some more hopefully useful info… sorry if its a bit all over the place i am supposed to be working but i also want to say something a bit more encouraging than my last post.
as others have said, a supervised taper is probably better than a quick detox for benzos. drugs services do offer detox, but again you have to get funding. i know people who have failed home detoxes multiple times and still cannot get funding for an inpatient one- though they’re heroin addicts, and that might be a bit different. some places stopped rapid detox for heroin cos people were just using it to get their tolerance down, not cos they wanted to quit. a week won’t touch a benzo tolerance. still, don’t count on getting funded for detox.
the plus is, your drugs services will offer you one to one and group support, in addition to medically supervised taper (NB to work with them at all you have to give them permission to contact your GP, so going via drugs services doesn’t avoid this going on your permanent record). i have basically a full time recovery program, and apart from the gym and one hour a week with a private therapist, its all free. i’d really like to encourage you to use what therapy is offered. my drugs services also help with housing, volunteer work, and when it comes to it potentially even employment, signposting to other services as needed, i hope yours are as good.
i expected state funded services to be shit after so many years of the selfservatives and bad reports from users with no intention of getting clean, and OK people not being able to get the inpatient detox and rehab they need is atrocious, but i've had multiple referrals for straight up mental health and never been offered as much therapy as the drug services. with no waiting list.
benzos create rebound anxiety, so your anxiety will likely improve with time away. i thought i could never live without a range of downers. i used various combinations daily for 16 years. and now they’re out of my system and i’m properly working on therapy to get to the underlying reasons, and meditation, which i’d very strongly recommend, i feel better than i’ve ever felt in my life and i’m only 5 months in. this may be longer for you because my DOCs before getting clean weren’t benzos, but my brain was utterly utterly fucked.
it gets worse very quickly at the start of recovery, but once you’re through that, it gets better.
one other thing- about employment. i don’t know what industry you’re in but drug testing isn’t standard. i’ve only ever had one drugs test, i failed pretty badly, got all of them apart from alcohol. i’ve worked several professional jobs. if you can find out before applying whether they want medical screening, just don’t apply to the ones that do.
don’t let the regret about uni etc get to you. its done. i am prone to the same. and no matter how much i like to think i’d have done so much better had i just not used, its a fallacy. its not the drugs, its us, and without proper help we’d have come unstuck some other way.
i hope that’s useful let me know if you have any questions and good luck with everything.