Hi [...]
Yes, it made a big difference to me, but there is a caution… you don’t want to go through any additional withdrawal, adding stress to an already difficult situation. There’s a reason it’s advised to only taper one medication at a time… to avoid additional withdrawal, although, my personal experience is that quitting smoking can have a very positive affect on your taper. Smoking not only causes inflammation in the gut, but also throughout the body, potentially crossing the blood brain barrier and inflaming a brain that is already trying to cope with withdrawal from the benzodiazepine, so it not only makes sense to me that such toxin induced inflammation can cause additional or increased cognitive and memory impairments, but I’ve actually seen the improvements numerous times over a short period of about 5-7 days. I’m not smoking now, but early on I had failed attempts, but they were enough to see the significant improvements (at least to me) over those several attempts. I find the tapering process considerably easier since cessation. I would advise you to use the nicotine lozenges or patches though, to avoid any additional stress to you system from the intense withdrawals of giving up smoking c/t (so to speak).
