The Other Epidemic: Trying to get off benzodiazepines

> handle the perceived insurmountable workload

This is so wild to me because output and work quality rapidly decline at (or well before) 40 hours a week. It sounds like a joke, but I probably have 4 good hours in me a day. Sure, more if I'm really into something, but working 4 hours a day 3-5 (max) days a week will actually achieve peak results in my experience.

Is it possible you have the cause and effect backwards? These people could have highly addictive personalities and were just switching from one drug to another and it’s not the actual drug that’s the issue.

Take the adderall and benzodiazepines out of the equation and they might just as well be using cocaine and barbiturates.

What are you seeing with Modafinil (Provigil)? It seems to be popular among the same crowd.

I was on Ativan for acute trauma avoidance (to try to prevent PTSD) for about 6 weeks. I hate taking medicating and stopped it cold turkey. It took me another 3 weeks or so to feel "normal" again and the withdrawal period was so phenomenally physically uncomfortable and panic-inducing that I will never take it again for any reason. I spent most of that time thinking I was going to die. In the long run, I guess it helped with PTSD avoidance (which seems to be one of the things they do now), but even just thinking back to those few weeks makes my skin crawl.

> weeks/months rather than days.

Weeks to months is actually pretty fast for benzo withdrawl IME.

For me it took nearly an entire year to feel completely normal. I was only taking 10mg diazepam per day (not a big dose).

To anyone on the journey now... hang in there. It feels never ending. But I promise you... you will wake up one day and feel completely normal.

I'm convinced a small percent of people get addicted to anything much more easily. Ive enjoyed various things but it's like meh- though Ativan is fucking amazing (but only for fear of flying). I think it is a brain reward structure thing; I get bored very easily and i guess it takes a decent amount of danger or effort to get me very interested.

I did everything under the sun, got sober, did klonopin for a bit to help with anxiety and was lucky -blessedly lucky that it didn't do too much for me.

My best friend was not so lucky and was on ativan and had the worst experience getting off of it, and had years of problems with it because it aggravated the anxiety she was already experiencing.

Benzodiazipenes (sp?) has it's medicinal uses, particularly with injury or surgery; but yeah -if you're not very careful and very lucky it's hell to get off of if you end up dependant on it.

I'm very glad to see the word is getting out and is more wide-spread. I hope that it doesn't result in a complete freakout the way that oxycotin did. It's vital when it's needed, hopefully it will remain available.

What gets me, as someone with chronic anxiety, is that they've only come up with one thing that reliably works -and it's this. It feels like the research stopped in the nineties or so. I often wonder wtf about that.

Just for kicks, what do you do? Radiology?

>These drugs need to be banned. Period.

I've lived with that as well, but I've also spent months carved up (surgically) and there is no replacement for the role that they play medically.

I can't agree with a complete ban. It's better to get awareness out there about the harm they can do, and put better controls on access to them but not a ban.

I live with anxiety -there's no other drugs that work for it. Luckily I'm able to use DBT and straight up avoidence to cope with anxiety. But if I didn't have that last option then I'd be hosed -because there really is not anything that works effciently for treating anxiety; at least not in my personal experience (which goes back decades).

People who have been taking benzos for decades with no dose escalation should be left alone. Most people develop tolerance quickly to the sedative and hypnotic and anti-convulsive effects. But not everybody develops tolerance to its anxiolytic effect, and few legitimate patients abuse the things for fun, despite what the recent zeitgeist and sob/horror stories would like us to believe.

Obviously it's been overprescribed. Old school doctors likely still do prescribe it too easily. And new docs often plainly refuse to prescribe it at all. The solution doesn't have to be black or white. Doctors have the ability to limit the number of pills per month a patient can get, imagine that! It doesn't have to be nothing at all vs as-needed-which-means-the-full-30-pills-every-month-inviting-the-patient-to-start-taking-it-daily. It can be "give 5-10 pills per month".

That way the doctor can monitor the patient needs more closely and effectively prevent both addiction and tolerance from developing (to preempt: no, most people cannot in fact easily source it from the black market, and doctor shopping is no longer a thing for controlled drugs thanks to the opiod crisis).

How is forcing her to cold turkey that not malpractice?

No one questions if they're helpful. But the danger and the severity needs to be more commonly known.

I certainly wouldn't want them removed -particularly after spending 4 months going through different surgical procedures where benzos were medically indicated. But awareness of the down-side is thin on the ground (from my perspective) and it's good to get out there.

Seconding your experience. Used on an occasional basis, benzos can be helpful without resulting in the horror stories related here. Of course, everyone is different and YMMV, but confirming that your positive experience is not unique.

Some people are wired for addiction and some aren't. I knew a guy who did heroin or cocaine a few times a year when he felt like it and never got addicted. I also quickly lose interest in alcohol or marijuana but I can't stop eating sweets no matter how hard I try...

My involvement in inpatient drug abuse clinics has been benzo addiction is one of the hardest to treat and accounted for nearly half the patients, the rest split between alcohol and opioids, even during the height of the oxy crisis. It’s much less reported on because it’s widely prescribed and it’s nearly impossible to OD on. The effects aren’t as dramatic as alcohol, but are no less debilitating. Furthermore because benzos and alcohol have similar pathways they are often abused together and they amplify each others effect. You can satisfy the addiction with either - so people withdrawing from alcohol are often given benzos and people addicted to benzos often drink to relieve their addiction. People describe klonopin and similar long lasting benzos as a six pack that lasts 18 hours - which is a long time to have than level of declined inhibition. This further leads to more drinking, but also to other out of character behavior like overspending - some patients have bankrupted their families through excessive and bizarre spending.

Many people receive opioid treatment and do not become addicted. In fact most do. Most people can drink alcohol without becoming an alcoholic. This isn’t a proof that “anecdotal experience” that opioid addiction and alcoholism aren’t serious problems. In fact it is a demonstration that they are insidious for that exact reason - it’s fairly easy to slip through the cracks in the system into a serious problem that is life altering and extraordinarily difficult to emerge from.

Finally, the hardest withdrawals I’ve seen are benzo withdrawals. Relapse is also extremely high because the profound anxiety that led to the addiction is amplified in the years of subsequent withdrawal with very little as effective as a benzo to mitigate it. Paralyzing irrational fear is in many ways worse than pain, and pain is often a symptom to boot.

I feel that perhaps saying “well not everyone, take my anecdotal experience” isn’t the most empathetic response, and the statistics bear this out. The prevalence of benzodiazepine dependency is roughly on par with alcoholism in the US and several times that of opioids. The distinction is that crisis level addiction is roughly the same as opioid, while alcohol is roughly 7x worse. This likely because acute alcoholic behavior is rapid and very readily observable, while opioid and benzo dependency can be masked behind an otherwise normalish appearing life. The decline is fairly slow often unless you trip over into fentanyl. Further the prevalence of common use of both opioids and alcohol is much higher because surgery and recreational alcohol use is fairly prevalent while anxiety disorders less so.

Stevie Nicks is a popular icon who has been very public about how hard her withdrawal from Klonopin was, including how her skin sloughed off among other horrible effects. She lost a large part of her life span to it. But otherwise it’s also a relatively under reported dependency given its prevalence.

https://time.com/3482462/rolling-stone-stevie-nicks-drugs-mu...

I’d also note in many countries benzodiazepines are highly controlled with much higher bars than US, including the UK, where they’re only allowed in crisis, not general anxiety disorders less.

> a few times a year, never more than 1-2 days in a row

It takes at least a few weeks to a few months of daily use to develop dependence.

On the other hand I took Valium 5mg daily for 2 weeks, and had no issues getting off them.

There’s definitely a lot of factors

i mean, it says it right on the sheet you get with the medication

"MISUSE OF CLONAZEPAM CAN CAUSE ADDICTION, OVERDOSE, OR DEATH. Keep the medication in a place where others cannot get to it. Never share clonazepam with another person. Selling or giving away this medicine is against the law.

Some people have thoughts about suicide while taking clonazepam. Tell your doctor right away if you have any sudden changes in mood or behavior, or thoughts about suicide.

Get medical help right away if you stop using clonazepam and have symptoms such as: unusual muscle movements, being more active or talkative, sudden and severe changes in mood or behavior, confusion, hallucinations, seizures, or thoughts about suicide.

Do not stop using clonazepam without asking your doctor. You may have life-threatening withdrawal symptoms if you stop using the medicine suddenly after long-term use. Some withdrawal symptoms may last up to 12 months or longer."

https://www.drugs.com/clonazepam.html

"The psych had told me nothing of the nightmare that dependence on those meds can create"

I hear this all the time and never get it. Didn't these people go to school? People talk about this every day on the internet. It's right there on Wikipedia, even.

I'm not a big believer in valerian, based on my experience. It's certainly not a stand-in when it comes to treating panic attacks. For sleep, it could work but I generally tend to prefer melatonin.