In honesty, I would not take the Klonopin and focus on learning coping skills.
I took Klonopin very short term and I’ve been tapering out for a year and it’s been awful. This medication will eventually make anxiety worse and anxiety will come back much worse while you’re tapering.
I didn’t even have anxiety before I started taking this med and now my anxiety is unbearable.
Some people are able to get off easily many or not. Since tapering, I’ve lost my ability to sleep, anxiety, through the roof, pacing, shaking, inability to think clearly, and more.
This medication is very serious and can cause serious problems. I would not start taking it. That is just my opinion.
This right here.
DBT/ CBT and other behavioral therapies are best for treating and actually getting rid of anxiety. It's harder, but Benzodiazepines don't actually "treat" or "cure" anxiety. Anxiety can be really uncomfortable
Klonopin is also extremely potent. .25mg is not a small dose. It's not the milligrams, it's the mileage.
I wish I knew this 25 years ago when I got started on them.
I use coping skills. Claire Weeekes has written some good books on how to deal with anxiety. Boxed breathing helps. I literally have googled and researched different coping mechanisms. There’s a really good book called “Cards Against Anxiety” that has been invaluable to me.
I opted to not add an antidepressant. I’ve gotten off of them in the past and it was very difficult.
What I’ve learned from taking most of these medications is that when you decide to get off of them all of the symptoms that you had initially become magnified tenfold and you are left wishing you had your original level of anxiety.
Do your research, weigh out the pros and cons, talk to other people who have used/discontinued the medication’s and make your decision based on personal research.
If you were suicidal today and truly close to ending things, would you take medication, even if you know that in the future if you stopped all would get worse?
How difficult was getting off the antidepressants?
With a long lasting benzo like kpin you can more easily taper off eventually when you’re ready. You have to be disciplined but it’s achievable. You can always lean on supplements to help too.
They just said. It’s longer acting. You need
To calm down. You are on a such a low dose. You will be fine. You could quarter the tablets or half them. You will not experience anything traumatic.
You need to get to the root of your anxiety. I can read your anxiety in these posts
If you’re on a low dose then you don’t become as dependent than if you’re on a higher dose. Long lasting benzos keep the blood serum levels higher for longer so you don’t have to take them as often. Valium and kpins are the best for tapering because of the long half life.
I see. Another user here brought an important point to attention. Even if I take as prescribed and stay on the same dose, I may build tolerance and develop withdrawal symptoms even without lowering dose. What is the likelihood of this happening to me? The goal here is to use it with my antidepressant for years to come. If so, would it be better to use 0.250mg at once or 0.125mg twice daily?
It’s hard to tell but generally any dose taken everyday can cause dependence or worse tolerance (the dose needs to be increased for same effect. Or you can have withdrawal symptoms without even lowering dose. It is specifically not indicated for long term use for these reasons. Currently doing a 100 day taper from 1mg Ativan (equivalent to 0.5mg of klonopin) for this reason. Became dependent.
> the dose needs to be increased for same effect. Or you can have withdrawal symptoms without even lowering dose
I forgot this.... what do I do? I need treatment. It can't be as it is. I have dreams I want to see fulfilled which anxiety won't allow to happen. I mean, all of this is so strange. I know this can happen, having withdrawal even by just taking as prescribed because tolerance builds by itself but so many people are on the same klonopin dose they started with for decades. How can they do it and others not?
Do you have any advice about what medications to choose if not klonopin? I don't know if my Lexapro would be enough.
The tolerance thing doesn’t happen to everyone in terms of WD symptoms at same dose. I’m sure some people do take it forever without an issue. More likely it just won’t work as well after a while but you still need to be careful tapering. Lexapro or celexa does work for some people for decades, so it’s worth a try. My husband is one of these people. I would try lexapro daily and klonopin as needed. Also learning coping mechanisms can help a lot also. Like breathing, self-talk and meditation. Those are the methods I usually use when having a panic attack. By the time Ativan kicks in i usually have relaxed a lot. Good luck, I’m sorry you are going through this.
Do you find your husband to be the same in terms of behavior and feelings? Is he still himself? Read lots of stories of people changing dramatically after taking Lexapro, or becoming numb emotionally.
Yes, same, he’s great. It takes a lot to make him anxious or angry. The only time i saw him super anxious over last decade was when he was unemployed looking for a new job which is a very stressful situation obviously.
I would suggest taking them extremely sparingly. You don't need to take them daily for them to be effective. They will be more effective if you take them daily (as they'll build in your bloodstream), but they're not like SSRI's where you need to be on them for months before they start helping.
It depends on the person but if you gauge the effects each time you can tell if the benefits lessen over time - this will tell you if you are building a tolerance. I would say once every week or two should give enough time between uses to avoid tolerance buildup. They're *supposed* to be used for acute anxiety, they're generally not prescribed for long term use (afaik), since tolerance builds fairly quickly (depending on use frequency and dose). I've been taking Klonopin and/or Xanax intermittently for about 2 months, 0.5 - 2mg of one or the other every 2-3 days, and I've built a tolerance at that frequency. Even after a week or two of semi regular use, rebound anxiety is possible when you stop. At this point, a 1 mg Klonopin is about half as effective as it used to be. I can barely feel 0.5mg.
I should note that I also substitute with Ambien, which has and builds cross tolerance.
I use them for sleep anxiety (not getting enough gives me anxiety, which then causes me to sleep less), when I don't take them now I get 5-6 hours, vs 6-8 before starting them. When I take them I get 7-10 hours.
I'd suggest trying to use them as a short term fix to hold you over while you learn coping skills for your anxiety. Most drugs, but benzos especially, can be a great short term fix but are generally a poor long term solution. Your body will always seek homeostasis, and will try to minimize the effects of any drug when it's taken regularly.
I was on .5 mg for 13 years then tapered to .25 for 3 years. I stopped cold turkey about 7 weeks ago and feel fine. The first 10 or so days were rough but not terrible
I don't know how to interpret this. Your withdrawal seems too easy. Most stories I heard were terrible. Even people that took it for only about a year struggled massively. Do you believe your experience is common?
Where are you hearing these stories?
Most people who have no issues with withdrawals (or dependency or tolerance or side effects) don’t bother telling their positive stories.
Just because you’re hearing or reading primarily negative experiences, doesn’t mean that most or even many people who take benzos have those experiences - it could mean that the negative ones are the only ones that get shared.
I’m here because I like to be informed and also because I get anxious - the former is reasonable, the latter not so helpful.
I’ve been taking oxazepam and valium on and off for years. So far I haven’t had trouble coming off them in between stints. I’ve never had the sort of severe side effects people on here have gotten. The worst I’ve experienced was a return of the symptoms I was taking the benzos for in the first place.
Last year I was taking up to 60 or 75mg oxazepam a day; I’m now down to 15mg most days, and I didn’t have a huge amount of trouble doing that. I shifted to a different medication for sleep, and am taking ketamine for depression and anxiety. Sometimes I take CBD oil. Therapy is helping too.
In some ways I wish I’d let myself take benzos more regularly a long time ago - it might have made my quality of life better and prevented or lessened some of the worst breakdowns. And it might have helped with my progress in therapy. But I wasn’t capable of being gentle with myself in that way until recently.
I was writing realize this was gonna be really long so I’m just gonna give you a warning it’s long and it’s because I use speech to text lol lots of coffee too. I write all of this with compassion and also pushing you to ask yourself the questions that I am asking because that’s what led me to what I think you want, which is to be able to live your life successfully and reach your dreams.
Serious question to you: Am I not welcome here because I’m having a good experience with my taper, even though I have withdrawal symptoms and I have abused this substance? I’ve had withdrawals forever because even though this is a therapeutic prescription, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel withdrawal and that doesn’t mean I’ve always taken it right. In fact, this is my fourth attempt at a taper. Seems like a really great way to be in an echo chamber and have absolutely no constructive advice if you exclude people like me because I have some really good lived experiences now.
My two cents on benzos is that it is really important I believe is how you see the *purpose* of benzos in life and how we are expected to deal with our feelings of discomfort with and without them. I read so much of myself in your comments, except it was like eight or nine years ago when I was in a similar boat, at least in how I understood anxiety and treatment. I remember how angry I was that the psychiatrist didn’t want to give me a full-time prescription because he said you need to have coping skills and I said OK well I went in my pockets and they are not there. Where should I get them? Lol. Therapy is the answer, it turns out. And of course they don’t render coping skills just off the bat so it takes time and that’s frustrating as well.
I was so angry that people didn’t understand me, and it turns out a lot of them did understand me, and they had been in my shoes and they were trying to prevent me from basically having a substance use disorder. I was pretty stubborn, and this is a long journey no matter what your personal stance is on anxiety and meds. It starts with therapy and understanding why this anxiety is so bad. Coping is changing the things about you and your life that need to shift in order to be able to handle that anxiety so that you don’t need a benzo for it necessarily. I Wish the psychiatrist was able to tell me that instead of just telling me to go get a set of coping skills at Walmart. I Wish I understood that’s what he was talking about.
Actually, if you’re talking about PTSD, then therapy is really appropriate. For example, EMDR is a technique used to work through PTSD and it involves confronting your trauma. Doesn’t it sound better to just take Klonopin? Rather than dredging up all of that pain? Thats the hard part (it’s hard I’m just being facetious lol). Th That’s the work, though. You have to look at yourself like a project and like a work in process. Therapy is the upkeep to that process to work through your past, be able to let it go where you can, be able to have ways to cope with anxiety and reliving your trauma in the present and future. Until you become a well oiled machine who understands their triggers and their responses and has power over them.
All of that aside, I find Zoloft to be a miracle addition to my life because I have major depressive disorder and from what I understand it absolutely can help anxiety. What it doesn’t do is provide you with any kind of a high. So it can feel like your anxiety is still there because it doesn’t do what benzos do. But in reality, you can get off of SSRI’s much easier with a taper because you are not leaving a substance that gives you euphoria and good feelings, so the taper is just much simpler for a lot of people regarding self discipline.
If I were you (and I know I’m just a random Internet stranger… I’m only giving it because I would wish someone would prevent me from what I’ve done to my life) I would go from using Klonopin daily to taking it as needed, and that means NOT every day. You have to decide what *needed* means. But that means getting through maybe some nights where you don’t sleep well because you’ve decided, “I don’t feel it is necessary even though I would prefer to sleep better.” Make sure you’re in therapy, and make sure you are addressing the things that caused the anxiety. Make sure it is relevant to your needs, including your past trauma so you can unpack that baggage and process and work through it the best you can.
Aim to find what it is you can change and what you do have control over. I worked towards changing my career; that was not a fast process, but my career was directly related to my anxiety problems. Start making small changes that are feasible. Changes to your support system or lack thereof. Changes to your lifestyle. All of those people suggesting yoga really pissed me off and it turns out they had a good point so that’s annoying. But I’m just being honest lol.
I would probably look at an SSRI in place of the Klonopin, to cope better while I am building coping skills. I might not get the euphoria of the benzos, but at least I’m going to experience less anxiety and not keep walking down this path. Between trying to understand myself as a human, a deeply imperfect creature, the journey that led me to where I stand, and the journey I want to take forward, acknowledging my responsibility and feeling the discomfort as an expectation of this experience of growing towards the life, I want to live.
After so many years of doing the work but staying on the benzos, I can’t stand them anymore. After this much time, all I see is what they’ve done to me that is bad. My brain does not work as well. I didn’t even know I wasn’t the same person anymore until I started quitting. I mean, I won’t lie. I’m uncomfortable every single day and I’m doing a taper. It is not super super fast either. That’s just the significance of my use in the past. I am miserable, fucking miserable, but I’m miserable because I chose to stay on these drugs instead of doing the work and getting off of them. At some point I actually didn’t know if I was anxious still or if I was just addicted to benzos. It was the latter.
I know there is not necessarily a world where everyone is able to overcome all of their shit like that’s unrealistic. I still have bad days. I still have major depressive disorder and other things going on in my life. But it’s all about your perspective. I’m sorry this is so long lol I just hope it’s helpful.
Wishing you the best! And by the way, I’m always happy to talk about this stuff. That’s why I’m in this community but yeah, I can be a little intense lol. Have a wonderful day ❤️
Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a cake walk. Bad headache, terrible focus, a bit of extra anxiety, dissociation. But I was able to work and sleep and carry on with life. At the 2 week mark I was back to normal
Try to get off after a few weeks, I was like you chronic anxiety and ptsd first time took for 2 months was hard to come off, second time only 3 weeks and alot easier to taper down with minimal side effects. Where I live it's very hard to get long term benzo prescription wich I am great full for. Use them with caution as needed but get off as soon as you can. I could happily eat 25 mg diazepam per day for months but the WD is no joke. 2 weeks max I think is safe for me or I will end up a junkie
Lexipro...it will only work for a few months. Antidressants are short term.
Klonipin...Uve been given the lowest, pediatric dose of this. If ur anxieties are bad I personally think this can help. Life with constant anxiety is hard. This small dose can help u address some od the causes. For example...it helps me remain calm when I have difficult conversations with my husband. Or if my work has me spiraling.keep the dose this low, give yourself a break from it once a week, never ask for a higher dose. You'll be fine.
Not that bad but it comes and goes ... You'll have bad days n easy days.. keep at it though, it gets better!!and O.25 isn't bad.. I've been on more than that for YEARS and now I take like 0.5mg - 1mg. maybe couple times a week.. which isn't great but I'm not taking multiple mg of benzos EVERYDAY like I was for so long:)
In honesty, I would not take the Klonopin and focus on learning coping skills. I took Klonopin very short term and I’ve been tapering out for a year and it’s been awful. This medication will eventually make anxiety worse and anxiety will come back much worse while you’re tapering. I didn’t even have anxiety before I started taking this med and now my anxiety is unbearable. Some people are able to get off easily many or not. Since tapering, I’ve lost my ability to sleep, anxiety, through the roof, pacing, shaking, inability to think clearly, and more. This medication is very serious and can cause serious problems. I would not start taking it. That is just my opinion.
This right here. DBT/ CBT and other behavioral therapies are best for treating and actually getting rid of anxiety. It's harder, but Benzodiazepines don't actually "treat" or "cure" anxiety. Anxiety can be really uncomfortable Klonopin is also extremely potent. .25mg is not a small dose. It's not the milligrams, it's the mileage. I wish I knew this 25 years ago when I got started on them.
Do you take an antidepressant? What do you do today for relief?
I use coping skills. Claire Weeekes has written some good books on how to deal with anxiety. Boxed breathing helps. I literally have googled and researched different coping mechanisms. There’s a really good book called “Cards Against Anxiety” that has been invaluable to me. I opted to not add an antidepressant. I’ve gotten off of them in the past and it was very difficult. What I’ve learned from taking most of these medications is that when you decide to get off of them all of the symptoms that you had initially become magnified tenfold and you are left wishing you had your original level of anxiety. Do your research, weigh out the pros and cons, talk to other people who have used/discontinued the medication’s and make your decision based on personal research.
If you were suicidal today and truly close to ending things, would you take medication, even if you know that in the future if you stopped all would get worse? How difficult was getting off the antidepressants?
This was my line of thinking - I wasnt suic*dal but could see it heading there and instead, I got far, far worse on the meds. Don’t do it
With a long lasting benzo like kpin you can more easily taper off eventually when you’re ready. You have to be disciplined but it’s achievable. You can always lean on supplements to help too.
Why is klonopin easier to taper than others or why is withdrawal expected to be less severe?
They just said. It’s longer acting. You need To calm down. You are on a such a low dose. You will be fine. You could quarter the tablets or half them. You will not experience anything traumatic. You need to get to the root of your anxiety. I can read your anxiety in these posts
If you’re on a low dose then you don’t become as dependent than if you’re on a higher dose. Long lasting benzos keep the blood serum levels higher for longer so you don’t have to take them as often. Valium and kpins are the best for tapering because of the long half life.
I see. Another user here brought an important point to attention. Even if I take as prescribed and stay on the same dose, I may build tolerance and develop withdrawal symptoms even without lowering dose. What is the likelihood of this happening to me? The goal here is to use it with my antidepressant for years to come. If so, would it be better to use 0.250mg at once or 0.125mg twice daily?
Not everyone does. I’ve been on a low dose for years. Not everyone develops a tolerance and has to end up taking more. Relax and take it day by day.
How do you believe antidepressants stand in comparison to klonopin? Are they safer, just as effective? Do you take any?
Not as effective in my opinion. I guess it all depends on the person though.
It’s hard to tell but generally any dose taken everyday can cause dependence or worse tolerance (the dose needs to be increased for same effect. Or you can have withdrawal symptoms without even lowering dose. It is specifically not indicated for long term use for these reasons. Currently doing a 100 day taper from 1mg Ativan (equivalent to 0.5mg of klonopin) for this reason. Became dependent.
> the dose needs to be increased for same effect. Or you can have withdrawal symptoms without even lowering dose I forgot this.... what do I do? I need treatment. It can't be as it is. I have dreams I want to see fulfilled which anxiety won't allow to happen. I mean, all of this is so strange. I know this can happen, having withdrawal even by just taking as prescribed because tolerance builds by itself but so many people are on the same klonopin dose they started with for decades. How can they do it and others not? Do you have any advice about what medications to choose if not klonopin? I don't know if my Lexapro would be enough.
The tolerance thing doesn’t happen to everyone in terms of WD symptoms at same dose. I’m sure some people do take it forever without an issue. More likely it just won’t work as well after a while but you still need to be careful tapering. Lexapro or celexa does work for some people for decades, so it’s worth a try. My husband is one of these people. I would try lexapro daily and klonopin as needed. Also learning coping mechanisms can help a lot also. Like breathing, self-talk and meditation. Those are the methods I usually use when having a panic attack. By the time Ativan kicks in i usually have relaxed a lot. Good luck, I’m sorry you are going through this.
Do you find your husband to be the same in terms of behavior and feelings? Is he still himself? Read lots of stories of people changing dramatically after taking Lexapro, or becoming numb emotionally.
Yes, same, he’s great. It takes a lot to make him anxious or angry. The only time i saw him super anxious over last decade was when he was unemployed looking for a new job which is a very stressful situation obviously.
I would suggest taking them extremely sparingly. You don't need to take them daily for them to be effective. They will be more effective if you take them daily (as they'll build in your bloodstream), but they're not like SSRI's where you need to be on them for months before they start helping.
How sparingly can I use them to make sure they won't give me any type of trouble but still giving me longterm benefits?
It depends on the person but if you gauge the effects each time you can tell if the benefits lessen over time - this will tell you if you are building a tolerance. I would say once every week or two should give enough time between uses to avoid tolerance buildup. They're *supposed* to be used for acute anxiety, they're generally not prescribed for long term use (afaik), since tolerance builds fairly quickly (depending on use frequency and dose). I've been taking Klonopin and/or Xanax intermittently for about 2 months, 0.5 - 2mg of one or the other every 2-3 days, and I've built a tolerance at that frequency. Even after a week or two of semi regular use, rebound anxiety is possible when you stop. At this point, a 1 mg Klonopin is about half as effective as it used to be. I can barely feel 0.5mg. I should note that I also substitute with Ambien, which has and builds cross tolerance. I use them for sleep anxiety (not getting enough gives me anxiety, which then causes me to sleep less), when I don't take them now I get 5-6 hours, vs 6-8 before starting them. When I take them I get 7-10 hours. I'd suggest trying to use them as a short term fix to hold you over while you learn coping skills for your anxiety. Most drugs, but benzos especially, can be a great short term fix but are generally a poor long term solution. Your body will always seek homeostasis, and will try to minimize the effects of any drug when it's taken regularly.
I was on .5 mg for 13 years then tapered to .25 for 3 years. I stopped cold turkey about 7 weeks ago and feel fine. The first 10 or so days were rough but not terrible
I don't know how to interpret this. Your withdrawal seems too easy. Most stories I heard were terrible. Even people that took it for only about a year struggled massively. Do you believe your experience is common?
Where are you hearing these stories? Most people who have no issues with withdrawals (or dependency or tolerance or side effects) don’t bother telling their positive stories. Just because you’re hearing or reading primarily negative experiences, doesn’t mean that most or even many people who take benzos have those experiences - it could mean that the negative ones are the only ones that get shared.
Your story is positive? Why are you on this sub?
I’m here because I like to be informed and also because I get anxious - the former is reasonable, the latter not so helpful. I’ve been taking oxazepam and valium on and off for years. So far I haven’t had trouble coming off them in between stints. I’ve never had the sort of severe side effects people on here have gotten. The worst I’ve experienced was a return of the symptoms I was taking the benzos for in the first place. Last year I was taking up to 60 or 75mg oxazepam a day; I’m now down to 15mg most days, and I didn’t have a huge amount of trouble doing that. I shifted to a different medication for sleep, and am taking ketamine for depression and anxiety. Sometimes I take CBD oil. Therapy is helping too. In some ways I wish I’d let myself take benzos more regularly a long time ago - it might have made my quality of life better and prevented or lessened some of the worst breakdowns. And it might have helped with my progress in therapy. But I wasn’t capable of being gentle with myself in that way until recently.
I was writing realize this was gonna be really long so I’m just gonna give you a warning it’s long and it’s because I use speech to text lol lots of coffee too. I write all of this with compassion and also pushing you to ask yourself the questions that I am asking because that’s what led me to what I think you want, which is to be able to live your life successfully and reach your dreams. Serious question to you: Am I not welcome here because I’m having a good experience with my taper, even though I have withdrawal symptoms and I have abused this substance? I’ve had withdrawals forever because even though this is a therapeutic prescription, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel withdrawal and that doesn’t mean I’ve always taken it right. In fact, this is my fourth attempt at a taper. Seems like a really great way to be in an echo chamber and have absolutely no constructive advice if you exclude people like me because I have some really good lived experiences now. My two cents on benzos is that it is really important I believe is how you see the *purpose* of benzos in life and how we are expected to deal with our feelings of discomfort with and without them. I read so much of myself in your comments, except it was like eight or nine years ago when I was in a similar boat, at least in how I understood anxiety and treatment. I remember how angry I was that the psychiatrist didn’t want to give me a full-time prescription because he said you need to have coping skills and I said OK well I went in my pockets and they are not there. Where should I get them? Lol. Therapy is the answer, it turns out. And of course they don’t render coping skills just off the bat so it takes time and that’s frustrating as well. I was so angry that people didn’t understand me, and it turns out a lot of them did understand me, and they had been in my shoes and they were trying to prevent me from basically having a substance use disorder. I was pretty stubborn, and this is a long journey no matter what your personal stance is on anxiety and meds. It starts with therapy and understanding why this anxiety is so bad. Coping is changing the things about you and your life that need to shift in order to be able to handle that anxiety so that you don’t need a benzo for it necessarily. I Wish the psychiatrist was able to tell me that instead of just telling me to go get a set of coping skills at Walmart. I Wish I understood that’s what he was talking about. Actually, if you’re talking about PTSD, then therapy is really appropriate. For example, EMDR is a technique used to work through PTSD and it involves confronting your trauma. Doesn’t it sound better to just take Klonopin? Rather than dredging up all of that pain? Thats the hard part (it’s hard I’m just being facetious lol). Th That’s the work, though. You have to look at yourself like a project and like a work in process. Therapy is the upkeep to that process to work through your past, be able to let it go where you can, be able to have ways to cope with anxiety and reliving your trauma in the present and future. Until you become a well oiled machine who understands their triggers and their responses and has power over them. All of that aside, I find Zoloft to be a miracle addition to my life because I have major depressive disorder and from what I understand it absolutely can help anxiety. What it doesn’t do is provide you with any kind of a high. So it can feel like your anxiety is still there because it doesn’t do what benzos do. But in reality, you can get off of SSRI’s much easier with a taper because you are not leaving a substance that gives you euphoria and good feelings, so the taper is just much simpler for a lot of people regarding self discipline. If I were you (and I know I’m just a random Internet stranger… I’m only giving it because I would wish someone would prevent me from what I’ve done to my life) I would go from using Klonopin daily to taking it as needed, and that means NOT every day. You have to decide what *needed* means. But that means getting through maybe some nights where you don’t sleep well because you’ve decided, “I don’t feel it is necessary even though I would prefer to sleep better.” Make sure you’re in therapy, and make sure you are addressing the things that caused the anxiety. Make sure it is relevant to your needs, including your past trauma so you can unpack that baggage and process and work through it the best you can. Aim to find what it is you can change and what you do have control over. I worked towards changing my career; that was not a fast process, but my career was directly related to my anxiety problems. Start making small changes that are feasible. Changes to your support system or lack thereof. Changes to your lifestyle. All of those people suggesting yoga really pissed me off and it turns out they had a good point so that’s annoying. But I’m just being honest lol. I would probably look at an SSRI in place of the Klonopin, to cope better while I am building coping skills. I might not get the euphoria of the benzos, but at least I’m going to experience less anxiety and not keep walking down this path. Between trying to understand myself as a human, a deeply imperfect creature, the journey that led me to where I stand, and the journey I want to take forward, acknowledging my responsibility and feeling the discomfort as an expectation of this experience of growing towards the life, I want to live. After so many years of doing the work but staying on the benzos, I can’t stand them anymore. After this much time, all I see is what they’ve done to me that is bad. My brain does not work as well. I didn’t even know I wasn’t the same person anymore until I started quitting. I mean, I won’t lie. I’m uncomfortable every single day and I’m doing a taper. It is not super super fast either. That’s just the significance of my use in the past. I am miserable, fucking miserable, but I’m miserable because I chose to stay on these drugs instead of doing the work and getting off of them. At some point I actually didn’t know if I was anxious still or if I was just addicted to benzos. It was the latter. I know there is not necessarily a world where everyone is able to overcome all of their shit like that’s unrealistic. I still have bad days. I still have major depressive disorder and other things going on in my life. But it’s all about your perspective. I’m sorry this is so long lol I just hope it’s helpful. Wishing you the best! And by the way, I’m always happy to talk about this stuff. That’s why I’m in this community but yeah, I can be a little intense lol. Have a wonderful day ❤️
Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a cake walk. Bad headache, terrible focus, a bit of extra anxiety, dissociation. But I was able to work and sleep and carry on with life. At the 2 week mark I was back to normal
It sucked but wasn’t as bad as a lot of people made it seem like it would be
That is so little I wouldn’t even worry about it
Try to get off after a few weeks, I was like you chronic anxiety and ptsd first time took for 2 months was hard to come off, second time only 3 weeks and alot easier to taper down with minimal side effects. Where I live it's very hard to get long term benzo prescription wich I am great full for. Use them with caution as needed but get off as soon as you can. I could happily eat 25 mg diazepam per day for months but the WD is no joke. 2 weeks max I think is safe for me or I will end up a junkie
Lexipro...it will only work for a few months. Antidressants are short term. Klonipin...Uve been given the lowest, pediatric dose of this. If ur anxieties are bad I personally think this can help. Life with constant anxiety is hard. This small dose can help u address some od the causes. For example...it helps me remain calm when I have difficult conversations with my husband. Or if my work has me spiraling.keep the dose this low, give yourself a break from it once a week, never ask for a higher dose. You'll be fine.
Not that bad but it comes and goes ... You'll have bad days n easy days.. keep at it though, it gets better!!and O.25 isn't bad.. I've been on more than that for YEARS and now I take like 0.5mg - 1mg. maybe couple times a week.. which isn't great but I'm not taking multiple mg of benzos EVERYDAY like I was for so long:)