Ugh, it is almost exactly one year and one week since I finished my taper. I was in a real bad place with RC benzos for a couple of years, going from daily etizolam to a mixture of clonaz, pyraz, flubromazepam and flubromazolam - always sporadically throughout the day with no dosage plan in mind in massive doses. If the benzo equivelancy charts are anything to go by (and I realise they probably aren't THAT accurate), I was taking from around 150mg diaz to upwards of 200mg. The fact I was mixing benzos with different half lifes probably confuses matters even more.
Anyway, after blacking out on a night involving MXP I came around to find my bag of around 50 .5mg clonaz was missing except a few on my bedroom floor. Don't know if I tanned the bag or threw them away in a moment of madness, but the point is I was left with only a few pyraz and flubromazolam and insufficient funds to place an order for more. I don't remember it happening (again MXP, which I was abusing during this period, it was a seriously fucked up time in so many ways), but I regained consciousness one day feeling SO shit and strange, had a black eye and fucked up face (hadn't left my bedroom), felt like my muscles had gone through some SERIOUS fucking strain, my piss was black and murky, and basically I had a whole host of unusual signs and symptoms which indicated I may have had a seizure. So I knocked all the daily poly drug abuse on the head there and then and resolved to get off the benzos.
I visited my GP, and she basically said something which explained "yep, definately looks like you're in severe benzo wd syndrome BUT I'm not familiar with the particular drugs you're taking so I can't do anything." All she did was refer me to fucking councelors, which I have nothing against but it was clear that I had a serious physical issue to overcome which was obviously taking priority over exploring the psychological side of the problem. I had to spend the day going round drug councelors in different towns and taking numbers of any helpful individuals they could suggest. Eventually I got in touch with a nurse on the phone who specialised in cases such as this (can't remember what her actual job title was now). When I told her the situation, she phoned my GP back up and insisted that it was her duty of care to provide me some proper help as my situation was dangerous. I was finally prescribed a shockingly inadequate short course of 6mg of diazepam a day to "tide me over until the addiction team could give me a proper assessment". After many delays over WEEKS, my drug councelor passed on the message that the addiction team would no longer see me.... because I was only on 6mg of diazepam a day!! Luckily I seemed to stabalise quicker than you might expect, but dear lord it was touch and go for those first few days.
Anyway, tl;dr, the point is I hope GPs on the whole will be more sympathetic than mine was with me. I really feel for those with dependencies who are going to have their supply cut short without a chance of tapering, this is going to fuck a lot of peoples worlds right up.
Alas, goodbye strange and wonderful world of RCs, we've certainly had a turbulent time together. Yet I can't help but feel I'm probably better off now as I mark this historic occasion by dipping into my stash of glorious time tested class As.
