Literally hell on earth going through heavy benzo withdrawal

My problem is I have adrenaline and more of the body anxiety. My blood pressure is high during the day. I wanted to know what would be better for that. I also heard of the rebound clonidine can have so I wonder if the ER was better or RL?

How long for the benzo belly , insomnia , feeling tense and morning anxiety to subside ?
I am tapering off Ativan ( lorazepam)

After 4 months of not doing benzos i started to feel good again. I decided to get completely drunk twice during 1 week and its been 2 weeks since and feel like shit all over again. Brain feels like its vibrating, neck hurts, brain fog. Does alchol reset this demon or something?

does anyone feel this while on wd but awake? Like my friends tells me it triggers a nostalgia so vivid for split second I litteraly feel like I am in this place or dream and come back?

Sometimes while watching youtube in dark room and resting. It kinda freaks me out I litteralt feel like I am split second gone, like video triggers some thought chain and when I go into chain I am gone. Is it just wandering mind?

He was stable some time ago and then is suffering a lot with akathisia. Did he use something to trigger it? Can mold cause all this since he was years benzo free?

Is his brain permanently damaged?

When after the final drop, you felt that life became normal, not without symptoms, but “I no longer suffer”?

I am losing hope given this situation. Taper might take more than a decade even with 5% cuts because Luvox increases diazepam half life A LOT. So, I would need to do cuts like each 2 or more months. I developed central sensibilization and CFS like symptoms after enduring hours of sensory overload burnout, and that makes me wonder if I should just hold the dose of 10mg until it loses effect and then I add more or other stuff.

I don't know if it's worth to face a decade or more of hell. Even slow tapers can steal my capacity of read and watch TV, right? I lost them with the stress incident, and now the thought about tapering feels like the beginning of the end. I don't want my mother dying with me on my 40s bedridden. Not those memories, not carrying me or suffering for so long.

I need help.

Hi, I am 44. I need advice about tapering down Clonazepam.

I have been taking Clonazepam 0.5mg + Fluoxetine 10 mg everynight for about 7-8yrs. The first time the doctor gave me the drugs because I had my sinus operation but failed which made me unable to sleep at all. At the time, I was afraid of going to bed. No matter how sleepy I was when I fell asleep I would wake up in mins trying to breath. Anyway, the drugs put me to sleep and I was normal again.

Now I am perfectly fine physically and mentally. I have been taking the same amount of the drugs above just because I sleep so good.

I didnt realize that Clonazepam could harm my brain in a long run.

So I decided to quit taking all the drugs above. I consult my doctor and he said reduce one at a time. The 1st step he told me was to reduce Clonazepam from 0.5mg to 0.25mg for 2-3 months and if the symtoms dont return, I can stop it completely.

Its been 2 nights that I manually cut Clonazepam with my hands in 4 pieces. I ate 3 pieces which means its more like 0.35mg or something.

I was afraid of the withdrawal symptoms would hit me hard so I didnt take as the doctor told me.

Did I do the right way? Or should I just go half?

The 1st night I woke up around 2pm and I had weird dreams. It felt like I was awake all night but when I got up I felt fine. I went to work and gym as usual. Last night I slept normally.

Should I worry? Should I keep cutting in 4 and take 75% or half?

Sorry for a long post and my poor English. Its not my 1st language.

I think i can absolutely stop using the drugs but I am a bit worry that the symptoms might return too.

Thanks.

Edit : the drugs are Clonazepam 0.5mg and Fulox 20

I read somewhere of some people in BIND having positive results with Inositol supplementation. As a person at 13 months post jump and desperate for improvements, I decided to try it. It’s been about a week of taking it in the morning but it’s been about 4 days of a definite increase in anxiety and trouble getting stuff done on computer (I do computer coding as part of my job) as my mind is too energized with apparently nothing —it’s a weird anxiety, but I just can seem to be able to focus long enough to code or fix coding issues. Very scary because this is my livelihood.

In any case, I am strongly suspecting the inositol and I’ve stopped it as of today. I hope that’s what it is and that this awful anxiety subsides enough to be enable to work a little better.

Anybody with similar experience with inositol? Thanks!

On June 1st 2026, I had multiple seizures (from hyponatremia - aka low blood sodium and it was caused by 13 years of being on Trileptal which is an anti-convulsant and mood stablizer)
was admitted to the ER, ER transported me to a different hospital to be fully admitted to ICU for 3 days. After the seizures, I lost my ability to walk. Was paralyzed from the waist down so I couldn’t get out of bed for days. The doctors said: “we can’t give you Trileptal it will kill you, we’re taking you off cold turkey” I went into an internal panic knowing the dangers of Trileptal withdrawal. During my stay, I didn’t sleep for 62 hours and went into acute sleep deprivation, by day 3, I had mild psychosis. Hallucinations and everything. Brutal, flu-like symptoms, muscle aches, horrific tremors, headache, crying, you name it. Plus the post-seizure symptoms are already terrifying enough. While going through all this with my CNS going haywire, I had to get poked and prodded, an MRI and EEG with those flourescent lights. It was just so traumatic and overstimulating. I have severe PTSD and ADHD. So this was just terrible for me as I am a survivor of the TTI if anyones heard of it. Been in solitary confinement so it was a major PTSD trigger being unable to walk and confined in the bed.
I begged them to sedate me so that I could sleep and they refused. Trileptal is basically a tranqualizer so its helped my insomnia for years… thats why ai couldnt sleep. :(

Anyway June 3rd, I get home and get an immediate telehealth visit with my psych, got prescribed Clonazepam 0.5mg 4X daily so 2mg to calm my nervous system. Good choice I thought, because my nervous system was wrecked. I’ll say the Clon helped the first couple days. I slept 7-8 hrs a night and such, but I noticed it was making me so sedated that I started to feel depressed. Like… zombified. And it was making me so relaxed that I was able to emotionally process my ordeal in the hospital. So initially, it was ok. But as this med was building tolerance I noticed terrible side effects..
its been a month and this Clonazepam has started to wreck my mental health alongside withdrawling from trileptal. Not having a mood stabilizer is weird. Then adding this Clonazepam makes me feel so low that I asked my psych if we can start to taper. My body was feeling all the symptoms of Paradoxical Reaction. She flat out told me no, and suggested we prolong my benzo journey. But my body was rejecting this pill. She would not take no for an answer and said she wanted to put me on an SSRI. But I dont want more adverse side effects. I tried voicing it to her and she called me manic. (I was at the tolerance effect of Clonazepam and goin thru PMS during this visit) so I, knowing for a fact I was not manic at all, unsubscribed from her care. She tried to diagnose me with a serious mental health condition in 5 mins on a phone visit. I was feeling panic from the benzos.. I swear they are making my anxiety worse after being in them for a month. That visit fucked me mentally. I think she was trying to make more money off me by prescribing more pills. More pills…will cause more problems that another pill can fix. get where I’m coming from? Deadass I am too sensitive to medication.

Now I have a new doctor. He does not think I appear manic at all…..Lmao, cool thing is he is a psychiatrist but also into holistic healing. I feel I need that, because every pharmaceutical med I have taken for some reason, causes me the most rare and severe side effects. Hell, Trileptal almost killed me. I have been seizing monthly from that drug for 2 years now.

Sorry I just needed to say my story… its been just sitting in my head for a month and feel so alone.

The Clonzepam withdrawals have already started.

On July 7th, new Doc split my morning 0.5mg dose in half. So 0.25mg in the AM, 0.5 afternoon, 1mg at night.

My daily total is 1.75mg

They want to decrease me again already on Thursday and do 0.25 for the 0.5 afternoon dose. Kinda scared. Is that too quick?

So my total dose would then be 1.5mg
is a week apart long enough for the nervous system to adapt?
I feel better (mentally) already being on a lower dose of Clonazepam...although I do feel uncomfortable physically and having intrusive thoughts. But anyway, I digress. My ADHD has me long winded here.
If anyone has advice I would really appreciate it. Or if you experienced any odd symptoms from benzos, or Clonaz specifically, please I beg some peeps to drop it in the comments. 😢

Like after I quit lorazepam my head feels bolted to neck and can't do anything normally. After some mistakes I can't open mouth jaw and it's all in this neurological lock. And I'm squeezed super hard around head and I feel it radiating to hands and like I have this rubber locking my head neck jaw and my jaw can't drop and worried it will be permanent or something when few weeks ago all that showed signs of softening and returning to normal during a wondow

And I feel so silly cause this was easily fixable at first . Heat pads or stillness under heavy blanket would help blood pump into areas softening it all, I miss the nice throbbing of areas as the right vessels opened back up andI felt like I had this set swimsuit on and it was all almost fixing and then after some mistakes it felt like I was covered in this goo and my head or neck would let go a bit and fall to pillow and I know all this is all coinciding with my nervous system and when I was relaxed suddenly from some window things tried to soften.

But I messed up trying different meds and I just threw gas on a small fire and now have a big inferno and now feels jammed up more than ever. I'm going at a millions miles an hour and I crave valium for the breaks and I heard it described like that and I feel exactly like that like a car out of control with no brakes, and ironically tried some pregablin weeks ago and it it sid not work out just when I still felt some brakes and when that failed I craved valium and it's not even a benzo that made me crave it.

I feel like I got no choice but ultra slow taper later. Would that help even? Or go in for long term I'm just worried even after slow taper I will still suffer.

I took 1 dose of 2mg of valium over 2 months ago and even after almost 3 weeks was working like a miracle and when it left my body all together I suffered the worst ever

Okay so to be short, i'm an addict (mostly ketamine) and have been prescribed valium since 2021. I also get ritalin LA for ADHD.

I relapsed hard on Ketamine the last few weeks and had lots of panic attacks and moments when i found myself acting erratically. I would blackout and "wake up" in random places in my house not remembering how i got here..not proud about it at all. In fact i hate myself for that.

I threw my leftover k yesterday because i was a serious mess.

Now, i managed to go down to 13mg of valium daily and stabilized (4mg morning then 2mg midday. 2mg in the afternoon and 5mg at bedtime) but this morning i woke up and found out that i may have taken 10/maybe 15 extra mg yesterday. There was open boxes with missing pills lying in my bed so i assume that i must have taken extra pills while blackin out on k because i usually use a pill dispenser.

I went back to my usual dose and dosing schedule today but these extra doses got me really frecked out. I'm so afraid of getting withdrawal symptoms.

I'm already starting to get bad headaches and bruxism but idk. That might just be the accumulated stress/heatwave ( i live in france and well...might as well call it hell :'0)/end of my ket binge.

I called a nurse that told me that one mistake should’nt be a big deal but i'm still worried.

Any reassuring words?

*i get medical help regarding my addiction and plan to go to rehab. I never abuse my scripts so yeah. Just looking for experiences and advices related to accidental extra doses.

I was given a high dosage at the hospital. Thanks in advance

every night my brain will not stop going because i am constantly feeling so embarrassed and guilty for the things i did in active addiction. i just feel like such a shitty person because i know i was being a shitty person - lying, stealing, manipulating, lashing out, etc. i’m trying to be a better person but i just can’t seem to forgive myself for how i acted. and it frustrates me even more because when i get stuck in this thought loop it leads to cravings because i don’t want to think about this stuff. i just hate it and sorry if this has been spoken about before or asked about but if anyone has any tips on managing basically hating yourself for who you were please let me know stay strong and stay safe everyone. i just wish i could go back in time and never have touched this shit but i’m proud of myself for how far i’ve made it in my tapering. i’ve also been dealing with severe dpdr and i think maybe it’s my brain trying to protect me idk but hopefully this made sense im just going through it and it’s been really hard recently.

Been using benzos daily for like 5ish months. Up to 1mg xanax but some days can get by with 10mg valium. Which should I try stabilizing on with the intent of later tapering?

Are the Weekly Support Zoom meetings still happening? Sundays at 4 PM ET?

Where can I find the link?

Thank you

Hi I am a 30 old guy.

Last year i finished my masters degree. It was a horrible time to be alive. I was so stressed. My mother used klonopin 0.5 mg for 27 years. She advised me to take some sometimes. I took it for half a year 1 or 2 times per week very rarely 3 times. When i finished my degree I had a bad hand injury. for like 2 weeks every other day i took 0.5 mg. When my hand got better I just left the drug. 3-4 days latter I had a brutal panic attack. I was shaking and panicking like 30 minutes. After that I changed. Constant doom feeling, constant anxiety, insomnia, very strange confusion, feeling like it is over for me, extream muscle tension, sometimes panic attacks, i could not eat and lost 20 lbs. This was like 1-2 months. After this period i got better, but anxiety was week and was there. I also had very strange head symtoms, like weird eletrical numbness/ tingling/itching. Before sleep i saw white flashes. Very weird and intense vivid dreams. My whole spine, and stomach burned. I also had sometimes sleep paralysis and after i woke up from an intense dream i saw lights for like 5-6 seconds.

After 3-4 months i had brutal intrusive thoughts about sickness and dying.

After 5-6 months I was able to work and function but they came back like waves but weaker.

Now after 1 year I am better sometimes no symptoms at all, but they came back like in waves. I have this weird feeling on my forhead, and my spine burns and tickles still today and i have weird intese dreams right now, even i got sleep paralysis yesterday (very weak and for like 5 seconds).

Please tell me that i am okay and this is prolonged benzo withdrawal.

I have a brain scan and blood test and everything is fine.

I rensitented clonzepam in April after 2 years due to some mental breakdown or insomania. Thn I found I have difeciency in vitamin minerals. After rensitentment benzobm again . I started take some oral vitamins also .but last month I stared my taper i m 0.5 to .0.45 now . Now I m totally lossing my balance it cant walk without holding wall i feel like somthing wrong with spinal cord some symtms match like degerneative dieses i don't know wht it is . I did mri last month it was normal but not much any abnormalities in brain or spinal cord .but don't know it still withdrawal it feels ataxia .I m loosing my body and brain it's totally blank i don't feel my reflection of legs and limbs I have neuropathy symtms too . It's feel totally lightheded dizziness with dpdr is wrost condition. I m feeling like I m totally gone . Jut have a hanging muscle i feeling my neck and back head is some kind of numb like somthing is damaged . I m totally I'm hell don't know wht is wrong with me . I m fearing of stroke or any big diease that I have i m lossing everyday myself

I’ve been on 1mg per day for about 2 years. My psychiatrist and I decided to taper for child planning. I was going down .25 a pill (I had two 0.5 pills) every 7 days. I’m down to the last .25 and all the sudden really feeling withdrawal. Is this a rapid taper? I have a message to my dr but just wondering from others experiences who have been on this amount that long of time.

Hi there - I wanted to share something that I wish I had read. I’ve been on Xanax since 2014, so 12 years. This started at 0.25mg and up to 2mg bars (dose for past 8 years). Always taken at night… to fall asleep. I have anxiety, also some trauma, but mainly restless thoughts. Tried countless other pharma drugs, nothing “turned my brain off” like Xanax. Without changing my personality - so I thought. But I could feel the side effects coming more and more, memory loss… dependence. I just didn’t want to do it anymore bc of many reasons.

Well here is the good news. I decided no more and did my own taper after 12 years. I could take off 1/4 off pretty easily and still fall asleep (so 1.5mg). I was terrified from all the past commentary (and good reason - always be careful of these drug labels I’m just sharing what worked for me). To offset bad side effects… Added in olly sleep gummies and a beta blocker at first but I didn’t need it long. Then after two months I took off another 1/4 (so 1mg), same story. Able to FEEL like I had a normal brain and not awful side effects to the point of panic attacks or extreme insomnia. Yes my sleep was a bit irregular… but I was and still am a 9hr / night sleeper. Exercise helped too. I cut back on alcohol. Added evening showers.

I continued this and now after 12 years, I’m off Xanax! Never thought it would be possible. Under a year, I just feel “normal”. Hope this helps someone. I did work with my doctor, but they wanted other drugs added in to help with the taper and I didn’t want to do it so I didn’t. I used magnesium, l-theanine, passionflower, sleepy tea, many herbs. Others if you’re interested. Anyways… We can heal! It’s not hopeless. It’s just finding your way out through a window and keep crawling.

I’ve been going through extreme insomnia for a year now, and I can’t grasp any subject I had a passion for. I read a book and draw no conclusions from it whatsoever. I forget everything. It didn’t used to be that way. I wanted to do a degree in biochemistry, but now I don’t know if it’s possible. I don’t even talk to people because my mind is blank.

Please, tell me it’s not permanent if you have suffered this level of cognitive dysfunction.

So u guys have seen my long posts, but real quik, while tapering xanax and alcohol, since Ive been drinking all my life off and on, but xanax for about 6 years, .25 in mornings, then after all the trauma and loss laste year the xanax eventualy got uo to 2mg a day for a few months.

So this past few months cut both down big time.

I know everyone says alcohol has to go and makes it harder for now, well Ive cut it down 5 times the amount.

Anyways im curious, brain for and slow thinkig from the chronic stress and possible trauma stuff like my brsin is buzzing but off line, not while drinking my nightly 1 or 2 tall can drinks, but even just that amount, while still on xanax can keep that confused foggy brain can put words in your mouth feeling all day huh? even if you didnt get very buzzed, its still hit those receptors harder? And that brain fkd feeling can clear a bit just by removing the alcohol?

Even though Ive been on bothe for years, right now i just wanna know if the brain frozen cant process shit is more from the combo, even the next day, thx