Benzos and Driving

[[Buddie]]

[quote .  I know when I was on 2mg of Clonazepam I felt very "drugged" and made the decision myself to stop driving as I considered myself a danger on the road.

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[/quote]

hi
this a very sensitive area for me .i also do not drive because of the high anxiety,social anxiety and phobias  i drive a little during the last  10 years.
but now i need to start driving again i have a licence but i did not practice a lot i think i will have problem with parking and loud noise .i live in a very very crowded city with 15 million people in it.i wonder when i can start driving agin me kids is growing up and out of reasons why i do not drive
[...]

[[Buddie]]

Hi [...]
I chose not to drive because I thought I would fall asleep at the wheel.

But during the early stages of my withdrawal fear took over and I gave up driving and it has only come back to me in the last six months or so.  I started by driving from home to the shops - I live in a small town so traffic is not a problem and we angle park in the main street.  I guess I'm lucky in that respect I can't imagine living in a city of 15 million - our entire country has just over 4 million!

Is there a block you could start by driving around - nothing too strenuous or challenging?  Start small and build up from there.  You may find that the energy of concentrating on driving again could take your mind off the anxiety and phobia issues.  My psychotherapist urged me to just attempt getting over my phobias in small steps - give it a try, but you've gotta keep pushing yourself.  It's not easy, but the more you do it, the easier it will get.  Good luck - you can do it.  I did.

[[Buddie]]

I am in the UK and was stopped 3 years ago for driving my mechanics car while mine was being fixed. I was at the end of my taper at that time and was on 5mg Diazepam and the police put me through quite an ordeal as I couldnt remember my insurance or driving licence details or the addresses they were reistered to. The policeman told me If i didnt come up with the goods then I would be arrested and the car impounded. I was in quite a state by then but we finally got the details sorted out and all was legal.
He then turned to me and asked if I was on drugs to which I said 'no'. He didnt believe me and so made me do a series of tests including pupil size, counting up to 20 in my head and walking in a straight line. When he was atisfied that I was not on drugs he turned to me and said 'ok, but theres something not right with you'. I had climbed down from 50mg to 5mg in a few months and I was completely confident that I was driving safely only I went to peices with anxiety during the ordeal.
The system over here I believe is that if you are found to be driving eratically and no alcohol is detected then they will perform the test which is either a mouth swab or a urine sample and no, they cannot detect how much of the drug is in your system just its presence which they would use as evidence for your 'Driving under the influence' whether you are prescribed or not although I doubt they would persue it if you were prescribed it as the evidence alone would not stand up to a prosecution.

[[Buddie]]

I know that when I first started klonopin, driving was still easy, but I found myself getting distracted easily (you have no anxiety so you dont care if you look away from the road as much) and almost hit cars a few times...I also found that my reaction time was delayed a little, and sometimes I found myself so comfortable (no anxiety) that I would do stupid things like driving way too fast, passing people like crazy, and just being plain stupid.

[[Buddie]]

Yes, it is scary how they affect your driving.  I got in an accident at 4mg of xanax, my eyes kept closing.  It was an off duty cop - fender bender, he said he would let me go because he thought I was looking at something (and did not realize that) instead, I was falling asleep.  He told me to look at the road next time.  Very scary.  I stopped driving after that and as the dose went up.

Reaction time is slower as shared above.  Good for you to notice!
Mary

[[Buddie]]

     I wanted to chime in here...I found that I was speeding, and I'm not a fast driver.  My husband bought it to my attention one day when I had picked him up from a friends.  To me it did not feel as if I was speeding.  What I believe was going on with me was that I was anxious to get where I was going because I didn't want symptoms to flare up while I was driving or to have symptoms flare up while stuck in rush hour traffic...does that make sense?  At any rate, I have since been watching my speed, and I make it a point to stay at 60mph on the highway. I am more conscious of my driving now, and the speeding has definitely stopped.  Can't be too careful on the roadway.

     Be safe all...stay the course.

[[Buddie]]

Coincidence but I just had an incidence of speeding the other day resulting in a speeding fine - my first for many, many years.  The reason (I now believe) I was about to drive down the road where my psychiatrist's office was.  I've been avoiding his street as I can sometimes see him sitting there in his little office and to me he is the cause of all the pain I've been through over the past two years.   On Wednesday, I had to drive down that street and as I was geting closer I could sense my anxiety increasing, and honestly did not realise I was over the limit.

I know I still have a huge amount of ill-feeling towards this man and I have to work through that.  Most of the time though he is just not in my life anymore, it just seems to build up when I get near his office.  Hopefully one day I will have the last laugh and be able to drive down that street again and not think of him.

Anyway back to using cruise control to control my speed again!!!

[[Buddie]]

   Sorry about the ticket [...].  Cruise control...why didn't I think of that...hope that the brain fog isn't coming back.