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Benzodiazepine addiction treatment in UK

JamieThorn

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Feb 23, 2019
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I was wondering if anybody could share their experience of getting treatment under the NHS for benzo addiction? Do they facilitate tapering?

I'm in a constant cycle of using 30-50mg Valium daily and then quitting cold turkey. I last around 2-3 weeks and then I cave in because of the horrible withdrawals.
Because of my addiction I have sabotaged my university degree and my recent relationship. I recently lost the opportunity to get a job because I failed the drug test at the interview. I see no hope in a life without using valium because of my crippling anxiety. Now even life under the influence seems hopeless too.
 
Welcome Jamie. If this thread doesn't get any responses in the next day or so, I'm going to move it over to Sober Living where it might get a little more traction. The key to tapering off benzos is to go slow and easy.

I'm not in the UK, so I can't answer any questions about the NHS, but you do have probably the foremost authority on benzo tapers in the UK, Dr. Heather Ashton. The Ashton Manual is probably the definitive guide to tapering off benzos. Schedule 2 on this page is a simple taper off 40mg Valium over 6-12 months.

https://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzsched.htm
 
How long have you been on this cycle of using then quitting?

I'm in the US, so I can't really answer your question about getting treatment in the UK, but I can offer a little advice based on my battle with benzos over the years. I was once equally hopeless if not more so, taking a 2-4 2mg Xanax bars at a time. I would suggest looking for treatment that offers some type of either cognitive behavior therapy(CBT) or dialectic behavior therapy(DBT) as well as group therapy. Our thought process can have real impact on the way we feel and behave. For instance, holding impossible standards for yourself can leave you feeling inadequate and constantly trying to prove your worth. Or believing people shouldn't swear in public would lead you to feeling offended or outraged upon hearing someone casually cussing at the grocery store.

By being more mindful of the way we think in situations, specifically those that give us anxiety, we can better understand our emotions and the situation around us. It's not going to solve all your problems but it is proven to help. Addressing things like trauma or abuse might be another component to your recovery. Usually those types of things come back up and if they are the reason or part of the reason for using you will have to find some way of managing those feelings.

Also, I think you might find that a lot of your current worries are either caused entirely or compounded by benzo use, as it can make basic things like getting a job complicated, plus all the side effects like rebound anxiety. Benzo use can shock the system and make you more sensitive to stress and less capable of controlling it. You can recovery from it, but it does take time patience, and determination.


The best thing you could do for yourself is begin a taper schedule now. If the UK is anything like the US, you'll usually have a waiting period of at least a few weeks and have to detox before being admitted to an inpatient treatment center or before beginning an intensive outpatient program. Then you'll probably be transferred to an inpatient program with medical on staff and doctors on consult if not staff. Detox centers here usually go pretty fast, as most are 7 days, so not really taper, more warm turkey as you'll have other medications like anti-seizure.

30-50mg isn't a crazy amount of valium, and given that you can go up to 3 weeks without seizure or other serious incident, then you could probably taper down quite a bit on your own while you are waiting for treatment. I'd drop to 30mg for a week and then start dropping 2-5mg off every week or two. Should be careful not to go too fast though.

Things can get better even if it doesn't seem like it. It's crazy how debilitating daily benzo use can really be, and something that is hard to fully realize until you have a few months of sobriety.
 
I'm moving this to Sober Living. There are regular posters over there who are from the UK. Hopefully one of them will chime in.
 
I'm not from the UK. My best advice is don't let anyone talk you into a taper that's too fast. My last taper was 7 days long and it was ugly
 
i'm from the UK.

you can either go to your GP or your local drugs services. i would strongly recommend your drugs services. i went to my GP with documentary evidence of a legit prescription from a psych unit i'd spent several months in and he still wouldn't prescribe me benzos. even if you get a GP who's sympathetic, that might not be good. i know people who've just been able to get basically anything they wanted off their GP. It depends on your GP. Either way, they will not be experts.

the drugs services should have experts and will enable you to do a supervised taper. they will also offer psychological support. what's offered varies with provider, my local drugs services are run by cgl, if yours are the same i can offer more detailed advice about what you can expect.

you're unlikely to be offered rehab out the bat. if you can pay, that's another issue, you're looking at at least 10k. there were 6 funded places per year when i lived in west yorkshire, which was before austerity really gots its teeth into everything.

do not do what i did and use heroin to get off benzos, it turned out to be exactly as bad of a plan as it sounds.

i'm in a rush cos i've got work to do but will try to post more later.
 
I'm not from the UK. My best advice is don't let anyone talk you into a taper that's too fast. My last taper was 7 days long and it was ugly
The ignorance on the part of people who should be knowledgable is unbelievable. I got into an argument with a guy who works at a treatment center telling me two weeks was more than enough time to come off benzos. He'd never heard of The Ashton Manual, which I also found unbelievable, coming from someone who was a self-professed benzo abuser.
 
SUD counselors aren't required to have very much medical knowledge. Much beyond "alcohol and benzos can lead to severe WDs which can be fatal" they really don't teach that much, at least not at the college I went to. Basically, if the withdrawals are bad then medical staff will be required. Certification/licensure is still spotty as well, with each state defining its own regulations. Pretty fucking crazy when you consider the average cost.. you'd think everyone on staff would be a nurse or doctor, yet some won't even have a license or any sort of higher level degree.

There is definitely a breach in knowledge in this area, especially with benzos. My guess is it's in part due to the fact that rampant benzo use is somewhat of a modern thing. It's similar to how 10-20 years ago doctors were telling everyone that a person can't become addicted to opioids if they are truly in pain. It takes only a basic understanding of human physiology and pharmacology to realize that is complete nonsense, yet many doctors repeat false info told to them by sales reps.
 
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.
 
The ignorance on the part of people who should be knowledgable is unbelievable. I got into an argument with a guy who works at a treatment center telling me two weeks was more than enough time to come off benzos. He'd never heard of The Ashton Manual, which I also found unbelievable, coming from someone who was a self-professed benzo abuser.

Really depressing to see how those in the treatment industry believe tapers should not last more then a few weeks. Honestly though it aligns with how our treatment industry is set up with insurance. Most detox facilities are 12 days at the most.

Meanwhile basic ASAM training which is usually required to work in a licensed treatment facility discusses the dangers to ones health when conducting a 2 week long benzo taper. My suggestion is before going into a treatment facility taper down on your own to about 5 mg of diazepam per day. Do this taper over 1-3 months.
 
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