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  itqwertz
  I’ve seen a few friends and coworkers go down this path, usually as a result of work stress or hustle culture. They start on neutropics and energy drinks, then get scripts for Adderall or Vyvanse to handle the perceived insurmountable workload, stabilize on those after an initial euphoria, then build up a heroic tolerance to (dextro|meth)amphetamines. Withdrawals from that high level of addiction leads to anxiety, insomnia, delusions, mania and all sorts of craziness (I suspect the lack of sleep is the culprit).Eventually this sends the patient to a doctor/dealer to escape their misery of detox/relapse cycles. The gates to hell are finally opened once a benzo is prescribed.One entrepreneur ended punching a bouncer and attempting to flee on a bus to some random city, spending more than a week in jail. Another fled the U.S. after making a lot of crazy purchases and life choices, he is now living in a war zone voluntarily. The amount of DGAF/YOLO these drugs give the user are very understated. The withdrawals were much worse. I’ve never seen someone down almost a whole handle of bourbon just to get “normal“. The brain zaps and the tics/twitches were very noticeable.Stevie Nicks has also spoken publicly about her struggles with Klonopin withdrawal. BEWARE!!!
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  gavinray
  > Having kicked opiates cold turkey in the past, I felt nostalgic for three simple days of traditional nausea, sweatiness, and bone-deep ache. I am one of few people stupid enough to have, at one point, been addicted to and subsequently withdrawn from, almost everything but alcohol.There is no way to explain the hell on earth that is benzo/GABA-ergic drug withdrawal, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. It is an order of magnitude more intense than opiate withdrawals, and the timeline is weeks/months rather than days.Like the author, I managed to quit via a year-long Ashton protocol taper.The irony is that benzos were the one class of drugs I wasn't abusing for recreation. I was using mega-doses of Etizolam to cope with PTSD flashbacks, and only discovered I had become physically addicted after flushing it all and winding up in the ER.
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  howtoquitwell
  Fun story time:Almost a decade ago now, I was a happy, high-functioning alcoholic. Winery tours, Scotch tastings, workplace drinks, etc.It was all "fine" until I started struggling to get to sleep without a little "nudge"; then it was getting back to sleep in the wee hours; then it was every hour or two, 24x7.Then I decided to go cold turkey while on vacation in Hawaii with my family, because who wants to be the drunk asshole in search of a cocktail while everyone else is having a good, sober time at the beach?Boom: detox seizures, ER visit, and the ever-so-helpful prescription of Ativan so I wouldn't seize again. I was discharged with the instructions to "take as needed, up to every four hours." Since I was an addict in pain, I took that to mean, "take them every four hours, or maybe more often."Cut forward 3-4 days, and the scrip ran out. Boom: more DTs, this time from the benzos.It wasn't long after that when I went through my first inpatient psych visit b/c I was in no way equipped to handle withdrawals from two highly-addictive drugs at the same time.Sadly it took another couple of years and another trip through the ER + inpatient care before I realized that doctors would and did prescribe me meds that were actively harmful in the interest of short-term comfort.It's been six years since the last big episode and I'm genuinely grateful I only threatened myself with my shitty brain chemistry (however aggravated by poor medical intervention) rather than putting other people at risk. It could have been much worse if, say, I routinely drove people around or did any kind of safety-critical work.Regardless: benzos are not "lightweight" drugs, and giving them to people with any kind of history of substance abuse disorders is a Bad Idea.
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  yodsanklai
  To give a different point of view: I've been taking Bromazepam for 25 years, but very occasionally when I'm very anxious or can't sleep, a few times a year, never more than 1-2 days in a row. It's been helpful, especially when I was younger as sometimes I was paralyzed by anxiety. I never had the slightest sign of addiction but was also careful not to rely on that too much (and never had any addiction problem).I've also seen friends or family members who used and stop these drugs without much difficulty.This isn't medical advice obviously, but I wouldn't rely on anecdotal experience to form an opinion on this. These drugs can certainly be helpful to some people.
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  soniczentropy
  I helped my mother go through this after her psych decided it was time for her to cold turkey a 4x a day xanax prescription she'd been taking for 20+ years. 5 total ER trips, 3 separate hospitalizations, and a full year of absolute misery before she started getting some relief. A YEAR.I have watched family members die of AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimers. I have myself recovered from alcoholism (5 years next month!). Nothing in all my life has ever held a candle to how hellish Benzo withdrawal is. These drugs need to be banned. Period.
• anon
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  lxe
  I was on low-dose Ativan for a few weeks casually prescribed for anxiety. What followed is an absolute year of hell. The most unimaginably difficult time in my life. Usually they tell you that short-term low dose poses lower risk or protracted withdrawal, but it's not a purely statistical risk. There are potentially pharmacological, physiological, and other factors that govern how these drugs affect each individual and those are largely unknowable.
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  GlenTheMachine
  I've been on fairly low dose Klonopin for about fifteen years due to persistent insomnia (I work in a black room with no windows, and hence no circadian rhythm).The good news is that the Klonopin let me sleep -- the first regular sleep I'd had in three years, when I first started using it.However, I'm on a journey to get completely off of it. I managed to do that for several weeks, but when I then tried to ween myself off the other drug I'm on for insomnia, mirtazipine, it came back. So I started taking Klonopin again, temporarily. I'm now in the process of getting off of it for a second time.Personally, I didn't find this that hard. The key, for me, was just to take it very slowly. Reduce 10%-25% at a time, and stay at that dose for 4-8 weeks. Repeat. Be patient with yourself. It took around six months the first time. I did have one crazy symptom: in the middle of the night, if I woke up, I could close my eyes and watch my visual cortex go haywire. It was like a fireworks show. That eventually went way, but man, it took months.
• fallinditch
  I was prescribed diazepam and it was an important part of my healing when I suffered a back injury. The doctor prescribed the 'holy trinity' for severe back pain: diclofenac for anti inflammatory, cocodamol for pain and diazepam to control muscle spasms and help me sleep. It worked like magic.The doctor gave me the minimum amount of pills to get me through the initial chronic period, 7 days, and I was very grateful to be made comfortable.I was lucky that my back healed quickly, even after a few days on the drugs I detected a feeling of dependency creeping up.
• aliasxneo
  I've been on a very long journey with mental health for many years now. It's astonishing the number of doctors who see any hint of mental health issues and then immediately claim you must be catastrophizing your symptoms. I've had a number of issues related to my ears/nose/throat, the worst being an inability to deal with pressure changes (without excruciating ER-inducing pain). The first ENT I went to walked in, scanned my file, made a small comment about my mental health issues, and then proceeded to explain there was nothing wrong with me and it was all in my head.It's like the jackpot for patient mill doctors. Aha, there we are, we can just blame it on that, collect their insurance, and send them on the way.
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  miladyincontrol
  Yeah, after witnessing a friend's troubles getting off theirs I wouldnt wish it upon anyone. It convinced me to get me off my own Clonazepam PRN prescription, which thankfully was rather infrequent and had minimal issues weaning off of. The psych had told me nothing of the nightmare that dependence on those meds can create, a situation somehow far worse than that which they're often prescribed to resolve.More recently another friend mentioned getting prescribed a rather hefty dose for his anxiety. I convinced him otherwise with science backed evidence and accounts like what OP linked, given his personality type I'm certain it would have ended him.
• dvduval
  I had a strong reaction to Covid and that was the only time in my life I ever took what you might call mine drugs. I took Ativan for a while, but I read up on it and I was very careful not to take larger amounts. I was cutting the pills and halves or quarters and just using them for some mild relief, but I did have severe anxiety for a while. I think there could be a place for them but unfortunately, the way drug companies are they allow people to get too much and they profit from the addiction.And by the way to get off of them, I read that the most successful people statistically with the ones who did a very gradually. So again I took the scissors and I was cutting small amounts off of pills so that I was sometimes taking some multiple of 1/8 of a pill And when I made adjustments I might go down by 1/8 or 1/4 per week.My anxiety problem actually played a role in me being afraid to take too much anxiety medication ha ha and that probably saved me
• lxe
  Site seems down. Here's archive: https://archive.ph/Tb1SZ
• so-gala-massey
  I was on klonopin for years but apparently not at those levels. It was by far the most effective anti anxiety med I had found. I feel like I dodged a bullet: my prescribing psychiatrist (requires) never mentioned the symptoms described by OP. Ironically after being off it for over 10 years my life has taken a turn that has made me want to go back on it. But I will absolutely be sharing this story with my Rx. Yikes.
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  spidercat
  Benzodiazepines are really gnarly stuff. Like alcohol, withdrawal from a benzodiazepine can be fatal. IIRC, some post-acute withdrawal symptoms can last indefinitely for some people. Benzos have their utility but they can be really, really awful stuff to become dependent upon.I've had anxiety issues my entire life, and I feel exceedingly grateful that I haven't fallen into the benzo trap. I've had prescriptions for them, but I always found them too impairing for anything other than very sporadic use (like on airplanes, back when I had anxiety around flying).I actually find beta blockers, taken as-needed, to be infinitely more beneficial when it comes to managing anxiety. There's some really interesting research on propranolol specifically and how it disrupts memory reconsolidation - which (deceptively) sounds like a bad thing, but it actually has beneficial implications on fear extinction and trauma responses.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8201901/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8979654/Just to drop a couple links. There's a good amount of research out there.I successfully eliminated my fear of flying with beta blockers (this was after xanax made it much worse, which turns out is a documented phenomenon https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9299803/). I like that, at least for more specific fears/anxieties, propranolol's fear-extinction mechanism means that you often need the drug less and less the more often you take it for that purpose. I haven't flown medicated in many years; my "amygdala is rewired" in that area and it seems it's more or less permanent.I take beta blockers maybe a few times per year, on average, but I always keep my prescription up to date.I'm something of a beta blocker evangelist (if it wasn't obvious), but I think they're deeply underappreciated when it comes to treating anxiety. I think a lot of people get spooked when they see that it's "heart medication", but it's really well-tolerated medicine for most people.
• glennfiedler
  When you are tapering down over MONTHS and you find yourself dividing the tiny tablets into 8ths, yeah that's a benzo.
• someothherguyy
  doesn't seem like great advice to take someone who is "feeling unstable" off a decade plus of benzodiazepine therapy to make them more stable. also, that was probably too aggressive of a taper for that long of use.
• amanaplanacanal
  I just saw a YouTube video about a Soviet era benzo that became somewhat popular in the West as a research chemical. It really sounds like a nightmare:https://youtu.be/CAm_L6CTnD4?is=o1UjxkDQwFloZ8VM
• anon
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• mulderc
  I had a friend who got hooked on these and it really messed up his life. He had issues before but one he was hooked to those he became unbearable to even be around.
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  jart
  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. These pharmaceuticals were originally based off valerian root, which works too, and is cheaper, and easy to obtain. You can always try going back to the roots. I find it helps me sleep every now and then.
• BikiniPrince
  This also just reminds me of the sensible things to ask your doctor when they try to prescribe a drug. Can I simply stop taking this drug? For two people I know in the last year this would have been a nice question to ask.
• freetime2
  Jordan Peterson has talked at length about his issues with benzodiazepine withdrawals. I know he is a controversial figure, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.Here’s a video of a doctor talking about the dangers of BIND (Benzodiazepine-Induced Neurological Dysfunction) in the context of some clips of Peterson and his daughter talking about his experience. [1]Definitely something that it’s good to raise public awareness about, because they are very widely prescribed (10% of women over the age of 50, for example) and a lot of people being prescribed these drugs likely don’t fully understand the risks.[1] https://youtu.be/_q44phEpFjA
• hn_throwaway_99
  I'm not sure if it's just the US and Canada, but doctors here (in my experience) are absolutely atrocious and not properly trained when it comes to getting off benzos (but in fairness my experience was from the mid/late 00s).Many years ago my partner at the time was prescribed Klonopin, primarily as a sleep aid. When he decided to go off it, he talked to his psychiatrist and was given basically no helpful guidance on how to go off. In retrospect I consider that malpractice. It was absolute hell and it took him well over 18 months to finally kick it (and it's not like he had a large prescription in the first place).One reason I was so pissed is that as he was going off it I did some research and discovered that the NHS in the UK had an entire extensive protocol for people getting off Klonopin that required months of tapering and replacing Klonopin with a less powerful benzo (I think it was diazepam, or Valium) so you could taper at a more gradual pace.It's insane to me that it's not required for doctors to explain the withdrawal procedures before writing a prescription for any drug that is physically addictive.
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• smm11
  Lithium Orotate for anxiety. You're welcome.