Benzos Substituting clonazepam with alcohol

[adder]

Hey,

I've been addicted to benzodiazepines for 9 years now. Recently I've started Suboxone maintenance treatment and since then my doctor kept lowering my clonazepam dose, from 6mg to 0 in a matter of 3-4 months. When I ran out of prescribed clonazepam, I got some estazolam from my GP, but obviously no GP treats insomnia and no GP prescribes sleeping pills indefinitely. A week ago I ran out of estazolam and my doctor from the program didn't want to prescribe me anything but one of these old antidepressants - doxepin (I didn't even take it, I was shaking and even little stress makes it worse, besides doxepin would increase side effects from buprenorphine). I'm a complete wreck, I smoke weed all the time to run away from obsessive thoughts and generally numb myself, but it only lets me vegetate as I'm sitting at home all the day long, I just can't get out (not that I have some place to go or friends to spend time with). I found 8 5mg clorazepate caps, 15mg helped me a bit, but it's far from good. Now I've got only 10mg. Since I started trying to get "straight", I stopped seeing my previous doctor who kept me on clonazepam for ~6 years and I lost literally all contacts, so I can't get any benzodiazepine or anything working similarly. There's only alcohol left. I always hated the effects it produces, but I can't stand the anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, tense muscles cramping, and the feeing of derealization.

Alcohol always made me sad and nauseous, but soon I won't even have weed to alleviate withdrawal. The problem is I've got some work to do, I can't just sit at home and be unable to work at all, I don't have time for withdrawal from benzodiazepines and it'd take years before I get better (if I ever got better), although I have tolerance, I feel fine on clonazepam. I'm constantly told by my doctor that clonazepam makes me feel bad, well, I remember I started feeling bad when he lowered my dose from 4mg to 2mg and one week later down to 1mg, it was way too fast for me.

If I'm withdrawing from benzodiazepines, will alcohol still make terribly nauseous with racing heart etc.? I guess I never felt anything positive from alcohol partially because of GABA upregulation and I guess if it wasn't for GABA effects, alcohol would feel like an intoxicant completely.

 

[dextroflicks]

i went through clonazepam withdrawl also it is not pretty at all ... i was not on them for 9 years tho ..... it was like 1 year but i quit cold turkey with the help of dxm, Now i am not suggesting you try this because i am unaware of the risks associated with 9 years of benzo usage but i o suggest you look into it ... it has worked for many people tho, and dxm has great seretonin properties ... gives a really good mood lift as an aftereffect and this works with lower dosages also ...

 

[Jean-Paul]

yeah i've been through that hellish little road. oh i'll just drink instead everything will be fine. yeah. mmhmm. see, i was trying to save up my pills for a move by taking less every day but just ended up eating all the the saved up ones while drunk. it's a good thing i'm some sort of gaba deficient robot instead of a human.

 

[Oxy8_8]

Hey,

I've been addicted to benzodiazepines for 9 years now. Recently I've started Suboxone maintenance treatment and since then my doctor kept lowering my clonazepam dose, from 6mg to 0 in a matter of 3-4 months. When I ran out of prescribed clonazepam, I got some estazolam from my GP, but obviously no GP treats insomnia and no GP prescribes sleeping pills indefinitely. A week ago I ran out of estazolam and my doctor from the program didn't want to prescribe me anything but one of these old antidepressants - doxepin (I didn't even take it, I was shaking and even little stress makes it worse, besides doxepin would increase side effects from buprenorphine). I'm a complete wreck, I smoke weed all the time to run away from obsessive thoughts and generally numb myself, but it only lets me vegetate as I'm sitting at home all the day long, I just can't get out (not that I have some place to go or friends to spend time with). I found 8 5mg clorazepate caps, 15mg helped me a bit, but it's far from good. Now I've got only 10mg. Since I started trying to get "straight", I stopped seeing my previous doctor who kept me on clonazepam for ~6 years and I lost literally all contacts, so I can't get any benzodiazepine or anything working similarly. There's only alcohol left. I always hated the effects it produces, but I can't stand the anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, tense muscles cramping, and the feeing of derealization.

Alcohol always made me sad and nauseous, but soon I won't even have weed to alleviate withdrawal. The problem is I've got some work to do, I can't just sit at home and be unable to work at all, I don't have time for withdrawal from benzodiazepines and it'd take years before I get better (if I ever got better), although I have tolerance, I feel fine on clonazepam. I'm constantly told by my doctor that clonazepam makes me feel bad, well, I remember I started feeling bad when he lowered my dose from 4mg to 2mg and one week later down to 1mg, it was way too fast for me.

If I'm withdrawing from benzodiazepines, will alcohol still make terribly nauseous with racing heart etc.? I guess I never felt anything positive from alcohol partially because of GABA upregulation and I guess if it wasn't for GABA effects, alcohol would feel like an intoxicant completely.

Benzo's can replace alcohol and completely stop withdrawal so I don't see why not the other way around.
I wouldn't normally suggest it, but alcohol is better than a seizure which is what will happen if you cold turkey benzos.
I was severely alcohol dependent during which time I suffered one heart attack, one stroke and 6 seizures, the latter in which I also suffered amnesia, 2 slipped disks in my back, 5 broken ribs and (thank God it wasn't permanent) temporary paralysis of the left side of my face.
DO NOT cold turkey PLEASE. Either take you benzo's are replace with with alcohol until you get a change to either taper slowly (if you have the willpower) or g through a safe medical detox.

From my experience, in answer to your question: yes. Alcohol with stop any and all withdrawals. The only thing I cannot guarantee is the cravings. You may still miss the benzos if you don't "enjoy" alcohol too.

 

[Halif]

Hi Adder

I'm sorry to hear about your predicament.

from 6mg to 0 in a matter of 3-4 months.

That is way too fast for 9 year's of use. I'm not surprised that you are having a tough time right now, considering that you were forced off clonazepam so abruptly.

I very much DISAGREE with the above poster's comments about using alcohol for withdrawals. Alcohol does not stop withdrawals and if you drink a lot you will definitely be worse off. The only way I can see you getting any benefit from alcohol is if you have, say, one glass of wine in the evening. It might help you to relax for a little while.

But it's hard sometimes to just have one glass and stop there. If you get drunk, then after you sober up you will almost certainly feel worse than the day before. A hangover from alcohol can exascerbate anxiety, which is the last thing you need.

I know that it doesn't help you now, but I think you would be better off staying away from the alcohol and trying to deal with it in another way.

Good luck, and remember that you WILL get better and feel like a human again after enough time.

 

[Oxy8_8]

^^For the record, I was only advising from first-hand experience.
My main concern was to help you avoid having a heart attack or a seizure.

A benzo with a long half-life like diazepam might be better for a taper?

 

[Halif]

Hi Oxy8_8: sharing first hand experiences is really valuable and is a big part of the BL system, however it's important to make a clear distinction between stating what has worked for you, and suggesting that someone else try something which could be counter-productive. It sounds as if Adder has not had good experiences with alcohol in the past:

Alcohol always made me sad and nauseous

-some people just don't take well to alcohol, and under the circumstances I think the OP would be in a very fragile state and more likely to be negatively affected by alcohol.

A benzo with a long half-life like diazepam might be better for a taper?

I agree that diazepam would be better for the OP's situation, but I think he/she said in their post that they have no access to benzos of any sort anymore.

It sounds rough, but seriously sometimes there's nothing to 'take' but time for healing. It sucks. Sometimes we just can't escape from things.

 

[dextroflicks]

brainstorming about long lasting benzos, phenazepam came to mind ... i only have a very very nasty experience with an overdose that lasted much too long ... but i assume that it could hypothetically be used in tapering off benzos if dosed properly and if said exampe trying to taper off resists to redose. I am not shure if this would be counter-productive by just switching to a different addiction nor am i sure which has more addictive potential out of the two ... also phenazepam is legal, one could easly aquire it without the need of a script ... i still believe that dxm method of eliminating wd's has greater potential tho

 

[RobotRipping]

yes you can use phenazepam to taper if you can control yourself and not fuck it up; that's the hard part about it. It's not switching addictions, it's switching the same addiction, with the end goal that you taper yourself off of it. There's a huge distinction between addiction and dependency. DXM is not a good idea to eliminate withdrawals, i think it reduces the seizure threshold, which makes it the worst idea you can think of, next to alcohol which will do the same thing after it wears off, not to mention dehydrate you and make you feel like shit.

Look around bluelight, the diazepam taper is the gold standard to get off benzos, you can use clonazepam or phenazepam if you want, it doesn't really matter but either way, you MUST taper or you risk death, simple as that.

and what are you going to do, take DXM for 6 months while you withdraw? you'd end up with a dependency with DXM. Benzos withdrawal especially clonazepam is VERY long and drawn out, especially after 9 years. Expect recovery times in the 2 year range. If you don't taper, you may never recover as a seizure can cause brain damage.

 

[adder]

I don't have access to any benzodiazepines or any GABA-ergic drugs. I stupidly stopped seeing my previous psychiatrist when I started tapering off methadone and when things didn't go well, and I eventually was offered Suboxone maintenance, I decided I wouldn't visit two psychiatrists. Besides my previous psychiatrist never cared about my state and kept prescribing me clonazepam for like 6 years, before that I had been mostly on lorazepam and estazolam for ~3 years. It would all make sense if I met my current doctor 6 years ago and tapered down then instead of substituting lorazepam with clonazepam. As a result I've been much longer on a "substitute" than on a drug that originally caused dependence. Also, when I stopped taking methadone, all my contacts disappeared quickly. 9 years ago I was 14, I don't really know life without benzodiazepines. I'm freaking out without them thinking about death all the time, especially about death of my family members who are the only people I have contact with, honestly speaking the only person I can freely talk to is my mum now.

I know dextromethorphan might be of some help theoretically, but waiting for glutamate receptors downregulation may take a long time and this solution won't help muscle cramps or trembling, it will make them worse. Besides dextromethorphan for me was a prelude to codeine and stronger opioids later, so if I take it once, I'm afraid I will start seeking dissociation. I did taper clonazepam but I never had a chance to get stable on any dose. At the end I was prescribed 0.25mg of clonazepam and I still needed at least 1mg to go out. When I ran out of clonazepam, I used estazolam for some time, definitely enough time for clonazepam to be excreted, but my last dose of estazolam was 4 or 6mg (I can't even remember the day I ran out of pills). When I saw my doctor almost 2 weeks ago, I wasn't really shaking in front of him as I'm shaking now, but he should have known it was really bad as I couldn't even call him and asked my mum to call and ask if the doctor was available. Embarassing, I know, I hate remembering all these embarassing situations when I couldn't solve a simple problem myself because of anxiety and social phobia or whatever it is. I'm now on leave, I had to take a break from studying because I skipped too many lectures and labs because of anxiety. My doctor keeps telling me I didn't feel good on clonazepam either. Well, it's not true, I started feeling bad when my dose was drastically decreased in hospital after the first dose of Suboxone. Now that I'm not studying, maybe my doctor thinks I have unlimited free time which is not true at all. How can an adult person have unlimited free time? The fact that I'm not studying doesn't mean I have a luxury of sitting at home for a year with no consequences. I earned money studying, now I've got to find a job and this is not happening in Poland, and I can't leave the country withdrawing from clonazepam... Unfortunately, I can't afford 2 years to recover, besides I don't think I'd be able to recover at all as this life is the only life I've known and remember. Going back to the point before I took my first temazepam pill would mean going back to the point when I had serious problems. Having experienced nothing but failure during all therapies, I don't know what else there is to help me learn to live without this aid of benzodiazepines.

Don't get me wrong. I'd really like to be free from this addiction, I hate it for all the problems it's caused, but at the end of the day benzodiazepines let me live "normally" among people at a sufficient dose. I definitely increased it too much when I was a stupid teenager, but later clonazepam actually allowed me to decrease it to 6mg, earlier I sometimes took over 25mg of lorazepam daily as it seemed to be metabolised faster and faster. I know I should have tapered down lorazepam, then add diazepam, then stop lorazepam, and taper down diazepam, but I was deep in addiction and my then psychiatrist preferred switching me to clonazepam than trying to help me, I was too blind at that time to see myself where this was going. I know I would never advise someone to switch from lorazepam to clonazepam.

I don't want to get drunk with alcohol. I thought of drinking 20ml of vodka, so my neck isn't so tense that I can neither lie in bed nor sit in an armchair, it also makes insomnia worse, and with no sleep anxiety, depression, and obsessive thoughts get worse. I don't want to drink so much that I will have to cope with hangover on the following day. If I had phenazepam or whichever benzodiazepine, I wouldn't think twice, they all substitute one for another. I have taken my last 10mg of clorazepate and I will try getting anything. If I don't, I guess I will have to wait for that seizure to get a diazepam shot at ER. I won't see my doctor until Saturday and I don't know if there's any doctor available at the program on weekdays. But even if there was someone, I guess he/she wouldn't prescribe anything without contacting the chief of the program (and that would be my doctor who doesn't want to prescribe anything).

 

[buckethed]

I agree with a lot of what is said above - and feel sorry for your predicament

A general rule is that it takes a month for each year of benzo use to do a detox, and that is for a fast, rough / tough
detox!. Also, Clonazepam is a medium-long acting benzo, but... is not what you want to to detox on. It is too
short acting for this, and the tablets are too potent to taper down easily.

You need to get a Dr who knows what they are doing and to switch you over to Diazepam, then *slowly* reduce this.
It is commen medical knowledge that Benzo withdrawal (and alcohol withdrawal) are unique in that they can kill you,
due to 'status epilepticus' - seizures back to back so you can't breath and your brain runs so 'hot' it runs out of sugar
and oxygen.

This site has a lot of useful information: http://www.non-benzodiazepines.org.uk/ (moderators - I hope it is OK to post
links like this?). It gives conversion tables as well as titration regimes - all based on the Ashton manual and clinical
experience.

I also disagree that alcohol can help. It might help for literally a day if you lose your meds or something, but, the
shorter acting benzos are much more dependence / addiction-building. Alcohol is like a super-short-acting benzo
and it worsens your dependence on the Clonazepam very quickly (and I talk from experience here).

Please see a Dr and defintely DO NOT cold-turkey on benzodiazepines - these (and alcohol and barbiturates) are
drugs whereby severe withdrawals can easily be fatal! (also, if you get your Dr to look up the literature on Pubmed
or Wikipedia, they will see that too-quick-reductions of benzos can cause 'protracted withdrawal syndrome' where
your body gets stuck with constant withdrawal symptoms even years after stopping the benzos! So slower reductions
are better all round.

Good luck, and please, please find a Dr, who is intelligent / open-minded enough to go to the above website, and
help you to get off the benzos safely!

 

[DickTate]

I just wanted to add that smoking lots of weed during a Benzo-WD sounds like a very bad idea considering the paranoia and thought-loops THC can cause.
Maybe try a few days without it and see how it affects your anxiety level.

 

[FULLofSTARS]

Don't get me wrong. I'd really like to be free from this addiction, I hate it for all the problems it's caused

Really? In the same post you write :

but at the end of the day benzodiazepines let me live "normally" among people at a sufficient dose...
... If I had phenazepam or whichever benzodiazepine, I wouldn't think twice

I've been following your posts and it seems to me like you always seek solution to your problems coming from abuse of a certain drug by taking other kinds of drugs. Dude you are so deep into addiction that all you see and talk about is substituting, detoxing, mixing, tapering, withdrawing, changing drugs and so on and and on... while completely ignoring the obvious solution which is abstinence from all substances.

 

[adder]

I don't think there are any psychiatrists in my city capable of treating dependence beside my current doctor on the program. He's the chief of the program, senior registrar of the detox ward, and one of two psychiatrists at the clinic (the other one told me to continue amitriptyline despite hallucinations). I can still remember one private psychiatrist who told me to jump off lorazepam right away and prescribed me 2 neuroleptics and carbamazepine. This seems to be a rule here, psychiatrists aren't really up-to-date with their knowledge and all they do is prescribing antidepressants, anxiolytics, and neuroleptics. First time I wanted to go to a hospital, they wanted to place me on the ward for young addicts having problems with amphetamine/marihuana and nobody cared if I start withdrawing both from opioids and benzodiazepines. I'm not saying my current doctor is bad, he helped me a lot when PAWS from methadone lasted and lasted, maybe if I met him 6 years ago, my situation would be different now. However, I noticed that he generally reduces doses of all drugs too fast, I always needed at least 1 month to get clean with the help of methadone, some people in hospital were given methadone for 5 days when I was there and once one guy had a seizure attack after tapering off clonazepam.

I thought of calling my previous psychiatrist, but how am I going to explain what I was doing almost 1 year not getting her prescriptions for clonazepam? She never believed in me and all she was doing was prescribing pills. If it wasn't for the anxiety, I'd call her, lie to her, and whatever it'd take, but without benzodiazepines everything seems impossible and withdrawal brings such hopelessness that I don't even have strength to seek the drug, it's completely different than with opioids. It doesn't pay to be honest. It's a common thing here in Poland that something really bad must happen before people start caring.

 

[xxxyyy]

yeah i've been through that hellish little road. oh i'll just drink instead everything will be fine. yeah. mmhmm. see, i was trying to save up my pills for a move by taking less every day but just ended up eating all the the saved up ones while drunk. it's a good thing i'm some sort of gaba deficient robot instead of a human.

this is exactly what led to me becoming a massive alcoholic. all in all i find benzo addiction preferable, mainly because benzos feel far less toxic on the body, but it's still horrible. these days i have some semblance of control over my drinking, but that only works as long as i have plenty of other gabaergics around. soon as i run out of baclofen, benzos and pregabalin it usually doesn't take long for me to be hitting the sauce again. in fact yesterday i had way too much to drink and this again reminded me of how fucking horrible alcohol really is, i'm nauseous down to my very core and have been vomiting on and off for something like 12 hours and am unable to keep down any food. fuck ethanol, honestly.

 

[RobotRipping]

@adder: i feel exactly the same as you, have been through all the bullshit with Drs. Can pretty much manipulate a Dr to give me what i want anyway but i just could not function without benzos, i couldn't leave the house, the symptoms weren't going away, i was in therapy, it just wasn't enough and i couldn't even go into a store without feeling like my brain had left my body and floated to the ceiling. The pain and misery i have suffered is immense. The best my shit Dr would do for me was a couple of doses of diazepam/week so i ended up just self medicating with etizolam. Now i can go places, do things, talk to people without issue and live a normal life, back in school, doing well and life overall is okay.

I was also an opiate addict too, which was really just an attempt to curb my anxiety anyway. I don't recommend going down the road i did but for some people, there's no question in my mind that it is necessary. It's hard to determine if it is for you, or if you'll recover completely. I had never used a benzo until 18, and before then, i was the exact same way as i am without them. I've always had these issues, which is what lured me in. If i didn't have these issues, i would probably have no use for benzos and opiates.

i don't like being dependent on something that if i can't get, i'll face a possibility of death and terrible withdrawals but it's better than having 0 quality of life. Maybe that's a rationalization or justification to stay on etizolam or benzos forever, but i can assure anyone that i don't get high from them anyway, they just treat my symptoms. If i didn't have those symptoms then i'd have no problem not using gabaergics. I still recommend you give recovery a shot as it's a hell of a responsibility to always keep a supply of a gabaergic so that you don't die or go into withdrawals, it's a massive burden.

If you really can't ever come off benzos, then you have to at least make sure you don't abuse them.

i've also thought about just seizing over and over again just to get proper treatment or even a suicide attempt that i know would fail. Unfortunately, you have to go through the proper channels, manipulate people, lie and do whatever it takes to get the treatment you need. I'm not sure what it's like in Poland but in Canada, most people don't have to go to such lengths to get treatment but since i'm labelled as an addict it's impossible for me to have any of my issues addressed properly.

 

[weekend addiction]

I'm pretty sure alcohol actually increases seizure risks... I use alcohol to stretch out my benzos if I accidentally drop a couple down the drain or something. But I would be reluctant to try it as a complete substitute.

 

[adder]

I got some phenobarbital, it should last me a month or so. I didn't abuse clonazepam much, if I took more, then it was mostly as an addition to opioids and those days are long gone. I suggested switching to my previous doctor because of its relatively long half-life compared to lorazepam. I did abuse lorazepam and estazolam as lorazepam elevated my mood and sociability and estazolam was a killer for anxiety, but it seems tolerance for both of them rises faster than for other benzodiazepines, once I settled on 6mg of clonazepam, I rarely took more and for about 4 years I didn't change the dose until I started tapering down myself. I tapered slowly, but not being forced by anyone I managed to decrease the dose down to 3mg. Things got worse when I started tapering methadone, I used 4mg (2 pills, I had unlimited amount of clonazepam, so I didn't cut 1 pill in half) even when my current doctor told me to increase the dose back to 6mg to help the withdrawal, but I knew I didn't feel any difference, so I didn't. I started feeling really bad, anxious, and depressed when my dose was reduced to 2mg from one day to the next. I was honest, I didn't cheat, I agreed to do everything as my doctor says. In the past I was always accused by my mum that I do everything as if I were smarter than doctors. Well, it didn't appear from nowhere, as most of doctors I met were poorly educated quacks, I made some mistakes. But if I didn't make these mistakes, I wouldn't have graduated even from middle high school. And I've always been into science, I'm both physically and mentally unsuitable for physical work.

Now I realized the real problem is not clonazepam or benzodiazepines. It's the feeling of lack of control. Back in the days I couldn't see the end because I controlled my anxiety with pills all by myself, I wasn't dependent on GPs or psychiatrists, I didn't have to spend time doctor shopping, and I always had enough not to be worried that one day I will run out of pills and I will be unable to get them. I took BZD(s) in the morning, a dose enough to hold me for the whole day, and I didn't have to think how terribly addicted I am... Even if I re-dosed, I was never at the edge of withdrawal, only once I refilled my reserve on the day when I took my last pill of lorazepam. My grandma was prescribed a compound with phenobarbital, but she doesn't take the medicine and occasionally uses weak benzodiazepines for anxiety instead. This is not a magic bottomless well, I don't want to be dependent on the mood of her psychiatrist (my previous psychiatrist), it's embarrassing to take grandma's pills because I "can't cope with life".

I guess I never saw addiction to any drug as a problem. My problem was being dependent on other people and that was the main reason why I stopped taking heroin at some point and didn't relapse until I could get morphine again myself, that was the reason why I stopped taking methadone because I feared I could lose the source (now I'm on Suboxone maintenance, I collect Suboxone once a week, and I try visiting the program at hours when few people collect their meds, I take my pills, sign a paper, and I leave; the reason why take-home doses are better than going every day for one dose is not because breaking program rules is easier - it's possible anyway - the real reason is it allows to forget at least for a short while). I simply prefer keeping the fact that my life isn't complete without drugs exclusively to myself as much as I can. I lived a pretty much normal life even using high doses of opioids, I didn't push it to the limit, so I perceived my life as "normal", drugs were just an aid to function among people as others do. I read many posts on benzodiazepine addiction, taper-down, and withdrawal. I've never got to a point when increasing the dose didn't help anxiety any more, so I've never seen a reason to go through the hell of withdrawal. Really, if these drugs haven't been withdrawn from the market although it's a common knowledge they're extremely physically addictive since 1980s, then in my opinion nobody should be bothered to taper down for no reason. Maybe my thinking is foggy, but it looks to me that I have to stop because I have to stop. It makes no sense. And what if I don't stop? Will I die? Will someone else die? Will I lose my mind? Well, I'd rather take the risk of dementia or whatever than spend the "better" half of my life in a zombie state of mind unable even to do the shopping.

I guess we've reached the conclusion. Alcohol is hardly a good substitute for benzodiazepines in practice. Thanks to everyone for the input.

 

[Kenny7822]

substitute

yeah i've been through that hellish little road. oh i'll just drink instead everything will be fine. yeah. mmhmm. see, i was trying to save up my pills for a move by taking less every day but just ended up eating all the the saved up ones while drunk. it's a good thing i'm some sort of gaba deficient robot instead of a human.

and

Pretty much, couldn't have said it better.

I often binge on alcohol and benzos. Sometimes at the same time, other times I substitute one for the other. Me personally I notice no difference between the two. Alcohol just makes me a little more ballsy and slightly more euphoria. I notice on alcohol I am aware that I am fucked up but I just don't care enough. On benzos I am in reality completely fucked and I don't even realize it. I think I'm normal.

So the answer to your question is yes. You can substitute with alcohol but be careful. Alcohol is more harmful than benzos in my opinion.

EDIT:
Also I'd like to add that phenibut is a great solution to your problem. It is widely available online, cheap and legal. It's not some grey area research chemical. I would look into it If I were you. It could be very helpful. It has worked for me in the past.