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Short term user with Short term Withdrawal Story


[lo...]

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My history with benzos started back in 2008 where I took klonopin twice while struggling with severe anxiety after a surgery. It was a live saver. I had 2 more surgeries after where I also took klonopin but over the course of 5 or 6 days. I always took .5 mg. Over time i noticed the effects of the drug weakening but it still worked well enough. Each time i stopped taking klonopin I had no issues. Now recently I had another surgery, took klonopin for 6 days, came off of it cold turkey as always. Over the course of a week I was feeling fine. I felt like I was becoming myself again as klonopin tends to make me feel suppressed.

 

Then at night all of the sudden i felt like I had an intense amount of mental energy, i tossed and turned in bed almost uncontrollably. I slept maybe half an hour that night. The next day I felt quite anxious and could not sit still. Later that night I tried to sleep but could not, it felt like my brain was screaming for me to take more klonopin, which I eventually did. I slept an hour or two that night but the next night I took klonopin again when going to bed and slept for several hours. At this point I came to realize that I had likely become dependent on klonopin and that the weakening of the drugs effects I had experienced had been me developing tolerance to it. I had always thought klonopin was safe so long as I did not take it longer than 2 weeks, you'll notice my history of starting and stopping it for 1 week at a time or less. In hindsight what I think happened was that my history of starting and stopping the drug, even over long time periods, eventually caught up with me and i became dependent. So anyways I continued taking klonopin for 3 more days, during this time i heavily researched this issue.

 

My two options where to taper, or cold turkey. I had taken the drug for such a short period i thought i might be doing more harm to myself than good by continuing to take it for 5-6 weeks and tapering off. I mean that taper period would represent a longer period than the total time I had taken benzos in my life, and even if you are tapering I believed taking this drug would still do damage to me. Not to mention the taper might not work very well if at all if I did not do it right. I thought if the taper did not work then I essentially would end up cold turkeying off of 8 weeks of continued use instead of just the 12 days I already had which would obviously be much worse. I really wanted to get off the drugs and I thought I should just bite the bullet and cold turkey, and so that is what I did.

 

Once I cold turkeyed I started having problems, severe insomnia with only getting an hour of sleep a night, severe anxiety, benzo belly, muscle spasms, and some minor burning and itching. Given my short period of use my symptoms obviously were not as bad as most, but were still very unpleasant. After 5 days of this, and a doc visit that went no where as he offered me ambien and anti-depressants which I of course refused (I would strongly advise you to stay away from that stuff), I decided to try some supplements. I had heard many people on this site and elsewhere advocate that people stay away from supplements completely, that they would cause setbacks and make things worse. I dont doubt this is true for many people, maybe people with more severe dependencies have more issues with supplements than someone with a minor one like myself, I dont know. Im not saying you should take supplements necessarily, I think you should do your research and decide what is best for you.

 

Im just saying that supplements worked for me and Im going to talk about that. There certainly are some bad supplements out there, but after doing alot of research I decided on Theanine for anxiety/sleep, extended release melatonin for sleep, a digestive supplement with various enzymes and probiotics as well as Metamucil fiber and apple cider vinegar supplements all for my stomach issues.

 

The theanine helped greatly which really surprised me, I did not think a supplement I could buy on amazon would do such a good job relieving a level of anxiety that only a benzo had stopped previously. It also seemed to help with sleep along with the melatonin. The digestive supplements helped alot in relieving benzo belly related issues as well. These supplements made the withdrawal much easier and enabled me to function. I went from 1 hour of sleep a night to 4. I could actually do my job and get things done that needed to be done. Over the course of the next 6 weeks things got gradually better, i gradually slept better and my stomach gradually felt better, the burning/itching went away and the muscle spasms and twitches were not as bad and less frequent.

 

After this 6 week period I felt I had gotten better enough that I could stop the supplements, and so I did. I had cut my theanine dosage in half the week before and had no issues with that and when I stopped taking the theanine completely there were no issues either. There were also no issues stopping the other supplements. Its two weeks later and I take nothing and I feel good, the same as I did before all this happened, everything has returned to normal. I will never take benzos again, and I do not drink which seems to be the main issue people have with ending up back in withdrawal, so I don't expect to have any issues going forward. I decided to share my experience, although it isn't as impressive as everyone else's, because I think more success stories are always helpful to people and maybe some of the information I posted here could be helpful to others as info I read here from other people was helpful to me.

 

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This gives me hope I c/t almost 4 weeks ago off klonopin I took .5 3x day sometimes once or twice depending on my anxiety for one month with 5 days off in between and I still have symptoms now I don’t think they are nearly as bad as others on here but still awful. I can’t wait till I feel better.
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Omg!!! This is the same as me !! I took 1 week , 5 mg diazepam and got addicted .  These drugs are catastrophic!!!! In such short time the doctor will not believe you that you got addicted !! My doctor diagnosed me with : paranoia to drugs ( how ironic ) , depresion , ptsd , delusional . 

They wanted to put me in antipshycotics . I ignore that but the fight for life was the hardest thing I have ever did that lasted about a year . My withdrawal was inhuman , ordeal .  I now feel 99% healed . From january I am going to work . I will write my own success story once I feel 100% .  Keep fighting my warriors !!! The life is so beautiful !!

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Congratulations and thanks for sharing.

 

Yes, we can always use more success stories and no one gets a badge for surviving the worst WD situation.

 

Enjoy life and warn others about Benzos!

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Thanks for sharing.  I think your story is just as important as someone who took for Benzos for years.  This goes to show how lethal these drugs are and why people who took it for longer period suffer for months/yrs post-withdrawal.
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It’s truly frightening how dangerous these drugs are.  I also thought I was safe because I was taking a very low dose over a short period of time ...  i’m glad to hear that you were able to recover in a short period of time!  I agree with you that I will never ever take another benzo for the rest of my life !
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@[Lo...]

great inspiration! Im on short term ativan use as well. Trying to taper, but difficult.

what dosage of melatonine and theanine were you taking?

 

 

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@Lop12

great inspiration! Im on short term ativan use as well. Trying to taper, but difficult.

what dosage of melatonine and theanine were you taking?

 

Ativan has a short half life, trying to taper ativan is a bad idea in general and only taking a dose once a day is also bad with ativan, again because of its half life. You might have more luck splitting your .5 dose to .25 twice a day so the drug is more steady in your system. I believe most people here advise switching to valium to taper but that may not be an option for you. I doubt you will "stabilize" doing what you are doing now and are just taking the drug longer. In fact given how fast you have cut the dose you may not stabilize regardless of what you do, unless you up the dose quite a bit which i certainly don't recommend. Often times when someone gets down to a low dose they are simply going to have withdrawal symptoms for the rest of their taper and so in my opinion they may as well just finish the taper instead of holding for long periods for relief that may never come. I would get advice from others on the board who know more than me if you have not already.

 

That being said as far as the melatonin I took 3mg extended release: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GFPCRU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 once at night. For theanine I took 200mg in the morning and 200mg at night with the melatonin: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BD29KHW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . From what I have seen it is generally not recommended to take more than 400mg of theanine per day.

 

Theanine is not a substitute for tapering, although like I said I did not taper I cold turkeyed. I dont know if it would be better to try it after you are off the benzos, but of course its your choice as to when or if you want to take it.

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