• Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

Benzos Quiting Oxazepam (on GP RX) with diazepam

sleepwalker

Bluelighter
Joined
May 27, 2009
Messages
124
Hello,

My wife has been prescribed 200MG of Oxazepam a day for two years now.
She's not been taking the whole prescription during that time, but uses to vary between 1and 5 of 50mg per day.
Her psych want her to quit using the Oxazepam, by using diazepam.
First he wants to transfer her prescription into diazepam and then lower the dose each week.
He wants to use a taper program of 8 weeks.
His initial idea is to switch to 2MG tablets of diazepam and we are still not sure how much Diazepam will be prescribed.

Now i've been a long term user of benzo's and imo the 8 week taper is rather short, and i'm kinda affraid she'll be expieriencing more stress than she can handle in such a short period.
Some extra info:
She's been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome lately, and besides that has been suffering from Borderline personality disorder, with post traumatic stress disorder.
Plus she's had a lot of psychotic episodes in the past and dissociative episodes as well.
She's recently suffering from those as well and often finds that she's been cutting herself during those episodes without any recollection afterwards.

Recently she stopped taking Risperidon 2 MG a day, and has Seroquel 400MG a day instead.
She also stopped with 25MG Phenergan, and takes 20MG Temazepam instead. (This in consultation with her psych)
Her other meds atm are 150MG Sarotex (amytriptyline), 0.075MG of Thyrax (for her hypothyroid disease) , and 40MG of Dex-amphetamines a day (for her ADHD).
These last meds she only takes when nescesary.

Now for the questions, after the long story .
My wife usually responds pretty badly to Diazepam, but her Psych still wants her to transfer to them.
This is esp. the case ,when taking small ammounts. She can expierience the opposite effects.
Our questions are:
A : Is there any other benzo, with a long halflife, that can be used to switch to and then taper off from, instead of the diazepam?
B : What is a reasonable period to switch and taper from a two year use of Oxazepam?

And the most important question of all:
C : What can be considered to be the equivalent to 200MG of Oxazepam? The info we found on different sites, does vary quite a bit. We did read through the Benzo -mega-thread, and lots of other threads on the topic, but the answer to this question still is inconclusive.

Taken in consideration, that my wife is not in a hurry to stop her Benzo use, but finds it more important to keep her life on track and be able to keep doing the things, that are expected of her , being a mother of two small children and a good wife to me , as her husband.<3

The main reason that we want to keep her life going in the good direction , is that we have been under investigation of the Child Abuse Agency, by a false accusation by my sister in law. This has been the cause of most of the stress we have been expieriencing in these last 2 years, for we both did not take any meds at all, before that investigation and all the trouble in our lives began.
This whole investigation has been concluded and there is no one that is interfering with our lives anymore.
All the agencies and people involved have made their apologies, but we are left with the ongoing stress and disruption of our normal family life.

We have worked very hard to get our lives back on track and are succeeding in that.
But we can use all the input from any Bluelighters, who have expierience with Benzo tapering.
Thank you for reading this and any replies. will be greatly appreciated.;)
 
So sorry to hear you were wrongfully accused, i know how demeaning & frustrating that can be.

Anyway, if your wife is on 200mg of oxazepam then the 2mg diazepam tabs wont cut it. According to the clinical knowledge summaries website 15 mg of oxazepam is equivalent to 5 mg of diazepam.
 
So that's gonna be 33 tabs of 10 MG a day.... or will they be taking the long halflife of dia in account?
 
Based on the length of time your wife should slowly taper. Valium is the recommended benzo for tapering with but like the poster above said 2 mg. won't cut it. Make an appeal to your doc. Any physician worth his weight in salt would taper a patient properly. There are just too many health risks. If you talk to your doc, mention the Ashton Manual by Heather Ashton. It's like the bible of benzo addiction and recovery. She recommends a reduction of NO MORE than 10% a month. It's just too dangerous.
Oh, and if you can't get Valium try to get your hands on some Klonopin. Tell your wife good luck, from someone who's been there.
From what I've read 10 mg valium equals 20 mg oxazepam. So 200 mg of Oxazepam would be equal to 100 mg of valium. And her doc is wanting her on 2 mg Valium? Sounds like a sadistic A$@hole. I know these numbers vary from site to sit but here is where I got mine.http://www.benzo.org.uk/bzequiv.htm. 10 mg of valium is roughlu equal to 1 mg of klonopin.
If she can't get help through her doctor remember there are some unscheduled benzos in the U.S. Check out Etizalam. Careful with those they're strong. Just don't go the phenazepam route unless you have a milligram scale as it's very strong, and causes major blackouts. Though they have a shorter half life it beats 2 mg valium a day.
You said she could not tolerate valium. Another benzo with a very long half-life is Klonopin. Based on your wife's dose that would be 10 1mg klonopin daily.
 
A - There are literally dozens and dozens of benzos with varying half-lives. But most doctors rarely use anything other than (1) alprazolam (short acting) (2) diazepam (long acting) (3) lorazepam (intermediate) and (4) clorazepam (long acting). Of course, there are also the hypnotics like temazepam (short-intermediate) and nitrazepam (short-intermediate). It is pretty textbook to put a benzo-addicted person on a long-acting benzo first. Oxazepam - which I take as well, by the way - is a short-intermediate acting benzo (4-10/15 hrs). Diazepam and clonazepam are very long acting (> 72 hrs for the half-life but say around 24-48 for the effective or beneficial dose). So in answer to your question - diazepam or clonazepam would be the way to go.

B - This depends on what your wife wants to do. I used to be deeply addicted to benzos at very high doses and I got off in about 12 weeks. Some people go faster or slower depending on how keen they are. I think it's more or less routine to reduce at about 5-10% of the current dose on a weekly to fortnightly basis. So 8 weeks is short, especially given that your wife sounds like she's not really in it.

C - There is disagreement between the benzo charts. Usually 15mg oxazepam is put at equivalent to 5mg diazepam. Sometimes you see 20mg oxazepam put as equivalent to 10mg diazepam. My experience would lead me to support the former model. 200mg oxazepam - which is a HUUUUUGE dose by therapeutic standards - then becomes equivalent to about 70mg diazepam. 2mg pills won't cut it - she'll need to take at least 30 at once.

On a separate note - diazepam is a more potent benzo than oxazepam, even allowing for the adjusted doses. It has an extremely fast onset (15-25min) compared with oxazepam (1.5-3hrs). Also, its muscle-relaxant and anxiolytic properties are far superior to those of oxazepam. And I recall a study where patients were administered diazepam and oxazepam over different days - they all expressed a preference for the diazepam. So your wife shouldn't fret about this.
 
And, without questioning your honesty, it seems unlikely to me that someone who can use oxazepam would respond badly to diazepam for two reasons: (1) oxazepam is a metabolite of diazepam, meaning that diazepam is reduced to oxazepam once ingested, in much the same way that codeine is a pro-drug for morphine. It would be absurd to suppose that someone could take morphine but not codeine; and (2) benzos all work in more or less exactly the same way, and on the same receptors.

Probably, if your wife had a bad response to diazepam, the dose was just too low. It's an all-round better benzo for people in her situation.
 
Ok. we searched the internet for the standard converting list from oxa to valium they keep here in Holland. The rate atm is 200mg oxasepam=100mg valium, and they recoment a time to taper the valium between 8 to 12 weeks to zero.

Her psych wants her to be hospilazed for 3 weeks to stop with the oxazepam through valium and to stop taking seroquell and finding the optimal dose of sarotex (amitriptyline) and dexamphetamine. THIS ALL IN THOSE 3 WEEKS
It's an inpossible task in my oppinion to do all that in 3 weeks.
We keep a plan B in mind for the unbearable times she might have in those 3 weeks.

Any ideas to get her trough all this shit?
All ideas are welcome!
Tuesday she will recieve a phonecall for an appointment with the clinic she wil be hospitalized in.
And they expect to have a spot for her verry quickly.
 
Ok. we searched the internet for the standard converting list from oxa to valium they keep here in Holland. The rate atm is 200mg oxasepam=100mg valium, and they recoment a time to taper the valium between 8 to 12 weeks to zero.

Her psych wants her to be hospilazed for 3 weeks to stop with the oxazepam through valium and to stop taking seroquell and finding the optimal dose of sarotex (amitriptyline) and dexamphetamine. THIS ALL IN THOSE 3 WEEKS
It's an inpossible task in my oppinion to do all that in 3 weeks.
We keep a plan B in mind for the unbearable times she might have in those 3 weeks.

Any ideas to get her trough all this shit?
All ideas are welcome!
Tuesday she will recieve a phonecall for an appointment with the clinic she wil be hospitalized in.
And they expect to have a spot for her verry quickly.
Heres some advice.. Fuck that shitty scum bag doctor. Why the Fuck detox when theres a taper. your doctors a complete pos. if it really came down to it fucking go buy some Etizolam online. Noone should be forced that quickly ugh doctors benzo stupidity pisses me off.
 
we are going to do some homework and hope to have a large stack of info about how stupid her psych really is!
 
Top