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My brother's benzo problem - help please

W

worried sister

Greenlighter
Joined
Apr 8, 2010
Messages
15
Location
London, UK
I am a new user to this site which i came across while searching through my brother's history. He is a 28 year old recovering alcoholic who has not had a drink this year. He has aso been on a GP supervised diazepam taper. (From 20mg to 4mg)Unfortunately he has been supplementing his medication with internet purchased products such as xanax and more recently clonazepam which made him like a zombie.

He now tells me that he has been taking 10 x 10mg of blue diazepam every day for the past two weeks. He has put my husband and i through hell but i love him and can't let him sink.
He has managed to hold down his job and we have confiscated the pills. (60 blisters of the blue pills) He said the 5mg taper was not enough but now says he needs to continue taking the 10mg doses otherwise he will have a seizure. I know something about the half life of these pills but I had no idea he was taking so many. Would it be irresponsible to slash his dose to 10mg per day? He has been doing so well and I had no idea these things on the net. They look like the real Mccoy - they originate from Pakistan and have a Roche marking but surely he has enough in his system to sustain him through a reduction.

I just want to help him - when he was drinking I locked him in our house and even slept beside him to stop him drinking mouth wash or insect repellant - we even had to come back from honeymoon early as he had a relapse. What is the most/least amount of these pills we can give him to make him functional? I would appreciate any advice. Have spent a fortune on therapy, he goes to AA but he seems obssessed with these blasted benzos. As for the Clonazepam, he assures me he has flushed them so I can only hope. His drinking put him in ICU 4 times.

My husband is staying with him tonight. Apologies if I haven't observed the right etiquette but I know that my bro is a dedicated follower of your site and I would appreciate any advice.
 
I'm not sure - as I've never read any of his posts. Where should I post this? I've been ringing helplines but to no avail and my bro insists that he nees 100mg in order to sleep.

Ahh I've found his user name but he doesn't seem to have posted recently.
 
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SUPPORT thru OD to TDS

I'll see if I can help you out at all. In the meantime, I've passed this through our 'Other Drugs' (OD) forum where a lot of people are very knowledgeable on the types of drugs you mention as well as the withdrawal issues. I've left the thread in our forum set aside for supporting people in need, our 'The Dark Side' (TDS).
 
That's very kind, thank you. He has had his 100mg and yet he is still not sleeping. I was just hoping to get some advice on what is the lowest and safest dose we can give him but he insisted that he needed 10 pils. I appreciate your swift response.
 
Wow, I wish I had as great a sibling as great as you seem to be for your brother.
The bad news: benzos, which include diazepam and clonazepam are an extremely difficult group of drugs to get off once addicted. All sorts of bad shit can happen if you stop cold turkey or reduce dose too quickly. Also, your brother needs to want to give them up.
If you can, go to a doctor with your brother and tell them exactly what is going on, the extent of his habit.
Google "The Ashton Manual", take a look at it and maybe bring it to the doctor when you go.
Bless you for puting up with all your brothers troubles, but sooner or later he will have to learn to walk on his own again.
Hope things work out for you and your brother.
Cheers
 
Please be careful with this as you could end up enabling your brother. It seems you are doing everything you can to help him, and for this I applaud you. But no matter how much you want him to stop, it will not happen until HE decides he wants the same thing. Just remember that no matter how much you love him, you can not give up your life, marriage, and dreams you may have. Addicts have a way of playing their families to end up getting what they want, and this comes from personal experience of being an addict. I always heard people say that you can't get better till you reach rock bottom and the only direction you have to go is up. Now I am a believer in this. I really hope your brother gets his act together and beats this thing, but again, don't let it cost YOU everything.
 
Edgewise1 I have been accused of this by several of his doctors and you are right. I expected the deception while he was drinking but didn't realise that it would continue.

Saripuya, thank you for your warm words of support. My husband is with him in A&E (he decided to climb out the window as we only gave him 10 tablets). He has been to all the luxury rehabs but he needs to do it from within. He has agreed t0 taper himself from 100mg to 80mg - suggested taper is 1/5th of pre-detox dose per week.
So he comes down to 80mg a day for a week, then 60. 40 and 20 in successive weeks. He says he will do this.

I just had no idea he was supplementing his prescribed taper to this extent. Apparently he has taken as much as 300mg in a single day. Is this common? It's very hard to get a GP to prescribe diazepams in large quantities for obvious reasons. Hence they start the taper at 20mg and reduce it by 2mg on a fortnightly basis. I suppose what I really needed to know was what it the safest and smallest amount I can give him? I thank you all for you support.
 
its difficult to estimate what the exact dose which is required for a person to begin their taper. once you have found a dose which he can survive on without going through dangerous withdrawals, follow a proper taper regime (e.g. the ashton manual).

the amount you can start on is very dependent on the individual and their own personal physical dependence.

dropping 10mg every week is quite a large amount. you are right in that only he can pave his own way to recovery - he can only clean up if he wants to clean up.

if he does want to get clean then the best way you can help him is to hold his dose to stop him from abusing his medication. dispense his dose as required and stick to the schedule. its up to him to not supplement his taper. if he goes out there to score more drugs, then its a sure sign that he is not ready to quit.


also your dedication to helping your brother is admirable. i am blessed in this world to have family who i think would do the same.
 
ideal is medical supervised detox. do what you can to get him there by taking steps to support his addiction less. be there for him still be supportive but in a different way. if you have to use tough love the worst thing you can do is comletely turn your back on him. if you can do this it may make him reach "bottom" but it may kill him. so this is not recomended.

take his medication and control it if he cant. if this does not work or he does not let you tell his job that he has mental health issues and can not work. no alcohol as it will prolong and make it worse. basically this job is too much for the family. ALSO look inside yourself and asses if he REALLY want to quit. if he has the desire he can do it.

sleep is the major issue for benzo withdrawl. try to get non addictive sleep meds, but not trazadone if u have that in the uk. as this medication can cause heart problems and seizures. there are many herbs that can help like kava kava. lots of good food, and he needs just to rest and chill out. as an addict he probably can not create the right environment to detox.

dont do what i did. just stop taking the meds and fuck up your body.
 
worried sister said:
He now tells me that he has been taking 10 x 10mg of blue diazepam every day for the past two weeks. He has put my husband and i through hell but i love him and can't let him sink.
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If you'll love him, you'll let him go.

My fiancee and I thought the same way you did (regarding her brother). That was many months ago.

Now I refuse to see him and he is not a part of our family anymore.

If I had given him a talking to regarding what fucking horrible person he turned into (drug abuse was only the beginning of his issues - he was addicted to racemic amphetamine and benzodiazepines), maybe I wouldn't have such a negative association with him, and maybe my life would have been easier.

I say this because if you love him, you don't want to end up not loving him.

Do not let anyone put you through hell. Just tell him he's become a person you cannot allow in your life. If he loves you too, he will (eventually) get clean, and maybe one day you can have him in your life without anyone being put through hell.
 
Thank you all for your advice. He is out of hospital now and has been given 4 x 20mg of diazepam which was very generous of the doctors. I know he'll be pestering me for the internet-purchased pills and I imagine he will order xanax again at some stage. He tells me he just takes it for emergencies (the xanax) and will stick to the prescribed meds during the rest of the time. He has shown no adverse signs of withdrawal after taking 300mg the other day but we will watch him closely. One nurse said he is a drug addict and I need to give him what he needs (60 blisters of 10mg diazepam) but the Consultant was a lot more reasonable and advised us to adminster them on a strictly as needed basis. I no that his alcoholism is a disease but i was naive to think that the benzo obssession/dependence would be a less serious condition. I know I have to back off eventually but in the mean time I'm trying to keep the crack addicts from his door and purging his mobile phone of names such as 'brown; dave and 'crack' andy. I am indebted to the advice I received from CITA - the UK's only Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants, and Painkillers.

He feels that a daily dose of 60-80mg is an insultingly low dose irrespective of the medical advice so I'm just hoping that he will try and stick to it so we can eventually start him on a gentle taper.
 
Many people say Benzo withdrawals are the worst withdrawals you can go through, worse the heroine. It sounds like he is thinking that he can withdrawal from them without discomfort. Many people here who kicked their habit had insomnia for weeks, and that is to be expected. At the same time, he needs to be slowly tapered down, or else he will have a seizure. It's a tricky situation. Your best bet is to make a schedule and go over it with him. At a dose that high, a lot of people wean themselves off over a year's span. You're both going to have to agree on the schedule, or you'll just end up clashing about the dose all the time. I wish you the best!
 
Definitely do a slow taper. The slower you do it, the better chance he has of being successful once totally off of them. Due to unfortunate occurrences, both my friend and I were forced to detox from a hefty xanax habit cold turkey. He had a seizure, but I was lucky to not have one. THe withdrawal was horrible though, worse than heroin withdrawal for sure. I did not feel right mentally for months and months afterwards. Benzos are no joke.

I commend you for sticking by your brother's side, and doing your best to learn about benzo withdrawal and the proper way to detox him. I wish you and your family the best of luck. I am fairly knowledgeable about benzo withdrawal and whatnot so if you have any more questions or need someone to talk to, feel free to PM me, or e-mail me.

Goodday
 
Once again, I am so so grateful for your advice. Cegli - I find the insomnia hard to cope with - every time i here a noise I jump up to see what he is up to. How can you not sleep on 60-80mg of diazepam? I give him nytol but it does very little. He has been on about 6 NHS tapers but they always start at 20mg and so hopefully this time, starting at 80 and taking it very slowly will be less traumatic. I had my own problems as a teenager but was lucky enough to spend 10 years in therapy but i have straight forward depression so understanding alcohol dependcy and benzo addiction has been a learning curve and so painful to witness. Brokedown place I shall take you up on your kind offer. I am so relieved to find such help on this site. I have asked my brother to take his doses in 10s rather than 20s purely because of the way it affects his speech but I admit I don't know if topping up is as effective as taking 20mg at once 4 times a day
 
worried sister said:
Once again, I am so so grateful for your advice. Cegli - I find the insomnia hard to cope with - every time i here a noise I jump up to see what he is up to. How can you not sleep on 60-80mg of diazepam? I give him nytol but it does very little. He has been on about 6 NHS tapers but they always start at 20mg and so hopefully this time, starting at 80 and taking it very slowly will be less traumatic. I had my own problems as a teenager but was lucky enough to spend 10 years in therapy but i have straight forward depression so understanding alcohol dependcy and benzo addiction has been a learning curve and so painful to witness. Brokedown place I shall take you up on your kind offer. I am so relieved to find such help on this site. I have asked my brother to take his doses in 10s rather than 20s purely because of the way it affects his speech but I admit I don't know if topping up is as effective as taking 20mg at once 4 times a day
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Tolerance to benzos can almost increase infinitely. For instance if he starts taking 1000mg a day for a month, he won't be able to sleep when he only takes 700mg. This happens because when your receptors are over-stimulated, they "down-regulate", which basically means they turn themselves off. Your body strives to maintain equilibrium, no matter what you put into it.

When they are under-stimulated, they slowly go back to normal (up-regulate), that's why withdrawal goes away. He's basically going to have to deal with a lot of insomnia for his receptors to slowly turn back on.

Dosing in 10s is a good idea. It will keep his blood levels steadier, as opposed to constant ups and downs.
 
cegli said:
Tolerance to benzos can almost increase infinitely. For instance if he starts taking 1000mg a day for a month, he won't be able to sleep when he only takes 700mg. This happens because when your receptors are over-stimulated, they "down-regulate", which basically means they turn themselves off. Your body strives to maintain equilibrium, no matter what you put into it.

When they are under-stimulated, they slowly go back to normal (up-regulate), that's why withdrawal goes away. He's basically going to have to deal with a lot of insomnia for his receptors to slowly turn back on.

Dosing in 10s is a good idea. It will keep his blood levels steadier, as opposed to constant ups and downs.
Click to expand...


I just found another hidden stash of abou 20 blisters. He says if I don't give them to him he will go out and score crack. He wants more even though he can barely walk or talk. It's a nightmare!
 
Please help (again) my brother says he needs 100-200mg of the internet diazepam. He says they are weaker than the ones he has been prescribed and will help him sleep. He says he won't be a zombie in the morning, I don't know what to do
 
Sorry to put out another SOS but my brother is demanding more and more benzos - could someone direct me to any online forum chatroom as I'm at my wit's end! Also if anyone knows about these blisters of 10mg valium allegedly produced by Roche and originating from Karachi please let me know. My bro says it's safe for him to take them in quantities of 100! It's 2300 in the UK and we're in for a long night.
 
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