Lol I know benzo buddies can be ridiculous!! This guy named "Diaz -Pam" was telling me some bogus advice they all expect everyone to taper from 5 mgs for years before they jump off that just isn't a good idea... Why taper for a year if you only abused the drug for a few months... If you go a year now straight even with small doses you're gonna be deeper into addiction cause you're taking it everyday for so long... This guy was basically opposing the Ashton manual this is what he said...
"Three months isn't an "only" amount of time. It's plenty long enough to develop a strong dependency. I wasn't on valium for much longer than that before I first tried tapering, and it was horrendous.
Like I said, no one can give you categorical answers to your questions, because everyone reacts to benzos so differently. Also no one can give you any prediction about how long before you will be 50% healed, let alone 80-100% healed. We just can't tell you. I know that's frustrating, but it's the truth.
Not everyone has a sensitivity to benzos. There will be many anecdotal stories told, even on this site, of members who know people who taper off their benzo fairly quickly with few problems, even after long term use. Those people never seek out a site like Benzo Buddies simply because they don't need to. Those of us who end up finding BB are here because we are probably the unlucky ones who are more sensitive to the drug, and who were desperate enough to search online for something to help us with our misery of trying to taper. You may well be one of the people who won't have too many problems tapering off, but doing the taper is only part of the journey.
You need to stop comparing benzos (including xanax and valium) to opiates or another other kind of drug. So many people, including doctors, make the mistake of thinking those with a sensitivity can just do a "detox" off a benzo, and then within a fairly short period of time they're over it. Benzos do not work that way. Getting the drug out of your system is only part of the journey, and it can be a mistake to think that it's all you have to do. It can take a long time for the body and brain to heal after using benzos - maybe years - depending on the type of taper you do.
I doubt that you will find anyone here who will recommend a taper where you dose only every few days. There are a lot of different methods of tapering to be found on BB, and often some heated discussions about what is best, but the one common denominator for doing a taper will be that you should be consistently dosing every day, sometimes even multiple times a day, and then taper using small cuts over a period of time that allows you to still continue to function fairly normally on a day to day basis. That may be the Ashton Method, cut and hold method or a daily method. No method is bad or wrong. It just depends on what suits the individual.
I won't predict or dare to tell you how you are going to react to the type of taper you are doing. It might work quite well, because you may not be as sensitive to benzos as most of us here are, but I guess the simple fact that you have sought out BB tells me that maybe you are struggling with the taper you are doing, otherwise you wouldn't be here. If you are struggling, then I'm sorry but there are no shortcuts.
What you do have to remember is that no one wants to do a taper any longer than they need to, so no one here is tapering needlessly long, or for the fun of it. If people are doing really slow daily tapers, it's because they have to, not because they want to. So all I can say is that if you feel you can taper the way you are tapering, then that's what you should do. I won't tell you how you should taper, but if things get really bad for you, then you will have to consider something different."
I got the feeling he's just mad cause it took him 18 months to taper from 5 mgs Valium to .01 mgs and jump off I don't have that much time and I think he feels like everyone has to do that cause he did which is horrible advice... And he's a moderator on benzo buddies LOL j guess I'll stick to blue light ...