How to function without sleep for months - how to avoid vegetative dementia?

I am just starting to experience benzo withdrawal insomnia where I have had multiple nights of 0 or 1 hour sleep. The peculiar thing is, no matter how little sleep I have had, I don't feel tired the following night and even seem able to function well during the day. But I am worried that this will not last, and that I will lapse into a zombie-like state in which I will be unable to drive my car, do the shopping, or perform almost any other task, even self-care.

How do other members here function with an almost total lack of sleep lasting weeks or months? I have read so many horror stories about this but nobody seems to conclude by saying they have ended up in a vegetative state of dementia or that they have never been able to regain all that lost sleep. If you forced a normal person to endure "sleep" like this they would quickly end up delusional and demented. It would be classified as a form of torture in a war environment. People with fatal familial insomnia lapse into a demented state in which they cannot talk or walk then end up in a coma and die, usually within 6 months.

Please can someone reassure me that I am not going to end up a vegetative dementia patient from sustained lack of sleep? If this is what lies at the end of the benzo road then I will likely just stay on benzos for the rest of my life. I have to care for my sick mother and if I can't function then I will be of no use to her or myself.

P.S. Please don't think I am saying that anybody should stay on benzos. I commend all of the people here who are making such huge efforts to get off these addictive drugs. I just feel hopeless about my own personal situation and my ability to withstand months of sustained insomnia without ending up a vegetable.

One of the hallmarks of benzodiazepine withdrawal is fear and I can see its working overtime on you and I get it, I had it too but that's the thing, its just fear.  Fear by itself can't hurt you, but how you react to it can so I can see benefits from reframing how you look at things.  This process makes us only see the negative, looking at worst case scenario's such as fatal insomnia is common but it doesn't happen, this is why you haven't found any posts like that on the forum even though there have been plenty of people worried about it.

Have you ever felt like you lost time while you were trying to sleep?  You may not have any perceived sleep but it feels like you've lost a few minutes or seconds during the night.  We call this microsleep and it seems like its enough to sustain life, ours.  Yes, we're exhausted and sleep deprived but somehow our body is taking what it needs to keep our bodily functions working, this is what keeps us going and for me, its comforting.

I noticed like you that even though I didn't get any sleep, I didn't feel sleepy, I couldn't even yawn, this is typical of this process, it has us amped up all of the time, even when we don't get any sleep and are exhausted. 

I believe you can make it through this if you take it one step at a time, quit reading the horror stories and do your best to accept this is the price you have to pay for freedom from these terrible drugs. 

Thank you very much for your reply.

Yes the fear is definitely working overtime in me, and I am imagining all the very worst possibilities that could happen. My doctor said I am obsessed with sleep and he is right. I have to try to let go of this obsession and just accept that this is the way things have to be, as you have pointed out. It is made more difficult by the fact that I have an obsessive and anxious personality. I can spend a whole day driving my car around thinking of nothing but my problems and how awful and insoluble they all seem to be. Not the thing to be doing when driving a car!

I have indeed had times when I have felt like I haven't slept but then remember dreams I have had. It has seemed like I am awake every time I look at the clock (a bad habit in itself) but then I have to admit that I must have been asleep for at least minutes, if not an hour or more.

I can only guess that having the brain flooded with glutamate and deprived of GABA must keep in wired all the time, and somehow able to keep on going despite next-to-no sleep.

I do need to quit reading the horror stories though, and hope that I am one who may not go through quite so much agony.

You have a great deal of self-awareness that I feel will benefit you on this journey, we need to actively push back on these horrible thoughts so they don't consume us, I'm glad to know you recognize the traps we can fall too easily into.

I'm glad you can acknowledge you may be getting more sleep than you realize, its not very satisfying I know but it's keeping your bodily functions going and that's a good thing.