I bet the majority of people don't make it

I was sitting here brainstorming how many different possibilities of things can go wrong when coming off of benzos. There's people that died as a result of withdrawal, there's people who committed suicide during it, there's people that got locked up in prison, and there's people that have accidents during withdrawal.

 

So considering how bad this last cold turkey was, I'm pretty sure that it would kill about half of the people that go through it. They wouldn't even have time to get on a site like this and type. We would never know about them. Doctors probably just call it natural causes.

 

And then there's the people that killed themselves, we might hear about it but most likely we won't. It's one of those subjects that are taboo in society, other than people that were on CNN and stuff like that. Or maybe if we know their family. Aside from that, we wouldn't know.

 

I'm sure there's lots of people that have car accidents or fall or whatever else, while going through benzo withdrawal. Who knows, maybe some people get shot out of anger or go to fast and run into something.

 

And now I'm thinking there's a lot of people in prison because of them, from committing crimes while on them or even coming off of them. Just like alcohol, I'm sure it's the same with benzos. I almost ended up in prison multiple times but luckily I wasn't a violent person and didn't do too many really over-the-top things, mostly just dumb small things. And I had a lot of control.

 

And then there's probably tons of people that overdose which we don't know about and just assume it's almost impossible but we don't know that. And then there's also the people that mix benzos with other CNS depressants and die.

 

Anyways, not trying to be all negative, it's just that I'm guessing we lose a good half of the people that took benzos, basically directly related to them. I'm sure there's probably tens of thousands of people that have died because of benzos. They just were not as lucky as us to be able to tell our stories and type on the internet.

For sure man, it takes one strong person to get off this shit.

That is a good observation.  Before I took the benzo's, I had good coordination, judgment, etc.  Now that I'm off, I'm at a real risk of dying from so many things.  I almost fell getting into the shower today and I can barely walk now.  Stuff like that. 

For sure man, it takes one strong person to get off this shit.

 

Amen.

I agree. I don't think I had enough GABA to spare when I took the Klonopin. I think it permanently down regulated. That and the generic I took from India was probably full of toxic fillers that passed into my blood brain barrier. I am barely hanging on. I wish I had known better. I wish I had tried anything else.

Yes, the Falls. That almost happened to me a few months back. And then there's the severe depression, that almost made things really bad for me. While we are able to get on benzo buddies website and type away, something tells me there's people not so fortunate. We have strong Minds.

These drugs are terrible and going CT and then recovering/healing was the worst experience of my life.  But I made it through. 

 

I concur that lots of things can happen to people trying to get off that will never get pinned on Benzos as the cause. 

 

Why?  Because the medical community as a whole does not recognize Benzo WD.

 

It would be pretty hard to contribute a car accident, fall, crime, etc to Benzo WD even if Benzo WD was recognized by the medical community.

 

These drugs should be banned unless they could somehow save a life?

After going through this, I do kind of think that they should be banned. It's no better than alcohol really, it's actually worse. That's just my opinion at least, it's like getting drunk for weeks. Or years. But it's worse than a hangover, because withdrawal lasts for years. But there's always going to be medical people and people that do well on them claiming that they're great drugs. But once they get off of them, they will see that they weren't. Who knows, I try to keep opinions to myself on benzo buddies otherwise somebody might say something. I just don't agree with them anymore.

True. This is why the “everybody heals” tag line is simply not true

I was sitting here brainstorming how many different possibilities of things can go wrong when coming off of benzos. There's people that died as a result of withdrawal, there's people who committed suicide during it, there's people that got locked up in prison, and there's people that have accidents during withdrawal.

 

So considering how bad this last cold turkey was, I'm pretty sure that it would kill about half of the people that go through it. They wouldn't even have time to get on a site like this and type. We would never know about them. Doctors probably just call it natural causes.

 

And then there's the people that killed themselves, we might hear about it but most likely we won't. It's one of those subjects that are taboo in society, other than people that were on CNN and stuff like that. Or maybe if we know their family. Aside from that, we wouldn't know.

 

I'm sure there's lots of people that have car accidents or fall or whatever else, while going through benzo withdrawal. Who knows, maybe some people get shot out of anger or go to fast and run into something.

 

And now I'm thinking there's a lot of people in prison because of them, from committing crimes while on them or even coming off of them. Just like alcohol, I'm sure it's the same with benzos. I almost ended up in prison multiple times but luckily I wasn't a violent person and didn't do too many really over-the-top things, mostly just dumb small things. And I had a lot of control.

 

And then there's probably tons of people that overdose which we don't know about and just assume it's almost impossible but we don't know that. And then there's also the people that mix benzos with other CNS depressants and die.

 

Anyways, not trying to be all negative, it's just that I'm guessing we lose a good half of the people that took benzos, basically directly related to them. I'm sure there's probably tens of thousands of people that have died because of benzos. They just were not as lucky as us to be able to tell our stories and type on the internet.

 

What I would really appreciate seeing from you JustInTime are citations for your musings, I'm sure they're readily available if you dig deep enough.  I know our members would appreciate seeing these as well since the description for the content of the Chewing the Fat board is:

 

General discussion space for non-support orientated benzodiazepine topics: science, studies, research, theory, issues, or even pet theories. The use of supporting evidence and citations are greatly appreciated!

Buddy, I saw the topic and I knew it was written by you.

My only comment is: You know what you have to do to feel better, you have written it down in a different thread in a conversation with me. Better stop posting this provoking bet-brainstorming-stuff and work on what will help you "to make it".

 

 

 

Comment from a person, who made it.

Marigold

I would like to see evidence behind it as well. I kind of just guessed and that's just my opinion. But it makes sense right? I mean if one in eight people are prescribed benzos, which it will say if you Google it, that means one out of every eight people would be going through withdrawal eventually unless they took them until death. And I really doubt each person makes it through withdrawal, as we know from watching things like benzos the other epidemic on CNN or the person on medicating normal that threw themselves in front of a train.

 

So if you take that into account, there's a lot of people going through withdrawal in this country and obviously there's some in prison and there's got to be some wrecking cars or hitting their heads falling over in the shower with jelly legs or whatever else. I mean I don't have facts to back that up, I'm just assuming.

 

There's people like myself that almost died from depression, severe depression that I can't talk about on here. But there's no statistics for that kind of stuff out there.

 

But the one thing that you can look at statistics for is just as many people take benzos as drink alcohol just about because it's one in eight. So if you take that into account, lots of people that drink alcohol die and commit suicide. so if more people take benzos, same thing probably happens with the benzo people. It's just science. They do the same thing to your brain. So the chances are equal.

 

So think about it this way, if one in eight people take benzos, there's a possibility that one in eight people died because of something benzo related. But that's just a possibility not guaranteed. Besides, any kind of study is going to be off a little bit because of external factors that can't be controlled.

A friend told me one time that he knew a lady who drove her car after taking Ambien and didn't even remember.  I guess she drove it in her sleep.  Now that could be very dangerous.  Ambien is alot like benzo's.  What about people who take a benzo and then operate machinery like driving a car. 

A friend told me one time that he knew a lady who drove her car after taking Ambien and didn't even remember.  I guess she drove it in her sleep.  Now that could be very dangerous.  Ambien is alot like benzo's.  What about people who take a benzo and then operate machinery like driving a car.

I’ve alweays heard similar stories with ambien, but never abiut benzos

Exactly, things like that. If you search on YouTube, there's a video called drugged driving. I think it's in Wisconsin or something, and it's all the people that get arrested for taking Xanax and driving or opiates or whatever else, not alcohol but drugged driving.

 

I have never wrecked a car while taking benzos and operating Machinery at the same time, but I have gotten lots of speeding tickets and are used to go 170 miles an hour on my crotch rocket all the time. All it would have taken is a pebble in the road to throw me off and kill me. I didn't really care or think about it when I was on pills, but looking back it was pretty stupid. It was fun, but deadly.

 

And as far as the people that don't need benzos and take them anyways, I've heard tons of stories about them totaling cars. In fact, I had a friend that totaled a car on Klonopin once. So I'm sure there's plenty of deaths.

Lol Just... -Your as bad as me..!! -Nothing is built fast enough...

Though Kawasaki came close with the ZX10 and KX500...

-Some of us DO need the full 9 lives... 

 

Speaking of the ZX10, I had a 2008 Monster Energy black one, with a full exhaust. That was my last really cool purchase and I had to give it up because of benzos. I mean I've bought cars since then and lots of cool furniture and moved different places and done lots of fun things, but I do miss my fast 2008 ZX10 Kawasaki. Although I would probably be dead by now if I still had it.

 

And Marigold, I just saw your comment sorry. Yes I'm trying but I'm also having fun and talking about all kinds of shenanigans. I guess it's part of the healing process.

I've got my Yamaha cruiser in the shed.  I used to own alot of motorcycles and used to love to ride before I got on the benzo's.  My MC license plate frame says, "Live to Ride."  I used to love riding and racing Harley's since my bike looked like a Harley V-twin.  They'd always beat me racing from a dead stop at the redlights since they had bigger engines.  Well, I had to give up riding because, first of all, I wasn't getting the thrill of the ride anymore, and I know you MC riders know what I'm talking about.  Then I was making small but serious riding mistakes.  Taking turns too sharply, etc.  That was because my judgment was off from being on the benzo's so long.  Turning wrong can put a bike down in a second.  You need all your senses and judgment in top condition to ride a MC.  You all know how alert and with it you need to be to ride a bike.  It's so depressing now that I can't ride my MC anymore.  It's because my CNS is so damaged now.  I used to be a delivery driver too for many years and now I can barely drive my car from my brain damage.  I've had minor tire scrapes driving and I used to be an excellent car driver too especially in the snow and on ice too.  I'll bet alot of people have accidents and get injured or die from being on head meds. 

That's a great Point, looking back I should not have been riding my motorcycle while taking benzos. I got into several high speed chases and also I would always be doing a hundred seventy miles an hour on straightaways and hitting Bridges and getting air like I was racing alongside Michael Dunlop on Isle of Man TT. And I would always cut in between cars and passed trucks on the road and all kinds of stupid things. Popping wheelies while being on benzos. I think you get the idea, needless to say, I was an accident waiting to happen. I did go down one time because I gave my Kawasaki too much gas coming out of a parking lot and low-sided it. I almost broke my leg, and it was in a lot of pain and they did an x-ray and prescribed me Vicodin for a few weeks down in Florida. Of course, benzos and opiates mixed. Anyways, I used to do a lot of driving because I like to race cars. I also drove lots of work vehicles. And looking back, I would always Park kind of crooked even though I was a great driver. Like I was great at driving, I just wouldn't pay attention sometimes. Or I would pull in too far at my own house. Now looking back, it's because of the benzos. It dulls your senses. I'm surprised I didn't get into car wrecks all the time. But I'm most lucky that I didn't die on my motorcycle or go to prison from the high-speed chases. I actually had several court cases because of it. Anyways, things are much better now and I'm 10 months off. Can't go back, can only look forward and do better in the future.

It's absolutely past time that we need honest research about benzos. But who will do it??? Let sleeping dogs lie...heads in the sand...don't muddy the waters...Meanwhile people continue to die or have months or years of difficult withdrawal, many ending up being poly-drugged.

It's absolutely past time that we need honest research about benzos. But who will do it??? Let sleeping dogs lie...heads in the sand...don't muddy the waters...Meanwhile people continue to die or have months or years of difficult withdrawal, many ending up being poly-drugged.

Amen to that..!!

-The deeper one thinks on it, the worse it gets...

 

I miss riding my MC, but those days are over.  I'm a wreck now from all the nerve damage I've got now.

After going through this, I do kind of think that they should be banned. It's no better than alcohol really, it's actually worse. That's just my opinion at least, it's like getting drunk for weeks. Or years. But it's worse than a hangover, because withdrawal lasts for years. But there's always going to be medical people and people that do well on them claiming that they're great drugs. But once they get off of them, they will see that they weren't. Who knows, I try to keep opinions to myself on benzo buddies otherwise somebody might say something. I just don't agree with them anymore.

 

I think we need to all get away from the victim mindset that drugs are bad and wonder which ones should be banned or not. Prohibition of dangerous drugs causes more harm than keeping them legal or heavily regulated. Prohibition created the research chemical drug market and the fentanyl crisis. Prohibiting cannabis created the synthetic cannabinoid market which has destroyed so many lives for no reason. Benzos are not evil or inherently bad, and they should not be done away with completely. It is the prescribing guidelines that need to be changed.

 

At the same time, benzo dependency needs to be recognized as a real medical disorder on the same level as opioid addiction. There should be benzo clinics that specialize in dispensing these drugs to people who need them for long-term use, so they can safely taper off. Other than that, nobody should be prescribed large scripts anymore. There should be extremely strict guidelines for new users. For instance, scripts that include a few day supply, similar to how they dispense opioids now. They really should just prescribe them the same way they prescribe opioids and things will be better overall. I don't want to live in a society that tells me what I can and can't put in my body though. Prohibition is the dumbest thing ever and drugs are just inanimate objects at the end of the day. It is the doctors who are responsible for getting us addicted to benzos.

 

My original prescriber of clonazepam would have changed the course of my life if he wrote a one week script instead of an indefinite one and explained to me the real dangers of this class of drugs. But I have to be honest, at the time, I had a severe injury and was dealing with some debilitating pain and I wanted to take benzos because I couldn't cope. Sure I knew they were addicting and hard to taper but you miss some things, and you never think it can happen to you. Without actually going through it or knowing someone close to you who has gone through benzo wd, you will miss things and details as to why they are so dangerous, even with a benzobuddies account. The truth is nobody gives a shit about this crisis and it will probably stay that way unless we really do something about it. When I first went on benzos I thought most of these members were crazy with preexisting conditions. Now I realize that they were all telling the truth. It's really mind blowing once you realize how much damage theses substances can cause.

Mamoot, believe it or not we have the similar mindset from the way you're talking. But I think I'm a little bit ahead of you. I used to think the same way, that nothing should be banned because it would create more problems. And then you look at places like Portugal and they have legalized everything and have less problems.

 

Or if you look at marijuana being legalized, there's less arrest of course. Or less synthetic marijuana or less cartels. And you can do all kinds of comparisons and make all kinds of charts or whatever you want to do to make things persuade your way.

 

But then I got a little bit more knowledge in me and started to realize, people are going to be people no matter what. So take your example of marijuana created synthetic marijuana. That's incorrect. People created synthetic marijuana. They could have just grown weed illegally or smoked it illegally like everybody else back in the day including myself, but instead they chose to smoke synthetic marijuana. I don't know who would choose to smoke K2 or spice instead of just buying a bag of weed off the local dealer. But people do it all the time. And then blame it on weed being illegal. But that's incorrect thinking and logic.

 

That would be like me saying alcohol has been banned so let's take benzos instead. It works the same just about, and if you can't have alcohol, benzos are the closest thing to it. So we are going to blame benzos on alcohol. You can't do that, that doesn't make any sense. That would just be because of the person stupid enough to take benzos instead of alcohol.

 

Or think about your example with controlling the amount of benzos you can take, that would cause more problems then Banning the actual drug. There's people like me that had to take really high amount in order to avoid interdose withdrawal and be able to take them long-term for 20 years. If I had not been able to take the high-dose, I would not have been able to take them in the first place. There's lots of technicalities involved.

 

Now as far as all substances in general, I don't think anything's should be illegal when it comes to cocaine or heroin or anything else. I think it should all be legal actually. But the problem is, there's lots of people that can't control themselves and kill themselves or cause problems for others. That's why they have banned drugs before we were even born. It's been going on for Generations. So because of that, I agree with them. Meaning whether I like it or not or agree with it or not, I think they should be banned. Most of them already are. Benzos are on the way. And opiates basically already have been, with the exception of some.

 

That is the reason I decided to get off of benzos, I was tired of hearing doctors complain about prescribing them and hearing the word controlled meds from the pharmacy and dr. So I called my doctor and said I wanted off of them. So then they told me to taper off of them and I decided to go cold turkey.

 

But we should not have any kinds of people dispensing benzos or opiates or methadone or Suboxone even, look at all of these clinics. Look at the problems they cause. What they should do is if they are going to have everything legal like that, and just give them out to whoever like they are doing right now, they might as well just not even control them in the first place and give everybody Free Will of taking as much as they want. That way you don't have so many people that are drug addicts all in one location and panhandling and selling themselves and going home with strangers and getting shot at there. It's always on the news, Google it. People get shot at methadone and Suboxone clinics and there's prostitution and people ask for money and all kinds of stuff. And there's drug dealers out those places also.

 

So what would be great is if everybody was on the same page about everything. Either everything is completely legal or it's not. And the way it's going right now, doctors don't like benzos and opiates so maybe they should just get rid of them all together. That eliminates all the confusion and some doctors willing and some not.

 

And if you have severe pain, you need to get whatever it is taken care of instead of taking dangerous meds your whole life. I get it some people can't, some people need them. That's why they're still legal and not banned yet. They will always have some use in certain areas. Same thing with benzos, they still have use in certain areas like surgery and plane flights or whatever else.

 

But anybody that wants to limit them is just as bad as people that want to ban them. Maybe Banning them is the better idea. You don't want somebody telling you how many you can take per day do you? That would be like if you broke your ankle and somebody said you only get one a day because it is being dispensed. That would defeat the whole purpose of it.

I think we need to all get away from the victim mindset that drugs are bad and wonder which ones should be banned or not. Prohibition of dangerous drugs causes more harm than keeping them legal or heavily regulated. Prohibition created the research chemical drug market and the fentanyl crisis. Prohibiting cannabis created the synthetic cannabinoid market which has destroyed so many lives for no reason. Benzos are not evil or inherently bad, and they should not be done away with completely. It is the prescribing guidelines that need to be changed.

 

At the same time, benzo dependency needs to be recognized as a real medical disorder on the same level as opioid addiction. There should be benzo clinics that specialize in dispensing these drugs to people who need them for long-term use, so they can safely taper off. Other than that, nobody should be prescribed large scripts anymore. There should be extremely strict guidelines for new users. For instance, scripts that include a few day supply, similar to how they dispense opioids now. They really should just prescribe them the same way they prescribe opioids and things will be better overall. I don't want to live in a society that tells me what I can and can't put in my body though. Prohibition is the dumbest thing ever and drugs are just inanimate objects at the end of the day. It is the doctors who are responsible for getting us addicted to benzos.

 

My original prescriber of clonazepam would have changed the course of my life if he wrote a one week script instead of an indefinite one and explained to me the real dangers of this class of drugs. But I have to be honest, at the time, I had a severe injury and was dealing with some debilitating pain and I wanted to take benzos because I couldn't cope. Sure I knew they were addicting and hard to taper but you miss some things, and you never think it can happen to you. Without actually going through it or knowing someone close to you who has gone through benzo wd, you will miss things and details as to why they are so dangerous, even with a benzobuddies account. The truth is nobody gives a shit about this crisis and it will probably stay that way unless we really do something about it. When I first went on benzos I thought most of these members were crazy with preexisting conditions. Now I realize that they were all telling the truth. It's really mind blowing once you realize how much damage theses substances can cause.

 

Mamoot,

 

The growth I see in you blows me away, it's a pleasure to read what you've written.

 

Pamster