Is It Bedtime for Benzodiazepines?
vanwinkles.com
vanwinkles.com
Let me tell you something. I've come off a lot of things. I've been addicted to a lot of things. Nothing, and I mean nothing compares to coming cold turkey off a benzo addiction. You truly have no idea how awful it is. It was at least several times worse than anything else I'd ever experienced coming cold turkey off of. And I'm including opiates, cocaine, tobacco, and alcohol in my list of things. All of those things were a hayride compared to benzo withdrawals. I was sobbing and laughing hysterically at the same time that I had diarrhea and vomiting, it was sweaty and awful and my joints hurt beyond belief, and I couldn't sleep while this lasted for two days. It scared the shit out of my wife. It scared the shit out of me. Later on, another doctor told me that going cold turkey off the dose I was on is deadly, and kills people. If you are taking them recreationally, please please be careful to avoid cold turkey withdrawals.
I think some people will doubt me, but if you have never come off of benzos abruptly, even if you're taking them now, you really have no idea what it's like. It is worse than any negative physiological experience I've ever had. Benzos are poison.
Medically I think they have a place for very short term acute emergency treatment and long-term palliative care, but otherwise healthy people really need to stay away from them.
And they're nothing like Alcohol, even though they both act on GABA, from experience I can tell you that its a huge mistake to put them in the same class and think that you can treat them the same way.
There are two things that doctors have prescribed me that I regret taking. Ambien and Chantix. Ambien for the withdrawal symptoms, and Chantix for the side effects...
I carefully review and research information about anything a doctor prescribe now other than an antibiotic.
Benzos have their place, but they need to be handled responsibly.
I was given Klonopin (clonazepam) for anxiety/panic attacks. I was definitely in the ‘feel anxious, take a pill, feel better,’ mindset, and it made life feel terrifying and out of my control. Not only was I randomly fearful of my life (the anxiety---worrying my heart would stop beating, etc.) but I felt completely dependent on the pills to stave off crippling panic. This resulted in meta-anxieties: what if I forget/lose my medicine? What if it stops working for me? Those were in many ways worse than the root anxiety.
Getting of Klonopin was one of the best decisions I ever made. It was as if a fog had been in my brain but suddenly lifted. I could focus again, do well in school, etc. I hadn't realized how fuzzy it made made my thinking while I took it---only when I got off could I realize what Klonopin had been doing to me.
My anxiety did increase a little bit. But surviving without Klonopin proved to me that I could handle life! I dealt with the anxiety on my own power.
Maybe there are still legitimate uses for these drugs, but my feeling is that is rare. They're a shortcut with high costs in the long term, and as such seem imprudent for general use.
Responsible doctors will strongly warn about the addictive nature. Irresponsible doctors will simply write a prescription, knowing that either their patient is an addict or they're creating an addict.
Ambien is the latest version of this. Ambien is "perfectly safe", even if they warn about Xanax. Xanax used to be "perfectly safe" as an alternative to the obviously addictive Valium. Sigh.
Benzos probably shouldn't be used for sleep, and certainly shouldn't be the first thing that's tried.
This article doesn't seem to be saying "stop prescribing benzos", but just "stop being so careless when prescribing benzos".
This article mentions the Z drugs and suggests that they're less addictive, but it doesn't mention the rise in referals to Dublin drug and alcohol services for people struggling with zopiclone; or the fact that zopiclone is one of the meds most frequently obtained using stolen prescription pads in Paris. The z drugs probably have similar addiction potential as diazepam.
It wasn't just people in long term pain, though. It was people who'd just had operations. It was people in hospice, for Pete's sake. What's the point of worrying about addiction in someone who's gonna be dead in a month?
The patient will develop a tolerance to the meds; requiring higher and higher doses; and eventually they'll be taking dangerously high levels of those meds and their pain will not be controlled, and so now they have an opiate addiction and they still have the pain.
We know that opiates are widely misused by clinicians and we know that this misuse does not help treat the pain and causes considerable other problems.
A few years ago when things got bad for me, my practical options were heroin, trust a doctor, or suicide. I might add buprenorphine/suboxone to the list now, but we'll see.
I chose heroin initially as a guaranteed short term solution, it did literally save my life at the time.
I was lucky to have the skills and resources to carefully purify and prepare it in isotonic sterile injection vials, ready for quick use. Moderate dosages worked perfectly, it instantly ended 4AM "episodes", I could function and think clearly again, and avoid missing work while I figured out what to do long term.
More importantly, I'm lucky to either have massive self control or lack the propensity for addiction. I tapered off on my own and saw a doctor, worked with them trying a variety of medications until finally given a choice of several benzos, which worked reasonably well overall.
I do recognize side effects with them, but without them I know I would be doing much much worse right now, at least I have a chance to keep going.
Maybe I'm overreacting but with all our technological advancement, it almost seems like people's lives are getting worse. Maybe we make more money than before (I'm not even sure about that!) but it seems we've traded our time and even health for wealth.
Are people less happy today than they were before? I don't think I'm in a position to say since I've been working for such a short period of time but it feels that way. But perhaps I'm just glorifying the past.
I've been taking tamazepam for insomnia, off and on, for months now, and experienced no side effects or addiction (when I don't need it, I can stop taking it for a week plus without any adverse effects). I tried multiple alternatives, but none were suitable (diphenhyramine/Nytol - no effect, currently using it as a anti-histamine; zopiclone - severe side effects, including memory loss and visual changes; amitriptyline - effective, but left me extremely tired for ~24hrs after each dose).
It's worth pointing out my experience and the lack of addictive effects may not be typical - I was prescribed tramadol (an opiate) for about six months at the maximum dose, and was told by my neurologist to taper slowly and stopping them will be worse than stopping heroin. I stopped cold turkey and had no problems or side effects (other than the original symptoms coming back of cause).
One time I left my pills on a work trip. That consecutive weekend of inadvertently quitting cold turkey was a living hell. Suicidal thoughts, insomnia, and the most intense panic attacks I can imagine terrorized me.
I remember calling the suicide hotline multiple times and was one 911 phone call away from checking myself into the hospital. The only thing that kept me from losing my mind was going on intense, long distance runs where I tired myself to the point of exhaustion.
It wasn't until the following Monday when I could get a new prescription that I realized I was deep in addiction. I spent the next couple years weaning myself off the drugs with the help of the Ashton Manual and full denial of my psychiatrist that these pills had any addiction potential.
In short, they are a tool that needs to be used responsibly. Prescribing them to people who don't need obviously isn't. Quitting them cold turkey is also a terrible idea.
I recently had to take two Valium in preparation for a nerve-wracking medical procedure (an injection into my eyeball). I was a senseless zombie the rest of the day, my sleep got all messed up, and I was hung over the next day. Next injection, I'm weaning myself to one, and hopefully zero for the injection after that.
When I was a kid back in the 1970s, I had migraines - had 'em as long as I can remember. Back then, there weren't migraine-specific meds, just painkillers. They didn't want to give me Demerol or other opiates, because those were dangerous and addictive! Instead, they gave me nice, safe phenobarbitol. I'd take one, stumble to the couch, pass out, and wake up 14 hours later uncertain what had happened. I hated it, hated my mind being so lost, but the migraines were worse sometimes.
But ultimately, the problem is that people like to get high on downers, and like to be addicted to them, and the industry will be happy to help.
Why is this a problem?
If you don't think it's a problem, you've never really spent time with someone who has a serious drug addiction. Someone who wants to quit, but can't.
Addiction effects many, many, many more people than the addict themselves.
Luckily, she has decided it's a real problem and is sobering up a lot - not completely, but better and more conscious. I've seen others who weren't so lucky.. failed marriages and parenting, car crashes, even worse things.
That's not an actual problem, there's nothing wrong with enjoying getting high.
> and like to be addicted to them
I highly doubt anyone enjoys being addicted to anything
Heck, look around the healthiest parts of Silicon Valley, and you'll find people addicted to jogging.
And saying that they're safer than that other thing, while important, isn't good enough. Sleep hygiene or sleep studies are even safer than benzos.
The article is very biased. Doctors don't tell patients that these drugs don't have much downside! Most of them know that benzos are not a long term solution due to tolerance.
I could probably pick up my phone, scroll through my contacts and blindly pick a name, and that person is quite likely to know what the phrase "brain zaps" means, and have a horror story about being prescribed SSRIs, or especially SNRIs, without being warned about the potential downsides and indeed the withdrawal symptoms.
You might look at magnesium/calcium/D3 in combination, specifically one of the chelated forms of magnesium.
Big Pharma companies drive drug development in the first place, so obstructing the benzo revenue without a suitable alternative may lead to better drugs taking longer to develop. I'm assuming the non-benzos (SSRIs like Lexapro) aren't functionally equivalent to the benzos in how they "help" patients, by some measure that is unknown to me.
They are also highly addictive and almost killed me when I combined one with codeine. Approach with caution. Not just because they'll trap you easily but also because withdrawal can cause seizures and death.
OTOH I know of no better (weekly or less) sleep aid. If anyone else has a better alternative I'm all ears.
Trazodone works very well for me but I haven't taken it in years because my anxiety no longer keeps me up at night.
Curious what dosages of these caused you to "almost die". There should be minimal interaction between a single therapeutic dose of both at once (its not uncommon to be prescribed both at once), but if you were taking very high "recreational" doses, that is something else.
I realise now that this combination of three CNS depressants is not good.
I went to bed, and woke up gasping for breath several times, eventually having to prop myself up on some pillows and try to stay awake so I could keep breathing. It was pretty hellish.
Ladies and gentlemen: I present to you the U.S. national drug policy.
Drugs which are as addictive and dangerous as prohibited drugs but which have therapeutic uses for which there is not a superior substitute are supposed, by the logic of the system, to be legal. This "Fun fact!" neither points to any problem in the overt logic in the system, nor a way in which the effect of the system conflicts with the overt logic (there's plenty of both to be found, just not here.)
General practitioners or even psychiatrists have no business prescribing this for longer than a week without fully discussing the inevitable dependence and taper plans. Any doctor who does not do that is akin to a murder on my mind and should be treated as such. This has been my experience with over a dozen doctors in two different states in both coasts.
It's a horrible situation this, but it is possible to escape. Best of luck to everyone who is struggling with this. I was able to taper off in a few months with few side effects. That was incredibly rapid for benzo withdrawal. I'd definitely budget at least three to six months at a minimum with the idea that it could be a lot longer. There are some scary stories out there but it's possible, given time, to do it gradually enough that it's not horrible. It's now been almost a year and a half and I haven't looked back since. The one blessing is that after the taper I've had no cravings. I had to give up a life I had spent seven years building and return home with no money and no savings and no job to taper, but it was worth it to get my life back.
The "doctors" who prescribed that shit, I will forever wish they lose their job. In my opinion, jail would be the only proper place for them. But it's big pharma. Never going to happen while the profits roll on. After all, they are indeed the most ruthless drug kingpins out there.
Source: seven years of hell on benzos under a dozen so called "doctors."