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Benzos Oxazepam - what to expect?

suessmayr

suessmayr

Bluelighter
Joined
Jun 30, 2008
Messages
1,067
Location
Sydney, Australia
My shrink gave me oxazepam 15mg tablets today despite my history of benzo abuse. It's been about 9 months since I had any benzos and despite counselling and multiple anti-depressants I'm just not responding. I'm anxious as fuck and can barely do simple things like stay on a bus, speak to a friend; I'm having between 1 and 5 panic attacks daily and these almost inevitably lead to me just leaving the situation no matter what it takes.

So my question is essentially what to expect from oxazepam. I've heard that it has an unusually slow onset of action - is this true? I've done many other benzos but notably alprazolam, temazepam and flunitrazepam. These are all obviously pretty fast-acting and intense so I wonder how it will compare. Also I used valium for a long time and really hated the length of its duration. Is oxazepam like valium in that I'll wake up the next day feeling 'out of it'?

(I should add that I'm really not even considering abusing this drug. I just want to be able to attend my classes and interact with people. What would be an ideal dosage for this? How long before class should I take it?)
 
I dont know why i'm replying since ive never taken oxazepam, but i've been curious as it's supposed to be the least recreational benzo, so no temptations to take it when you dont really need it.

It's supposed to 'feel' about half the strength of valium & yes it is apparently a slow onset drug. I'm actually quite tempted to get some myself soon so let us know ho it goes.

p.s the half life is much shorter so i imagine no waking up groggy.
 
That makes sense. My crafty doctor, he knows what he's doing. But I am confused about it being the least recreational because I often see signs in and around doctors' surgeries saying like 'NO Serepax dispensed here'; so I wonder why people would be seeking it out if it's so shit.
 
suessmayr said:
That makes sense. My crafty doctor, he knows what he's doing. But I am confused about it being the least recreational because I often see signs in and around doctors' surgeries saying like 'NO Serepax dispensed here'; so I wonder why people would be seeking it out if it's so shit.
Click to expand...

Because people will still go for whatever they can get their hands on.
 
Well I tried the Serepax tonight, 15mg, which is meant to be equivalent to about 5-10mg diazepam or .25-.5 of alprazolam. I have to say that it's absolutely unlike any benzo I've ever tried before, and I've used extensively at least 6. It comes on reeeeal slow. I didn't even begin to notice anything until about the 60min mark. And now, 3hrs later, it's still going steady. It's also somehow alot less foggy than the other benzos I've tried. Like I don't feel 'high' but totally in control. I can see why some people seem to think that it's absolutely the best for anxiety. Also, with other benzos, I always get to about 20min after dosing and then want to just take more and more and more. With the Serepax it was like 'well I won't even bother taking more since it'll be at least 60min before I feel it'.
 
I like oxazepam. It's a question of dose. Take a 50mg pill and tell me it's a shitty benzo...
 
We don't have 50mg here. Actually it seems like it's often the case in America that you guys have way higher dosages than we. Like 10mg valium, and (I think) 180mg oxy?

I find with benzos that if I take too much before some event, like a tute/performance/social event, I end up getting more anxious about the fact that I'm 'high' than I would otherwise. Like, I took 10mg diazepam before an event recently and I was obsessed with the idea that I was 'out of it' and not in control, and this made me more fucked up. After that I tried 2mg diazepam and it was way better. I could barely feel the benzo so it was just like being unusually chill.

I think it took me a while to realise this because for a long time I just took benzos for pleasure, so I would take like 150mg diazepam in one hit, and didn't think it was even worth bothering with doses like 2mg.
 
I hear you on that. Less is more with benzos. If i take too much diazepam it has 'paradoxical effects' & often i'll be up all night drinking tea & eating biscuits & doing all sorts of random stuff, almost like doing a line of coke...

I'm actually thinking of getting some of these. I'm currently on a diazepam taper, down to 8 mg per day, so i'm on the 2 mg pills, but i oft take like 10 mg one day then 6 another day as if i take '4 tablets per day' as it says on my script i just dont always feel it.

So, how would you say 15 mg oxazepam feels compared to diazepam? mg for mg wise?? & how long did it feel effective for? I'm really looking for a benzo that i can just take or leave as with my benzos of choice - diazepam, lorazepam, nitazepam, they give too much of pleasureable effect to just ignore when i dont have any marijuana, opiates, booze... What i want is a decent 'utility benzo' that i can take when i get really bad peroid of insomnia or an awful alcohol hangover, which seems to happen every other saturday these days & i wind up taking like 20+ mg of diazepam as anxiety is never worse for me than after drinking alcohol, which is why i only do it socially now.

p.s i think loulou reed is notre ami en France.
 
doppelganga196 said:
So, how would you say 15 mg oxazepam feels compared to diazepam? mg for mg wise?? & how long did it feel effective for? I'm really looking for a benzo that i can just take or leave as with my benzos of choice - diazepam, lorazepam, nitazepam, they give too much of pleasureable effect to just ignore when i dont have any marijuana, opiates, booze... What i want is a decent 'utility benzo' that i can take when i get really bad peroid of insomnia or an awful alcohol hangover, which seems to happen every other saturday these days & i wind up taking like 20+ mg of diazepam as anxiety is never worse for me than after drinking alcohol, which is why i only do it socially now.
Click to expand...

Well I'm not dependent on any benzos at the moment, so my perception of their strength could be a bit off, but I would say that 15mg oxazepam is roughly equivalent in terms of subjective, anxiolytic effects, to say 5mg of diazepam. However, it comes on alot more slowly - takes easily 60min reach its peak, if not more - and so it feels more like 2mg of diazepam, because it doesn't have that typical benzo 'high'.

I agree that diazepam, lorazepam, nitrazepam (and others like, notably, alprazolam, temazepam and flunitrazepam) are pleasurable enough to be dangerous. I think for this reason that oxazepam is often preferred to other benzos. I actually read a study recently in which diazepam and oxazepam were administered to drug addicts with a view to determining which would be perceived as the more 'abuseable' benzo; all the subjects preferred diazepam. So if you're looking for a utility benzo, as you put it, oxazepam could be very useful.

On a separate note - considering that oxazepam has a half life of 4-15hrs, how likely would I be to become addicted to it if I was using it monday, tuesday, wednesday of each week. I feel a bit trapped atm as even with the oxazepam I can barely manage certain situations, but it does help. I just don't want to end up with another fucking benzo habit. It was too hard to quit last time.
 
Only use it two to three days out of the week max. You might only want to do 1 to 2 days as is to be on the safe side.

Continue to embrace healthy eating, exercise, good sleep, as well as getting vitamins and minerals in (especially magnesium) and your anxiety will be lessened on the days you go without.

:)
 
Yeah, I'm really wary of using too much of the Serepax. I've only used it once since I got it. Does anyone else find that benzos make it virtually impossible to think about think maturely or in detail? Maybe it's more pronounced with me because the sorts of tasks I'm attempting are academic as opposed to manual, but I find that benzos essentially make me a child in my thinking. I can't form connections or retain things in my memory. Then I wake up sober the next day, look at the same material and think 'shit, what was all the trouble about?'.

So for this reason it may not have helped at all to be given the Serepax, because my thinking is 'well I can't take Serepax today because I need to write an assignment, and if I can't take Serepax then I can't attend that class, so I'll skip'.
 
When I use benzodiazepines I don't find myself in a state where I want to do much of anything; I wouldn't call this a child like state because I loved actively learning as a child.

It is probably due to the relaxing effect. Drunk people aren't normally the most intellectual.
 
I reckon i'm gonna go with lorazepam instead of oxazepam. I've found this to be a very versatile benzo which has far less of a 'dumbing' effect on your everyday performance compared to something like loraz, which although is a decent hypnotic at the right dose, 1 mg will strip me of the barriers anxiety can put up without causing a foggy headed state like diazepam, which can at, say, 10 mg, leave you occasionally quite sedated but still feeling debilitating anxiety.
 
I wouldn't expect much from it. Valium might do you better if you've been on benzo's before. It seems to work better then the more potent ones if you've abused the crap out of those in the past.

As for your situation you cant expect to be 100% back to normal after 9 months. Somtimes it can take a few years to really recover from a benzo addiction. Unless you plan on taking them until the day you die your going to have to quit at some point. So when you do just know that life is full of stress and bull shit. Somtimes you just need to deal with the problem head on.

When you quit benzo's you do not want to stimulate your gaba A receptors at all. That's going to turn back the clock on your recovery process. I hear where your comming from, my blood pressure always seems high and I get anxious and panic attacks. But i've noticed they've become alot less frequent. Benzo's are serious drugs and if you had some anxiety before using them it's going to take a few years to recover like I said.

If you decide to take them I would recommend not using them daily, only when you really need somthing. Another good thing you can do is start working out. It will be hard at first, but give it about 3 months and after you see some results, it will be easy to continue. Eat healty foods that help your body also. Get out and expose your self to these situations that are making you panic. Your going to freak out a few times. But gradual exposure to these problems will lower your panic attack incidents.

Good luck
 
Yeah. I was massively proactive about my anxiety until about a week ago. Since then I've just been so fucking depressed I can barely do anything. I certainly don't have the energy to be attempting shit like graded-exposure.

I think my shrink gave me the Serepax because he wants me to be able to finish the semester. I think he feels like using a benzo as needed is a lesser harm than flunking out of uni. But despite having it I'm still not using it because it is just so mentally debilitating.

What is klonazepam like? I've used temazepam, diazepam, nitrazepam, oxazepam, flunitrazepam, lorazepam, alprazolam and midazolam. Which of these does klonazepam most nearly resemble?
 
I found clonazepam the most stable and most calming of all the benzo's without too much fogginess. It is one of the longer acting benzos. It could help you get through Uni this year but what about next year? I have found the longer I use them for the harder it is to reduce the dose or stop. Ask your GP about using an an epileptic when it gets tough if you need to come off them.
Nimshie29
 
You mean an anti-epileptic, as in a mood stabiliser? Like Epilim or Lithium? I've used both of those but never for benzo withdrawal. Either way I'm not going back to benzos - my shrink would not even prescribe them regularly - and it's just a question of using them say, 3 days weekly, or not using them at all.

I'm interested in what you say about fogginess. What do other people think? Which benzos are the least 'foggy'? Given that I only want a benzo that can be used for particular siuations, and therefore a benzo that is not too long acting, which one would be most appropriate? My shrink gave me oxazepam because I complained about the length of diazepam's action and about the fogginess. Maybe oxazepam is the most ideal but I'd be interested to know what other people think.
 
About oxazepam this benzo certainly has quite some recreational value else i dont understand why people who's doctor's write for benzo's will want the 50 mg pills preferably four times a day, but its true that oxazepam is the benzo with the slowest onset of them all i just dropped 150 mg oxazepam and before i might feel something 2 hours easily pass only that's me and i have quite a benzo habit.
First time i used oxazepam in jail without benzo tolerance yet and i would have sworn i received a mg of flunitrazepam as the feeling was so similar also within 45 minutes the onset was very present and quite nice at 50 mg, but later getting a croacker who would write 200 mg oxazepam plus 20 mg temazepam after he encountered too many problems with prescribing flunitrazepam better known as rohypnol those days mid 80ties even in the 4 mg version enough to knock anybody out, except for those with a sized benzo habit like myself.
I like it to take a few benzo types together so those 150 mg oxazepam mentioned plus 2.5 mg alprazolam and last, but not least a 50 mg tranxene pill so the alprazolam and tranxene combined will be felt within an hour and then the oxazepam by an hour more only to say i am still coherent when all this acts no not really and its only a small part of my daily dose of substances like 160 mg methadone 900 mg lyrica and a little seroquel oh yeah and this shit called zopiclon.
If you want something what potentiates your benzo like 3-4 times easily without exaggaration then you want lyrica pregebalin substance name and not at 900 mg that is my dose and the shrink wrote 300 mg more then the 600 mg who are considered the max for lyrica, but anyway i am taking lyrica and benzo for more then two years now and i have no idea anymore where my benzo tolerance is, except for somewhere very high in the statosphere.
Without the lyrica i dont feel 10 mg alprazolam while with lyrica at 600 mg 2.5 mg xanax are felt plus the rest ofcourse, but whomever interested in lyrica its given in the US for nervepains and in Europe against anxiety it works quite well for that reason so typically lyrica will be started at twice daily 75 mg that's more then enough to get your benzo potentiated also if you have a benzo dependency and for some reason you run out of the benzo then a bit higher dose of lyrica can almost fully suppress withdrawals it gets even better though, because lyrica also helps bigtime with opiate withdrawal or the other way around to potentiate an opiate.
Oxazepam is short acting and its quite difficult to find a dose who wont knock you out, because oxazepam has this habit at higher doses that from one moment into another your lights go out due to the oxazepam hitting and this really sucks as it makes you lose memory so idont know who said oxazepam is the least recreational benzo i think librium is the least effective benzo, except to help tapering them as librium is long acting.
For a benzo naive individual i would say 30 mg is a nice dose and 50 mg are a bit nice while 75 mg will probbaly knock you out so dont underestimate oxazepam.
 
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