Day by Day - not exactly sure what to do.

BenzoBoston - 28 Years old, Male, 6'2, 145lbs.

Injuries:

Herniated L4/L5 bulged discs into lower lumbar + Sciatica.

Atrophied Quads

Frayed Cartilage - Left Knee

CNS

Been reading the forums for past month and a half as a guest and figured it is best to get on and develop connections and support. As I foresee this being a journey that cannot be walked alone.

Little bit of history.

18 years old (2007)

(2007) Started prescription from Primary care .5 lorazepam 3x daily for 1 month. for GAD

(Early 2008) Started prescription from Psych for Klonopin 1mg 2x daily. Did that for a month switched to Xanax 1mg 2x daily.

(2007) Opiate addiction to prescription painkillers

(2008) - (2015) 8 totaled cars later, numerous jobs lost, relationships, friends & newly found heroin addiction. I Isolated myself and abused opiates and Xanax daily all those years.

(2015 August) Started Suboxone program for opiate dependency. CT'd in June 2017 personal decision. Successful.

(Jan. 2017 - July 2017) Benzo use drastically increased to 4-6 mg daily of Xanax due to significant job stress and family member illness and my own poor decisions. Ontop of "Switching" / Starting valium in May 2017 to get off the Suboxone the Psych Dr. switched me from Xanax 2mg daily after 9-10 years to 10mg of valium, lost 38lbs that month. Dr let me cold turkey saying go to the hospital until I called in and told the medical department the dosage equivalencies were incorrect due to the AMA Benzodiazepine equivalency chart and UK's. Dosage increased to 20mg within the hour (Early June 2017)

Found myself in the predicament that I no longer had refills or tapered down the Xanax and was only Rx'd 20mg valium daily.

Now working with a doctor who has me prescribed 1mg of Xanax and the 20mg of Valium for my back and etc..

In tolerance WD's from the Xanax but somewhat stabilized not really though, Bloated, Poor Sleep, Can barely walk for more than 5 minutes. Sloshy feeling in head etc etc..

Im basically terrified that once I try to make the full switch to Valium completely from Xanax that it will not be enough to compensate to even start a taper. Plus with my back issues anything less than 20mg valium Im on the floor crying in pain. I don't know where I'm going with this at the point just trying to get some info and thoughts out there. Having a hard time with coping mechanisms during this time & I'm not even off the stuff or close. Truly scares me.

Any idea's, suggestions, personal experiences, or any knowledge no matter how little or insignificant it might seem to keep me on the most informed path possible would be immensely greatly appreciated. As we all now know were in this together. Thank you.

For now, Benzo Boston.

08/23/2017

Hello, BenzoBoston - welcome to BenzoBuddies!

It must be very scary to have been dropped so precipitously from that much Xanax - perhaps your doctor can give you a more equivalent does on which to stabilize, if you can demonstrate a more realistic equivalent. Members here will be happy to help you with that.

I'm so glad you decided to join the forum - you'll find plenty of information and support here. Our members have gone through all aspects of benzodiazepine use and withdrawal, so you'll be able to connect with others who understand what you're going through and can tell you what has worked for them.

Based on the information provided in your introduction, the following links may be a good starting place for you to post your questions.

  General Taper Plans

  Withdrawal Support

When you have a chance, I recommend that you take a look at The Ashton Manual, which is an authoritative resource on what to expect during withdrawal and recovery. It provides a great deal of information that can be very reassuring during any stage of this process, including a list of common symptoms with helpful explanations.

For those who are currently tapering, a starting guideline is that the dosage not be reduced faster than by 5-10% every 10-14 days - some taper even more slowly than that. One exception: very short-term users of a few weeks or less may be able to taper somewhat faster. 

Please take the time to Create a Signature. This will allow members to see where you are in the process, so that they can better support you.

Looking forward to seeing you on the forum!

  Leslie 

Hi, Boston. I'm so glad to hear you found a doctor willing to prescribe you the 1mg of Xanax plus 20mg of Valium. From your history and description of symptoms, you do sound very destabilized. The new scripts may help you to get your feet back under you, but it will take time.

My doctor once had me on part Xanax and part Librium (very similar to Valium) because my Xanax taper was too difficult. The Librium helped to stabilize me somewhat, so I pushed on to a full crossover to Librium using Ashton's charts. As I removed Xanax, I added Librium to take its place. I did it much more slowly than the Ashton charts because my doctor was willing to prescribe in a way that enabled a very slow crossover. It was still difficult, but it was doable. Once I was fully on Librium, I stopped tapering entirely and held my dose of Librium the same for nearly a year. That's how long it took for my CNS to recover from my Xanax crash (from tapering too fast) and my Librium crossover. When I was finally stabilized, I began tapering again, this time very slowly and more successfully.

I hope your doctor is willing to prescribe while you read, learn, ask questions, and take the time to figure out how to get stable and the best way to taper for your situation. This will take time, but you can do it. Many on here started in very bad places and yet figured out how to taper off successfully. Slowly is generally the key to successful when a person has been a long-time and/or high-dose user.

On a personal side note, as a mom of a young man who is 6 feet tall and weighs only 145 pounds, I do hope you prioritize putting on some weight. Perhaps this would be a good thing to discuss with your doctor. He may agree that gaining weight would be a good first step on your path to healing.

My best wishes to you,

Gard

Hey Boston..!!

Great you decided to join and get involved, I would hate to think where I would be without the access to info, support, and distraction...

Reading your intro and history, I noticed some simularities in medicines (opiates) and physical challenges... There is a link to the first few pages of my blog under my sig, where I mention accident and hospital stuff... post there anytime you wish...

No matter the exact way you decide to move forward, you will find general principals that seem to work better than others...

My personal view is to try to start from as stable as practicle, which may mean holding on a dose for a while, or if in bad instability, possibly even considering dose correcting then holding...

From there, I see a slow taper, guided by emerging symptoms (SX), working best...

Obviously holding and/or dose correcting if needed...

The Idea being to match medicine intake to where the bodys healing is at...

-The important thing is that this is my opinion, and may not suit your needs or thoughts at all...

I find the whole tapering thing to be in flux, ever changing, anyway...

Reading peoples Sigs can shed a lot of light on things...

There are options of micro tapering, either liquid or dry... -check out the support groups in areas of interest... (just consider how active they are, as to receiving responses)...

Please remember the search function, it is very under-utilised, imho...

The Orange "STICKIES" at the top of pages are well worth looking through, (but often forgotten)

There are informal games to help distract, once you get settled..

And Blogs are good to visit or even start...

Dont Be shy, -you wont break it... lol

Welcome, and My Best Wishes...

Cant...

Thank you to everyone that has welcomed me thus far. 

It really feels good to know that I have a place and knowledgable - well informed, walked miles in the shoes of darkness, genuine people. Even explaining this to doctors or people in midst of abuse of other kinds they seem to think there is a simple fix, it boggles my damn mind to the point where I want to boggle theirs, but i don't Because I too had no idea how much of a huge issue this could be either so why should i expect someone whose never taken them to understand. I meet with the doctor that is prescribing me both the Xanax 1mg daily and the Valium 20mg daily today to discuss a compounding pharmacy to make the crossover from Xanax to Valium completely and then tell how my body reacts. At this point basically trying to round up knowledgeable doctors to help me through this process. I will keep things updated to keep those in similar situations informed. Thank you everyone so much truly.

-Boston

Good to see you again, Boston. I hope you go out onto the main forum via the links Leslie gave you and meet even more people. When you find some buddies you can relate to, you can click on their avatar to see where they post, which may lead you to helpful threads and blogs. There's so much going on here that it takes a bit of trial and error to learn to navigate the forum, but it's well worth it.

Hope things go well with the compounding. Good thing both Xanax and Valium come as liquids. Compounding them should be no problem. My insurance doesn't cover compounding, so I actually did it myself with help from the math guys on the liquid titration board. If you ever need them, here's where to find them.

Liquid Titration

Gard