Benzos Question About Xanax (In need of help)

[HiwattDR103]

Hypothetically speaking, if someone started Xanax 3 years ago to help them sleep, they started at 0.5 every night and then eventually worked up to 5.0 mg a night due to tolerance. They would have most definitely developed an addiction right? Say this person ran out of the Xanax supply and freaked out and they were forced to stop cold turkey. They would most definitely go into severe withdrawals, right? But what if said withdrawals never occurred and as a matter of fact they felt great after 72 hours off of it and they sleep wonderfully and no problems at all during the day. If something like this happens, how could it be explained? If something like this happened could it be an anomaly or what could it be. Could it be the chemistry of the body? Or has enough time not passed for the withdrawal effects to set in?

According the the research, withdrawals kick in 10-12 hours after the last dose. How could a person be feeling perfectly fine after 72 hours after years of such a high dose?

 

[SS373dOH]

You would think wds would occur, however I always say wds are mostly mental. Meaning your fear of wd, can induce them, and your ignorance of them,.can make them non existent.. You should have felt symptoms already,.but youre not out of the woods, for rebound symptoms.


- Hopeless 7nos

 

[024liakam]

Are they IR or XR, that could make a difference

 

[sonicwhite]

Yes fear of WD is a beast. I think if we didn't have ppl saying benzo withdrawal is so brutal then we would have a lot of ppl getting better faster. Now 72 hours not even knowing you could have WD nah, you would feel it for awhile. Five mg a night for three years is insane.

I was on one mg four times a day. I had to go to the psych ward after getting caught stealing dxm from a dollar general. They cut me off and I was on it for a year. But they cut me off also off of. Depakote, risperdal, Remeron, Ambien, and some others. I was in there five days and I slept like two hours that whole time.mi did not eat I didn't shower, it was making me worse. I told the doc just let me leave, you're making me sicker. They did, I never stole dxm again and I was put back on everything but Xanax and the reintroduced klonopin. Today I can say that I knew Xanax had withdraws so that it why I couldn't talk I couldn't sleep. It made my PTSD even worse.


Now I suffer from the fear that I'll never be able to get off any med because the Internet is full of horror stories and it just makes it worse for ppl.

 

[Roxi808]

Consider yourself lucky and don't ever touch a benzo again, I've actually read a ton of benzo withdrawal stories and I don't think it's all mental these people are truly suffering...I read a lot of those while I'm withdrawing off opiates (like right now for example) cause it actually makes me feel better that I'm not in those shoes?

 

[mazda01]

physical dependence is NOT the same as addiction. if you're not taking more than prescribed, seeking them off the streets, basically not repeatedly using them despite negative consequences than your body is basically physically dependent on them, you're not addicted.

and based on your scenario you described it's an anamoly that there's no rebound anxiety, restlessness, agitation, derealization, depersonalization, and all the other fun WD symptoms that normally occur with long time benzo use.

 

[Znegative]

You would think wds would occur, however I always say wds are mostly mental. Meaning your fear of wd, can induce them, and your ignorance of them,.can make them non existent.. You should have felt symptoms already,.but youre not out of the woods, for rebound symptoms.


- Hopeless 7nos

Well spoken-the first time I kicked an opioid it was actually suboxone back in 2007, and at the time I had been told that subs were not an opioid, and were also not physically addicting. It sure as hell sucked when I quit it cold turkey, but instead of thinking I was withdrawing I just thought I was losing my mind. Not a pleasant experience at all, but I know now that if I had known what the withdrawals were, I would have made them out to be much worse.

Anyway as far as benzodiazepines are concerned, IME it usually takes a couple days, even with alprazolam, for the withdrawals to become really noticeable. For me it usually is around the 48-72 hour mark. With clonazepam it's usually 3-4 days. Several times I've thought that I wasn't addicted to benzos, only to wake up on day four in a state of amped up panic and misery, so yeah you're not necessarily out of the woods yet, but hopefully you won't have to experience any symptoms. Benzodiazepines are a bitch of a drug class to withdrawal from, and the withdrawals are usually very drawn out, which is why I've always struggled to kick them for periods longer then a month or two. There was a time when I tried to kick clonazepam and made it close to 2 months but the symptoms just kept persisting (keep in mind I hadn't tapered at all, which would have helped a great deal I imagine). Honestly though, with a relatively long history of benzo use and a relatively high tolerance (5mg isn't the biggest habit by far, but it is not small, that's for sure), you really don't want to just wing it. I would do a short taper with some diazepam, clonazepam or even librium if you can get ahold of some, just to be safe, because the withdrawals aren't just unpleasant, they can be deadly.

 

[kleinerkiffer]

^This
I imagine that 5mg a day for 3 years is enough to build up a really high concentration and it'll take a while to go down enough to throw you into withdrawal. And at your dosage we're speaking about seizures etc. This could kill you.
Please taper, google the Ashton manual for more information.
And have someone around the whole time to call an amublance/ drive you to the ER in case you seize.