My success story off of Xanax and Ambien

Hello. I just got finished a taper of about 1 year after being on Xanax (3mg) and Ambien (10mg) for over 20 years. Here’s the summary of my story and how it might help you:

It was easy to go from 3mg Xanax to 1mg Xanax so I skip that part in this summary. Under 1mg of Xanax is when it got hard.

I tapered from Feb 2019 to Nov 2019 using a dry taper of .003g per day. The taper was hell, but I did a few things that made it easier.

1. I took Lexapro (10mg) to help with the anxiety and panic attacks. It worked well. ZERO panic attacks after day 10 on Lexapro. Important point: give Lexapro 8 FULL weeks before judging its effectiveness. Week 8 was way better than week 5 on Lexapro.

2. I TOOK Ambien during my WHOLE taper off Xanax. The Ambien helped me sleep AND covered the intense withdrawal of the Xanax from about 8pm to 1pm (the next day). So my Xanax withdrawal symptoms were the worst from 1pm to 8pm each day. The Ambien covered the intensity of the Xanax withdrawal.

3. I NEVER held a dose due to symptoms because the ONLY dose of Xanax that the body gets used to is ZERO. It’s a myth that “holding a dose” helps make withdrawal easier. 

Feb - June I cut .25mg of Xanax

Jun - Nov I cut .75mg of Xanax

Ambien - guess what? For most people Ambien has no major withdrawal symptoms. I got off Ambien in late Nov after my Xanax taper was done. My Ambien taper took about 15 days. No withdrawal from Ambien at all. Others have said this as well and they were right! The Ashton manual is not correct regarding Ambien IMO.

Note: Ambien did have interdose withdrawal after I was off the Xanax, but it didn’t last more than a few days.

Lexapro - I took Lexapro during my whole taper and I came off Lexapro easily with no withdrawal. It took 1 month to taper off Lexapro.

My withdrawal from Xanax was hell! Ambien saved me each day by reducing the severity of the Xanax withdrawal each day.

I’m now off everything and I’m doing fine. YOU will succeed and you can do this! Your life WILL return to normal!

This is interesting how the other meds helped! It may open a new path getting out of the benzo hell.

I know another member got off Valium smoothly using Zoloft, much like you did.

Please keep us updated further along, hope the hell is all over forever!

Thanks for sharing your success story with us Justjoe, it's amazing how we all have the same goal, but no two paths for getting there are the same.  I'm happy for your success and agree with you about the Ambien, I think the sooner off of that stuff the better. 

Pamster

Ambien WD was pure hell for me.

I am happy you had a successful recovery in such a short amount of time.