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!!!
This is so wild to me because output and work quality rapidly decline at (or well before) 40 hours a week. It sounds like a joke, but I probably have 4 good hours in me a day. Sure, more if I'm really into something, but working 4 hours a day 3-5 (max) days a week will actually achieve peak results in my experience.
> 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I am one of few people stupid enough to have, at one point, been addicted to and subsequently withdrawn from, almost everything but alcohol.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.
I was on Ativan for acute trauma avoidance (to try to prevent PTSD) for about 6 weeks. I hate taking medicating and stopped it cold turkey. It took me another 3 weeks or so to feel "normal" again and the withdrawal period was so phenomenally physically uncomfortable and panic-inducing that I will never take it again for any reason. I spent most of that time thinking I was going to die. In the long run, I guess it helped with PTSD avoidance (which seems to be one of the things they do now), but even just thinking back to those few weeks makes my skin crawl.
14 months. (Usually) not every day, maybe 3-4 times a week. And 8 months to taper off. How long it takes to taper depends on the level of discomfort you’re willing to tolerate.
Diazepam half life is so long that dependence can develop even when not taking it every day.
Edit: and I totally believe there are people who can take the same amount as me and not become dependent as easily as I did. Everyone is different
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.
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.
Seconding your experience. Used on an occasional basis, benzos can be helpful without resulting in the horror stories related here. Of course, everyone is different and YMMV, but confirming that your positive experience is not unique.
They really are extremely effective drugs when used correctly. That's why the calls to ban them (as seen elsewhere in this thread) are not terribly compelling. There's no replacement for what they do.
That said: do not abuse benzos. They will fuck you up.
I was prescribed temazepam for insomnia. It was the only sleep medication that worked, and it was the best sleep I've had in my life. It stopped being effective after around 30 days (or maybe 60, I forget). That was the end of that. I could have argued for a higher dose or a refill or whatever, but... you don't fuck with benzos.
My involvement in inpatient drug abuse clinics has been benzo addiction is one of the hardest to treat and accounted for nearly half the patients, the rest split between alcohol and opioids, even during the height of the oxy crisis. It’s much less reported on because it’s widely prescribed and it’s nearly impossible to OD on. The effects aren’t as dramatic as alcohol, but are no less debilitating. Furthermore because benzos and alcohol have similar pathways they are often abused together and they amplify each others effect. You can satisfy the addiction with either - so people withdrawing from alcohol are often given benzos and people addicted to benzos often drink to relieve their addiction. People describe klonopin and similar long lasting benzos as a six pack that lasts 18 hours - which is a long time to have than level of declined inhibition. This further leads to more drinking, but also to other out of character behavior like overspending - some patients have bankrupted their families through excessive and bizarre spending.
Many people receive opioid treatment and do not become addicted. In fact most do. Most people can drink alcohol without becoming an alcoholic. This isn’t a proof that “anecdotal experience” that opioid addiction and alcoholism aren’t serious problems. In fact it is a demonstration that they are insidious for that exact reason - it’s fairly easy to slip through the cracks in the system into a serious problem that is life altering and extraordinarily difficult to emerge from.
Finally, the hardest withdrawals I’ve seen are benzo withdrawals. Relapse is also extremely high because the profound anxiety that led to the addiction is amplified in the years of subsequent withdrawal with very little as effective as a benzo to mitigate it. Paralyzing irrational fear is in many ways worse than pain, and pain is often a symptom to boot.
I feel that perhaps saying “well not everyone, take my anecdotal experience” isn’t the most empathetic response, and the statistics bear this out. The prevalence of benzodiazepine dependency is roughly on par with alcoholism in the US and several times that of opioids. The distinction is that crisis level addiction is roughly the same as opioid, while alcohol is roughly 7x worse. This likely because acute alcoholic behavior is rapid and very readily observable, while opioid and benzo dependency can be masked behind an otherwise normalish appearing life. The decline is fairly slow often unless you trip over into fentanyl. Further the prevalence of common use of both opioids and alcohol is much higher because surgery and recreational alcohol use is fairly prevalent while anxiety disorders less so.
Stevie Nicks is a popular icon who has been very public about how hard her withdrawal from Klonopin was, including how her skin sloughed off among other horrible effects. She lost a large part of her life span to it. But otherwise it’s also a relatively under reported dependency given its prevalence.
I’d also note in many countries benzodiazepines are highly controlled with much higher bars than US, including the UK, where they’re only allowed in crisis, not general anxiety disorders less.
I also take it on as needed basis. .5 mg clonzepam before bed. Sometime I’d take 2 if the day has been especially rough and I need a good night sleep. It mostly help with falling asleep and feeling more centered the day after.
During a crisis I took it for a month. Then stopped. Stupid as it may be, I only fairly recently learned that this drug can cause hell but for the life of me I couldn’t understand how. All it did for me is help me sleep. I didn’t understand how it can be abused or what’s the recreational part of it. When my doc told me about the dependence, and how it may creep stopped even my occasional use and the bottle I got last Jan still sits in my meds canbinet.
Could it be that different people have different reactions or may be more susceptible to addiction to it?
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.
i mean, it says it right on the sheet you get with the medication
"MISUSE OF CLONAZEPAM CAN CAUSE ADDICTION, OVERDOSE, OR DEATH. Keep the medication in a place where others cannot get to it. Never share clonazepam with another person. Selling or giving away this medicine is against the law.
Some people have thoughts about suicide while taking clonazepam. Tell your doctor right away if you have any sudden changes in mood or behavior, or thoughts about suicide.
Get medical help right away if you stop using clonazepam and have symptoms such as: unusual muscle movements, being more active or talkative, sudden and severe changes in mood or behavior, confusion, hallucinations, seizures, or thoughts about suicide.
Do not stop using clonazepam without asking your doctor. You may have life-threatening withdrawal symptoms if you stop using the medicine suddenly after long-term use. Some withdrawal symptoms may last up to 12 months or longer."
"The psych had told me nothing of the nightmare that dependence on those meds can create"
I hear this all the time and never get it. Didn't these people go to school? People talk about this every day on the internet. It's right there on Wikipedia, even.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
> handle the perceived insurmountable workload
This is so wild to me because output and work quality rapidly decline at (or well before) 40 hours a week. It sounds like a joke, but I probably have 4 good hours in me a day. Sure, more if I'm really into something, but working 4 hours a day 3-5 (max) days a week will actually achieve peak results in my experience.
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.
I was on Ativan for acute trauma avoidance (to try to prevent PTSD) for about 6 weeks. I hate taking medicating and stopped it cold turkey. It took me another 3 weeks or so to feel "normal" again and the withdrawal period was so phenomenally physically uncomfortable and panic-inducing that I will never take it again for any reason. I spent most of that time thinking I was going to die. In the long run, I guess it helped with PTSD avoidance (which seems to be one of the things they do now), but even just thinking back to those few weeks makes my skin crawl.
> weeks/months rather than days.
Weeks to months is actually pretty fast for benzo withdrawl IME.
For me it took nearly an entire year to feel completely normal. I was only taking 10mg diazepam per day (not a big dose).
To anyone on the journey now... hang in there. It feels never ending. But I promise you... you will wake up one day and feel completely normal.
how long were you taking them?
14 months. (Usually) not every day, maybe 3-4 times a week. And 8 months to taper off. How long it takes to taper depends on the level of discomfort you’re willing to tolerate.
Diazepam half life is so long that dependence can develop even when not taking it every day.
Edit: and I totally believe there are people who can take the same amount as me and not become dependent as easily as I did. Everyone is different
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.
[delayed]
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.
Seconding your experience. Used on an occasional basis, benzos can be helpful without resulting in the horror stories related here. Of course, everyone is different and YMMV, but confirming that your positive experience is not unique.
They really are extremely effective drugs when used correctly. That's why the calls to ban them (as seen elsewhere in this thread) are not terribly compelling. There's no replacement for what they do.
That said: do not abuse benzos. They will fuck you up.
I was prescribed temazepam for insomnia. It was the only sleep medication that worked, and it was the best sleep I've had in my life. It stopped being effective after around 30 days (or maybe 60, I forget). That was the end of that. I could have argued for a higher dose or a refill or whatever, but... you don't fuck with benzos.
My involvement in inpatient drug abuse clinics has been benzo addiction is one of the hardest to treat and accounted for nearly half the patients, the rest split between alcohol and opioids, even during the height of the oxy crisis. It’s much less reported on because it’s widely prescribed and it’s nearly impossible to OD on. The effects aren’t as dramatic as alcohol, but are no less debilitating. Furthermore because benzos and alcohol have similar pathways they are often abused together and they amplify each others effect. You can satisfy the addiction with either - so people withdrawing from alcohol are often given benzos and people addicted to benzos often drink to relieve their addiction. People describe klonopin and similar long lasting benzos as a six pack that lasts 18 hours - which is a long time to have than level of declined inhibition. This further leads to more drinking, but also to other out of character behavior like overspending - some patients have bankrupted their families through excessive and bizarre spending.
Many people receive opioid treatment and do not become addicted. In fact most do. Most people can drink alcohol without becoming an alcoholic. This isn’t a proof that “anecdotal experience” that opioid addiction and alcoholism aren’t serious problems. In fact it is a demonstration that they are insidious for that exact reason - it’s fairly easy to slip through the cracks in the system into a serious problem that is life altering and extraordinarily difficult to emerge from.
Finally, the hardest withdrawals I’ve seen are benzo withdrawals. Relapse is also extremely high because the profound anxiety that led to the addiction is amplified in the years of subsequent withdrawal with very little as effective as a benzo to mitigate it. Paralyzing irrational fear is in many ways worse than pain, and pain is often a symptom to boot.
I feel that perhaps saying “well not everyone, take my anecdotal experience” isn’t the most empathetic response, and the statistics bear this out. The prevalence of benzodiazepine dependency is roughly on par with alcoholism in the US and several times that of opioids. The distinction is that crisis level addiction is roughly the same as opioid, while alcohol is roughly 7x worse. This likely because acute alcoholic behavior is rapid and very readily observable, while opioid and benzo dependency can be masked behind an otherwise normalish appearing life. The decline is fairly slow often unless you trip over into fentanyl. Further the prevalence of common use of both opioids and alcohol is much higher because surgery and recreational alcohol use is fairly prevalent while anxiety disorders less so.
Stevie Nicks is a popular icon who has been very public about how hard her withdrawal from Klonopin was, including how her skin sloughed off among other horrible effects. She lost a large part of her life span to it. But otherwise it’s also a relatively under reported dependency given its prevalence.
https://time.com/3482462/rolling-stone-stevie-nicks-drugs-mu...
I’d also note in many countries benzodiazepines are highly controlled with much higher bars than US, including the UK, where they’re only allowed in crisis, not general anxiety disorders less.
> a few times a year, never more than 1-2 days in a row
It takes at least a few weeks to a few months of daily use to develop dependence.
I also take it on as needed basis. .5 mg clonzepam before bed. Sometime I’d take 2 if the day has been especially rough and I need a good night sleep. It mostly help with falling asleep and feeling more centered the day after.
During a crisis I took it for a month. Then stopped. Stupid as it may be, I only fairly recently learned that this drug can cause hell but for the life of me I couldn’t understand how. All it did for me is help me sleep. I didn’t understand how it can be abused or what’s the recreational part of it. When my doc told me about the dependence, and how it may creep stopped even my occasional use and the bottle I got last Jan still sits in my meds canbinet.
Could it be that different people have different reactions or may be more susceptible to addiction to it?
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.
i mean, it says it right on the sheet you get with the medication
"MISUSE OF CLONAZEPAM CAN CAUSE ADDICTION, OVERDOSE, OR DEATH. Keep the medication in a place where others cannot get to it. Never share clonazepam with another person. Selling or giving away this medicine is against the law.
Some people have thoughts about suicide while taking clonazepam. Tell your doctor right away if you have any sudden changes in mood or behavior, or thoughts about suicide.
Get medical help right away if you stop using clonazepam and have symptoms such as: unusual muscle movements, being more active or talkative, sudden and severe changes in mood or behavior, confusion, hallucinations, seizures, or thoughts about suicide.
Do not stop using clonazepam without asking your doctor. You may have life-threatening withdrawal symptoms if you stop using the medicine suddenly after long-term use. Some withdrawal symptoms may last up to 12 months or longer."
https://www.drugs.com/clonazepam.html
"The psych had told me nothing of the nightmare that dependence on those meds can create"
I hear this all the time and never get it. Didn't these people go to school? People talk about this every day on the internet. It's right there on Wikipedia, even.
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.
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.
On the other hand I took Valium 5mg daily for 2 weeks, and had no issues getting off them.
There’s definitely a lot of factors
Site seems down. Here's archive: https://archive.ph/Tb1SZ
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.
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.
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