My unorthodox story on getting free of benzodiazepines

Sorry for my English, I live in Brazil, a country where benzodiazepines are given like aspirin by public health pdocs (yes, we don't have anything like "Obamacare" here, but plenty of public hospitals with questionable quality), but they don't know anything about the Ashton Manual of very slow tapering for a cessation of usage, resulting in a silent but existent benzodiazepine problem here.

 

This is how I personally managed to quit benzos and how it worked for me. I'm not recommending anyone to follow the same protocol, even though it worked for me I'm 100% sure it may not work for everyone. But what does? I see stories of people following strictly the Manual and still going through hell, hell while tapering and year(s) of hell after. I didn't and I couldn't do it for me, so I decided I would not. I completely acknowledge the Ashton Manual instructions are the most accepted form of quitting benzodiazepines, but I decided at my own risk I wouldn't exactly follow it - much because of events that happened in my life that made it impossible for me to do it and because it forced me to start trying my own method (after a lot of researching) and it was working fine, so I kept up with it.

 

I use "benzodiazepines" since my first year of college, 8 years ago. I suffer from a very strong case of social anxiety, leaving me completely unable to talk with some kind of strangers (like a bank account manager to close my account or call the gym to cancel my membership, or my professors, even over email, things which made me keep paying the fees without even using it). I finally went to see a psychiatrist after my roommate recommendation in college and started psychotherapy. She prescribed me fluoxetine and zolpidem 5 mg. After 3 months 5 mg wasn't working anymore, so we upped to 10 mg. I noticed that when I took my zolpidem I became another person, free of my anxiety chains and I started using just the moment after taking zolpidem and before going to bed to send emails, etc. After some weeks I decided taking zolpidem by the day. As its duration of action is at most 3 hours, I was taking like 60 mg/day. I did this by doctor shopping and spending a lot of money paying private doctors for this, which made me very screwed financially for some months, which I still didn't totally recover from. This changed my life and I was a whole other person, though. I could talk to people, even do job interviews. But zolpidem is very "strong" and kinda screwed me up a lot intellectually. I talked to my close friend who is a doctor about my situation and he gave me Alprazolam instead. I started taking 0.5 mg/dose, averaging 1 mg/day. I shifted to Clonazepam. Clonazepam was really good for me, as it didn't impair me at all, I was at a high demanding engineering college and couldn't afford to trade intelligence for mental for mental health so much. After around 3 years taking clonazepam, which I bought from a friend who is a dealer, I progressed to 4 mg/day. While I don't "feel" it much at all, 1 mg of Alprazolam, which is supposed to be equally powerful to 1 mg Clonazepam, still makes me a zombie and the duration is much shorter, making the habit more expensive.

I kept going to psychiatrists but they weren't much useful, most of them just followed up the former one and diagnosed me with "mixed depression and anxiety" (I don't even think I have any depression, and I don't think I ever showed signs of having it).

 

I finally decided to go to an "expensive" and well-known psychiatrist and she was the one which diagnosed me with Social Anxiety (I didn't even know the concept until that day), after a much more careful and personal talk/evaluation. She prescribed me 2 mg Clonazepam for 2 weeks until the new antidepressant "kicked in" (I've been through the antidepressant story so many times, before and after the benzos... It may have helped with my SA, along with the psychotherapy, but only like 5%).

I started abusing alcohol too (for a very short period) after things were getting really really worse, suicide ideations because my SA started creeping me not only during social situations but think about them and freak out 24h/day, like before a social situation x, and found the mywayout forum. I saw how people there quit alcohol with very high dosages of baclofen and how it worked for every one of them. I decided to try it (it's OTC here) and it worked for me.

There are numerous positive case reports of Baclofen being used to help with benzodiazepine withdrawal, but with the spasticity "normal" range instead of the much higher "alcoholism" dose range. I don't understand why they would use such low dosages for benzodiazepines while using 10x more for alcohol. I decided I would keep using Baclofen (200 mg/day) and made a relatively fast taper of my clonazepam (2 weeks). It worked like 90%, with some positive and negative aspects.

 

Positive and negative aspects after cessation of Clonazepam and substitution with a high dosage Baclofen

 

Positive:

I was more talkative and less introspective

I was definitely happier

Started feeling emotions again

 

Negative:

Felt jittery, which subsided and wax and waned with time, like in a typical benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome but much less pronounced.

Started caring less about my obligations, as I was in a state of near "hypomania", started projects and worked intensively on them but ended them after they made me bored

Brain fog

 

Neutral:

Was able to "speak my mind" more directly, which was good in some situations but in others made me sound like a douche

 

Anyway, I still felt some typical benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms, but they weren't "hell" nor left me bedridden, they were totally manageable.

I still take Baclofen but didn't have any with me and live far from any drugstore and this weekend I was just too lazy to go and buy. This is my second day without it and I definitely don't feel good, but nothing I can't manage if I'm home alone. I don't think there's still any baclofen in my body because the duration of action is so short (2.5 - 4h half-life), compared to its "cousin" Phenibut. Since I stopped it c/t unintentionally, I'll just keep this way. Tomorow I'll go to work and buy more if I feel like I need it. People have success tapering Baclofen for just 1 week and PAWs and much rarer, compared to benzodiazepines.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271384/

 

Very interesting, if u think of anything else revelant, please update.  Thanks for the post and am glad you found your way out :balloon:

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

 

 

carloseduardodaf, I think you should be careful. I only felt the first WD symptoms two to three weeks after cutting my dose by 50%. And the pattern has been the same during my taper.

 

I see how Baclofen can be used to overcome the psychological addiction to alcohol (or other substances). However, it's very unclear to me how it could be useful to overcome the physical dependence most of us have to benzos, as that would mean making our brain receptors heal faster.

 

So, you may be simply replacing the benzo by another substance that increases your gaba levels and, so, prevents both WD and healing.

 

Take care

A Brazilian fellow? OMG! I'm flabbergasted. Greetings from São Paulo! I feel so sorry for the millions in our country lost in withdrawal labyrinth who can't access good information, or have a good support online because of language barrier and poverty isolation. I'm sorry you had to take all those meds, I hope you keep doing fine. I can't wait to write a success story, but I'm still very ill from withdrawal.

 

Boa sorte e muita saúde pra você!

 

Sorry for my English, I live in Brazil, a country where benzodiazepines are given like aspirin by public health pdocs (yes, we don't have anything like "Obamacare" here, but plenty of public hospitals with questionable quality), but they don't know anything about the Ashton Manual of very slow tapering for a cessation of usage, resulting in a silent but existent benzodiazepine problem here.

 

This is how I personally managed to quit benzos and how it worked for me. I'm not recommending anyone to follow the same protocol, even though it worked for me I'm 100% sure it may not work for everyone. But what does? I see stories of people following strictly the Manual and still going through hell, hell while tapering and year(s) of hell after. I didn't and I couldn't do it for me, so I decided I would not. I completely acknowledge the Ashton Manual instructions are the most accepted form of quitting benzodiazepines, but I decided at my own risk I wouldn't exactly follow it - much because of events that happened in my life that made it impossible for me to do it and because it forced me to start trying my own method (after a lot of researching) and it was working fine, so I kept up with it.

 

I use "benzodiazepines" since my first year of college, 8 years ago. I suffer from a very strong case of social anxiety, leaving me completely unable to talk with some kind of strangers (like a bank account manager to close my account or call the gym to cancel my membership, or my professors, even over email, things which made me keep paying the fees without even using it). I finally went to see a psychiatrist after my roommate recommendation in college and started psychotherapy. She prescribed me fluoxetine and zolpidem 5 mg. After 3 months 5 mg wasn't working anymore, so we upped to 10 mg. I noticed that when I took my zolpidem I became another person, free of my anxiety chains and I started using just the moment after taking zolpidem and before going to bed to send emails, etc. After some weeks I decided taking zolpidem by the day. As its duration of action is at most 3 hours, I was taking like 60 mg/day. I did this by doctor shopping and spending a lot of money paying private doctors for this, which made me very screwed financially for some months, which I still didn't totally recover from. This changed my life and I was a whole other person, though. I could talk to people, even do job interviews. But zolpidem is very "strong" and kinda screwed me up a lot intellectually. I talked to my close friend who is a doctor about my situation and he gave me Alprazolam instead. I started taking 0.5 mg/dose, averaging 1 mg/day. I shifted to Clonazepam. Clonazepam was really good for me, as it didn't impair me at all, I was at a high demanding engineering college and couldn't afford to trade intelligence for mental for mental health so much. After around 3 years taking clonazepam, which I bought from a friend who is a dealer, I progressed to 4 mg/day. While I don't "feel" it much at all, 1 mg of Alprazolam, which is supposed to be equally powerful to 1 mg Clonazepam, still makes me a zombie and the duration is much shorter, making the habit more expensive.

I kept going to psychiatrists but they weren't much useful, most of them just followed up the former one and diagnosed me with "mixed depression and anxiety" (I don't even think I have any depression, and I don't think I ever showed signs of having it).

 

I finally decided to go to an "expensive" and well-known psychiatrist and she was the one which diagnosed me with Social Anxiety (I didn't even know the concept until that day), after a much more careful and personal talk/evaluation. She prescribed me 2 mg Clonazepam for 2 weeks until the new antidepressant "kicked in" (I've been through the antidepressant story so many times, before and after the benzos... It may have helped with my SA, along with the psychotherapy, but only like 5%).

I started abusing alcohol too (for a very short period) after things were getting really really worse, suicide ideations because my SA started creeping me not only during social situations but think about them and freak out 24h/day, like before a social situation x, and found the mywayout forum. I saw how people there quit alcohol with very high dosages of baclofen and how it worked for every one of them. I decided to try it (it's OTC here) and it worked for me.

There are numerous positive case reports of Baclofen being used to help with benzodiazepine withdrawal, but with the spasticity "normal" range instead of the much higher "alcoholism" dose range. I don't understand why they would use such low dosages for benzodiazepines while using 10x more for alcohol. I decided I would keep using Baclofen (200 mg/day) and made a relatively fast taper of my clonazepam (2 weeks). It worked like 90%, with some positive and negative aspects.

 

Positive and negative aspects after cessation of Clonazepam and substitution with a high dosage Baclofen

 

Positive:

I was more talkative and less introspective

I was definitely happier

Started feeling emotions again

 

Negative:

Felt jittery, which subsided and wax and waned with time, like in a typical benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome but much less pronounced.

Started caring less about my obligations, as I was in a state of near "hypomania", started projects and worked intensively on them but ended them after they made me bored

Brain fog

 

Neutral:

Was able to "speak my mind" more directly, which was good in some situations but in others made me sound like a douche

 

Anyway, I still felt some typical benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms, but they weren't "hell" nor left me bedridden, they were totally manageable.

I still take Baclofen but didn't have any with me and live far from any drugstore and this weekend I was just too lazy to go and buy. This is my second day without it and I definitely don't feel good, but nothing I can't manage if I'm home alone. I don't think there's still any baclofen in my body because the duration of action is so short (2.5 - 4h half-life), compared to its "cousin" Phenibut. Since I stopped it c/t unintentionally, I'll just keep this way. Tomorow I'll go to work and buy more if I feel like I need it. People have success tapering Baclofen for just 1 week and PAWs and much rarer, compared to benzodiazepines.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271384/

 

Please be careful Baclofen withdrawal is the same as Benzo's, its probably just covering your Benzo withdrawal symptoms up, you need to taper off it the same way as Benzos

 

]Discontinuation of baclofen can be associated with a withdrawal syndrome which resembles benzodiazepine withdrawal and alcohol withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms are more likely if baclofen is used for long periods of time (more than a couple of months) and can occur from low or high doses. The severity of baclofen withdrawal depends on the rate at which it is discontinued. Thus to minimise withdrawal symptoms, the dose should be tapered down slowly when discontinuing baclofen therapy. Abrupt withdrawal is more likely to result in severe withdrawal symptoms. Acute withdrawal symptoms can be stopped by recommencing baclofen.[11]

 

Withdrawal symptoms may include auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, delusions, confusion, agitation, delirium, disorientation, fluctuation of consciousness, insomnia, dizziness (feeling faint), nausea, inattention, memory impairments, perceptual disturbances, pruritus/itching, anxiety, depersonalization, hypertonia, hyperthermia, formal thought disorder, psychosis, mania, mood disturbances, restlessness, and behavioral disturbances, tachycardia, seizures, tremors, autonomic dysfunction, hyperpyrexia (fever), extreme muscle rigidity resembling neuroleptic malignant syndrome and rebound spasticity.[11][12]

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baclofen#Withdrawal_syndrome

 

 

 

Nova xxx

Interesting.

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

Hi M xxxx  :smitten:

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

Hi M xxxx  :smitten:

 

Hi Nova!! 

I've missed you ! how are you holding up ??

:smitten:

Thanks for your story! My Dr prescribed me Baclofen when I first started tapering. I filled the prescription but then I did a bunch of research here and on the wider internet and decided not to take it because of all the things Nova said. I have been curious though, especially since I have a bottle in my medicine cabinet. Definitely keep us updated on your progress, especially when coming off the Baclofen. I wish you great success!

Interesting story, thanks   

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

 

On you tube type in benzodiazepine information coalition and all of their videos will show up. There is one on there talking about phenibut and tapering.

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

 

On you tube type in benzodiazepine information coalition and all of their videos will show up. There is one on there talking about phenibut and tapering.

thank you PBH 

Yes , Thank you for posting your story.... I have read also about baclofen helping benzo wd.

I know phenibut is very similar and I do wonder if that too could help , though I knwo it has a highly addictive profile. I wonder  if it is more addictive than bacofen? and if so why?  Do you have any information on that ? I have researched it but not come up with much .

I think 200 mg baclofen is quite a high dose isn't it?

 

Anyway , good luck and keep us posted if you can ,

MiYu

 

On you tube type in benzodiazepine information coalition and all of their videos will show up. There is one on there talking about phenibut and tapering.

thank you PBH 

 

U r very welcome miyu

Also from Brazil !

If you want PM me, i’ll tell you some stuff about your weaning process.

Regards from Juiz de Fora, MG.

 

 

interesting and intelligent post...I fell down the rabbit hole getting off Ativan and am surprised I survived and succeeded in total recovery...in my experience, the only way out of benzo etc dependency is through..there is no 'magic bullet' and taking supps. or other drugs is only postponing the REAL journey to freedom...however, if your psychology is such that without a chemical crutch, you can't function, i agree it's a tough choice..life's a journey..depends what altitude and clarity you want to fly at? :-)

Hi Carlos: How are you doing? Are you still taking Bacoflen. I found your article very interesting and prompted to learn more about this drug and found one that caught my attention:

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addicted-brain/

 

I am not advocating any other drugs to withdraw from this hell; but I am nobody to judge the ones who do, and if there is a potential drug than can make the process easier, then go for it. I am nine months out and hadn't taken anything, suffered a lot; but now I am almost completely healed, Alleluia!

 

Peace and much healing your way!