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I was taking prescribed Klonapin for 15 years, never told about the dangers of it.  For 11 of those years, I was upped to 4mg/Klonapin per day.  I unfortunately moved to this very scary town that I thought was "country," but ends up it was a prison town, drug-infested people and in a highly uncaring county in California.  Such a small and creepy town that there were no doctors, just a Physician's Assistant (that I thought was a doctor).  He chose to cut me off of Klonapin cold turkey even though I begged him to taper me off safely unknowning what a withdrawal would be like.  He smirked at me and said "No."  I had 1 day  and 1/2 left of Klonapin.  Had to look up on the internet what was going to happen.  It was worse than what the internet said would happen.  I can't go into detail because, even 6 years later now I can't go there to think too deeply about it and all that happened (that I remembered that happened).  I think I may have had a seizure or even died because I "woke up" to my beloved cat screaming and scratching me.  Other than whatever that was, I did not get one minute of sleep the entire two weeks.  I should have died several times, but I had special needs cats that I love so much I couldn't bear to see them left in this creepy town where there were a lot of abandoned animals already.  I was completely alone except one friend from high school that called at least once a day which helped a lot from what I can remember.  I remember frantically writing my Will to make sure my cats would be taken care of because I knew I was going to die.  The day the chemical part left my body, my jaw shifted very hard, I suddenly had very loud Tinnitus (still have), my vision changed and never went back to normal, I lost my taste and smell completely (way before COVID, btw), I had burning mouth syndrome for about a year, and my most precious cat that I've had since she was a baby and was 12 at this time, she sniffed me and ran away from me and hid for a few days.  I was absolutely heartbroken and angry at the Physician's Assistant at  the same time.

I was graced with a regular credit card turning into a  Mastercard so I could use that to move back to my safe county and town, but it wasn't easy and took some time.  I am so, so nauseous just writing this. I knew I was moving back to my home town to die because I didn't want to die there and I wanted to be sure my cats would go to a certain rescue That I knew would make sure they were taken care of and would provide their medicines and find them great homes.  Detail for my withdrawal from this horrifying medicine literally takes me back there so I don't talk about it much. 

While on it I became a recluse; lost all motivation to do anything fun or creative (I had a really good job as a Legal Secretary/Paralegal downtown L.A., also danced professional foclorico, also played percussion in quite a few bands.  That was, and still is all gone.  Six years later, I stay in the house although did some hiking for awhile, but too many triggers came so I'm back in the house.

The only, and I mean ONLY meaning in my life and love I have is for my beloved cats.  They are the only-only reason I am still alive.

Hello MultiCatJu, welcome to BenzoBuddies,

Your experience was horrific and I'm so sorry to hear you're still suffering so much, but happy to hear you still have your beloved cats, you'll find we have many cat lovers on the forum.

We have a section of the forum for protracted members to discuss their challenges if you're interested, its a subscription board so you'll need to change your settings to see it, I'll give you the link to the instructions just in case. http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=189058.0

Please reach out to our members, they understand what you're going through, our recovery takes too long and some more than others but hopefully, we all heal in time.  Please make yourself at home.

Pamster

Post-withdrawal Recovery Support

Thank you!  Happy to hear of all the cat people here!

I had forgotten to add that I was recently diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia.  I had the pain from it this past 6 years and was just diagnosed a few weeks ago.