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Unsure if severe withdrawals from clonazepam or something else


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Hello everyone, I'll try to be as brief and straight to the point as possible. I'm very nervous and scared right now so excuse any spelling/grammar errors.

 

I'm a 23 year old male who just last Monday got off Clonopin. I have been on it for about 7-10 years. I. No idea the exact time I started it.  I was prescribed the medication for anxiety and severe panic attacks. . Clonopin is the only Benzo I take.

 

I also have stopped taking Luvox as of last monday. I was on a dose of 300mg at one point about 1.5-2 years or so ago and over the past 6 months have gone down by 100-50mgs per phase.

 

I don't recall how many mg's of clonopin I was on back when I was younger but I believe it was 1 or 2mg. For the past year I have been at about .5mg.

 

The past couple of months I have been taking half of a .5mg pill daily. along with 50mg of luvox. (I was diagnosed with OCD at a young age)

 

Last Monday I stopped taking both medications, I had breifly spoke to my doc about doing so and they didn't seem to worried. I went about 3-4 days without any meds until my symptoms became insanely severe. I was worried I was having a stroke, seizure, heart attack, all the above. I ended up taking one of my clonopins on friday (.5) and since then have started taking a quarter of a .5 pill to keep these withdrawals at bay.

 

I see a lot of my own withdrawal symptoms being talking about but I do have one that is really frightening for me. Whenever I lay down to go to bed or rest, my heart begins racing and pounding, I believe they are palpitations. I'll suddenly get a feeling of severe vertigo and then it goes away and then repeats off and on until i fall asleep. I have not blacked out from this or fainted. On occasion (has not happened a lot) it feels like a drowning sensation and I have to get up from laying down. I've had these kinds of things happen in the past on occasion when having panic attacks.

 

I have a ton of symptoms that I won't waste your guys time with since I've been reading everything about it all (Great info on here). I feel like complete death.

 

What I'm freaking out about right now is this heart pounding whenever I lay down and try to sleep along with not feeling like I can breathe at all. I get sudden dizzy spells, almost a vertigo feeling and sometimes even a drowning feeling that makes me have to sit up and gasp for breathe. Can this be a symptom of Benzo withdrawals? I'm afraid to even sleep now.

 

 

 

I also might mention, my heart races throughout the whole day but if I play xbox or something I sometimes feel a little better and then right when I lay down BOOM it comes on.

 

I suffer from many other symptoms that are listed on Benzo withdrawls.

 

I'm going to be refilling my clonopin tomorrow and start taking a quarter of a .5mg a day for a couple weeks to try and taper it off more instead of trying to quit cold turkey.

 

I'm so scared I'm going to die. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

One last thing, I have suffered from shortness of breathe for years along with other anxiety/panic disorder symptoms. I do tend to always think I have the worst wrong with me.

 

So sorry for the brick wall of rambling. I'm a nervous wreck.

Let me know if you need any more info.

 

Cheers.

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Also, I did have an EKG,brain scan and chest xray back when I was 17 and everything was normal. I even wore something to monitor my heart (of course nothing weird happened during this time)

I got this done because I had severe anxiety and panic attacks.

 

I don't know if this is worth mentioning but I find myself so short of breathe when I lay down to sleep that I have to take deep breathes or yawn alot to actually feel like I can geta  satisfying breathe. This happens throughout the day but even more so when I'm trying to sleep.

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I don't know if this is worth mentioning but I find myself so short of breathe when I lay down to sleep that I have to take deep breathes or yawn alot to actually feel like I can geta  satisfying breathe. This happens throughout the day but even more so when I'm trying to sleep.

 

This is a classic symptom experienced by people with anxiety and does not necessarily have anything to do with withdrawal. It is not a lack of oxygen, but a lack of carbon dioxide caused by taking breaths that are too rapid and too shallow. The cure is to learn abdominal breathing instead of chest breathing.

 

I bought a cheap pulse-oximeter at the pharmacy. It is a small cheap device that clips on the end of your finger over the fingernail. When I felt the need to take a deep breath or to yawn I would check my oxygen saturation. It was always 97% or 98% which is fine. Knowing I was not really starving for air helped me a lot.

 

Someone will jump in and brutalize me for saying so, but not every symptom reported by every benzo buddy is withdrawal. Stay open minded folks. Benzo withdrawal does not cause hypoxia.

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    If I understand right your taking .5 mg 1 time a day?  You may be having interdose withdrawal and I would never recommend going off 2 meds c/t, I believe these meds need to be tapered one at a time.

I had the heart palps and breathing issues for years while on Xanax and Clonazepam and they are gone now Ive been off everything for awhile.

    There's always a possibility it could be a underlying condition but there's also the possibility it's the drugs that are causing the problem.  For me it was the drugs.

 

Molly :smitten:

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I don't know if what you're having is withdrawal or not, but I can tell you that I've experienced increased heart rate/sweating when I lie down, that it started in benzo withdrawal, that I've never experienced it before, that I have no history of panic attacks, and that I'm certain it will stop when I'm through withdrawal.

 

If I didn't know this was caused by benzo withdrawal, it would be a scary symptom, for sure. Deep breathing helps me to keep this physiological problem from becoming mired in emotions about it.

 

I think Molly's advice is spot on and reassuring, given that she's been through the process. And have you read the Ashton manual? If not, you can find it here: http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/

 

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  Yeah, my insurance company paid for thousands of dollars in heart tests to a wide variety of specialist trying to figure out was wrong with me (which they never did).  It was finally a metabolism specialist that determined it was the drugs.

 

 

Molly :smitten:

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Thanks for the responses guys. I'm hoping this is all just wiithdrawal symptoms.

@Molly - Yes, I've been on .5 a day for the past 2-3 months and and actually I've been cutting a .5 in half and taking that for the last month. So a mild decrease.

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Hey Goku,  if your cutting your .5 pill in half that's a 50% decrease.  That's pretty big and could be the cause of your symptoms.  Have your read the Ashton Manuel yet?

 

Here is the link to the Klonopin Club they can answer tapering questions for you.  I would recommend stabilizing on one dose (.5 if that's the dose you felt stable on) for a week or two then doing a slow taper.

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=57791.0

 

Molly :smitten:

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