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almost five months clean

sonicwhite

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 8, 2012
Messages
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1 good thing is that I?m almost five months clean off of benzos. It was hard at first but I hardly feel any withdrawals from it.
 
I?m sorry if this is flooding the forums. I was just giving a heads up and my benzo withdrawals.
 
Congratulations good work :)

Keep at it and hope you are appreciating that you are off it.
 
Almost nearly a year since I?ve taken pharmacy benzos. I had that three day stint w flubromazolam but that?s it!

No withdrawals or anything. Just my normal free floating anxiety.
 
I have some questions if you don't mind: How long were you on benzos and what dose? What benzo did you take? What made you want to get off them and did you taper?

I've been on Klonopin for about 6-7 years, a lose dose (0.5 mg) and PRN, but I often run out of my 45 pills/month early. I don't know how I will respond if I am forced to get off them. I imagine the psychological effect will be the hardest, but honestly don't know. The longest I have gone without taking them is 5-6 days, with no ill effects, except maybe a little difficulty with sleep onset and staying asleep, although I didn't have that the last time I went without for that long, so who knows. I'm not really looking to get off them, but currently I have no doc, so I don't know what will happen and feeling dependent on a drug, even though I take them as prescribed and don't abuse them, sucks. It's nice to hear something positive regarding getting off benzos, because most of what you find are horror stories. I appreciate any advice or information you can give me :). Hope you're doing well still :)
 
In 2017 I was yanked off of klonopin three mg a day. For three months I was completely psychotic. I fired the docs. Got back on the script and weaned myself from July till March of 2018 .

I was in TN and I moved back to Oklahoma. I found a doc who would write a little to help the process. In April of 2018 I thought I was going to be crazy like I was. Yes it was hard but I managed.


It can be done tho. Today I don?t wonder whether it?s still withdrawal. My anxiety still is very debilitating.
 
I have some questions if you don't mind: How long were you on benzos and what dose? What benzo did you take? What made you want to get off them and did you taper?

I've been on Klonopin for about 6-7 years, a lose dose (0.5 mg) and PRN, but I often run out of my 45 pills/month early. I don't know how I will respond if I am forced to get off them. I imagine the psychological effect will be the hardest, but honestly don't know. The longest I have gone without taking them is 5-6 days, with no ill effects, except maybe a little difficulty with sleep onset and staying asleep, although I didn't have that the last time I went without for that long, so who knows. I'm not really looking to get off them, but currently I have no doc, so I don't know what will happen and feeling dependent on a drug, even though I take them as prescribed and don't abuse them, sucks. It's nice to hear something positive regarding getting off benzos, because most of what you find are horror stories. I appreciate any advice or information you can give me :). Hope you're doing well still :)

Look up the Ashton Manual for benzo tapering. I believe they recommend somewhere around 10% taper every 2 weeks. This should be the least painful way and shouldn't put you at risk of seizure or psychosis.

If you are taking benzos daily and abruptly stop you would be considered at risk for some of the potentially more severe benzo withdrawals like seizure and psychosis. Generally this is only a risk with higher doses over longer periods of time but some are more sensitive than others. With longer half life benzos like klonopin, it will take longer to go into withdrawal- probably about a week before they really get bad. With shorter half life benzos they are in full effect within a few days usually, but even still people usually don't have seizures until around the 4-10 day mark. In general they can be fairly unpredictable. And that is just the more severe withdrawal. Rebound anxiety, insomnia, nausea, nightmares, and hallucinations are some pretty normal benzo WD symptoms in my experience.
 
I've been on Klonopin for about 6-7 years, a lose dose (0.5 mg) and PRN, but I often run out of my 45 pills/month early. I don't know how I will respond if I am forced to get off them. I imagine the psychological effect will be the hardest, but honestly don't know. The longest I have gone without taking them is 5-6 days, with no ill effects, except maybe a little difficulty with sleep onset and staying asleep, although I didn't have that the last time I went without for that long, so who knows. I'm not really looking to get off them, but currently I have no doc, so I don't know what will happen and feeling dependent on a drug, even though I take them as prescribed and don't abuse them, sucks. It's nice to hear something positive regarding getting off benzos, because most of what you find are horror stories. I appreciate any advice or information you can give me :). Hope you're doing well still :)

I'm in a similar situation. I dropped off a prescription for lorazepam about 2 weeks ago, and there has been some sort of disruption in the supply chain. Almost all the Walgreens in the area are out of it, and the one I found that has it can't fill it because the location I dropped off the prescription at gave me a partial fill of 20 1mg tablets. They said something about being unable to transfer it, since it was partially filled, went against Federal law yada yada yada and they have no idea when they're going to get more. The best advice they could give me was to see my doctor and get a prescription for something else. The psychiatrist is next to impossible to see on short notice, so I'm thinking I'm going to have to see the GP and see if he'll write me a 30 day script for alprazolam.

Also, most treatment centers don't know jack shit about detoxing people off benzos. They think 7-14 days is enough. Bullshit. When I was coming off benzos, I did a slow, slow taper over several months under a psychiatrist's supervision. About a third of the way through, I switched over to diazepam for the rest of the taper. The Ashton Manual that Mafioso mentioned is probably the best resource out there. Schedule 5 on this page is a slow taper over 15-30 weeks off 1.5mg/day off clonazepam:

https://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzsched.htm
 
I had already been thru a major psychosis in 05.

In 2010 I was put on klonopin, I tried Xanax for a year and Valium.

I was on k-pin the longest. Practically I was on it for seven years.
When I was yanked off I thought it was the end of the world. My psychosis themes have always been the end times.

The day I got my script I took .5 and everything went back to normal.

I moved back to Oklahoma and weaned all the way down to .25 once a day. I stopped in April and I was anxious but very more comfortable then yanked off that three mg.

In TN when I was yanked day fifteen I went to Walgreens and got my gabapentin, I was so out of it I took 22 six hundred mg.

I had two grand mal seizures and the docs said it was the gabapentin.

Trying to cover their butts.

I was in detox and got phenobarbitals. It did nothing.
 
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