Very short term high dose xanax withdrawal

My apologies for double posting this (I had added it to a long xanax thread) but I don't know how to delete my other post.

 

I bought street xanax and took 2mg, had a beer, and blacked out. When I woke up two days later I looked at my pills and realized I had taken 12mg total. I don't think I left my apartment so I don't think I had any more alcohol. A day and half after that I began to have feelings of unusual hotness and tightness in my chest and heightened anxiety. I suspected it might be withdrawal from the xanax but I thought that seemed crazy because I only took it for 2 days. I ended up taking some xanax, I think .5 or .25 mg, and the symptoms went away.

 

I decided to try tapering. I started at .5 and dropped to .125 in a week, went to 0.0625 for a day, then stopped. It's been four or five days and my symptoms are still there. It's making it difficult to work (data analyst) so I am considering taking a xanax crumb (~0.0625) today in hopes that it helps me accomplish my work. My question is, is it likely that taking this dose would make my withdrawal much much longer, or worse? Has anyone else gone through withdrawal from using for only a couple days?

 

Thanks,

 

C

Yes, it's entirely possible to get benzodiazepine discontinuation syndrome even after just a single dose. If you've been a regular alcohol abuser there's a great chance that your nervous system is already kindled/sensitized and that even a single dose of benzodiazepine/Z-drug would give you "withdrawal" symptoms. I wasn't an alcohol user, but have kindled on benzos in past three years, tapered was feeling fine and then a single dose made me feel as if I'm in a cold-turkey. It would be for the best to just stay off benzos and alcohol completely from now on.

 

Thanks for the reply pacenik. I actually hardly touch alcohol, and this is only my second time doing xanax in the last three years (but the other time was only a month or month and a half ago). I talked with my psychiatrist this morning who also suggested not taking any more. I know withdrawal length varies from person to person, but how long do you think I might have these symptoms?

No-one can tell you that. It could be a couple of weeks. It could be a couple of months.

Just to give an update...I didn't take any more xanax. Since then my symptoms have fluctuated in intensity from day to day and even from hour to hour. Finally today I feel like I don't have any, or very minimal symptoms. Based on what I've read from others, my benzo withdrawal symptoms have been very mild. My heart goes out to everyone struggling with their withdrawal.