effect of the trazodone than anything else.

Seriously, give it a try. Non-narcotic, not habit-forming, isn't an antihistamine... Hell its a 5-HT2A antagonist so its even great for when you've gone too far on psychedelics.
 
Eurgh... I am getting so nervous... I was planning on cutting my dose in 2 days time and im really freaking out about it. Iam really scared to because I know its just going to make me unable to function in any way shape or form :(
 
Eurgh... I am getting so nervous... I was planning on cutting my dose in 2 days time and im really freaking out about it. Iam really scared to because I know its just going to make me unable to function in any way shape or form :(

Then hold off. Nothing wrong with that. My psychiatrist has continued to keep me on 7.5mg and I will be on it until the 18th. I'm actually finally stabilizing so she knew what she was doing when she slowed me down, regardless of what I had told myself.
 
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