# Xanax withdrawal



## dreamingoflife (Oct 22, 2006)

I am dealing with xanax withdrawal and was just wondering if anyone else here has? It's making my dr/dp a lot worse, my anxiety is through the roof lately, the simpliest things send me into panic, I can't sit still sometimes, I get a racing mind,my eyes jump and it's hard to focus on stuff, I get depressed sometimes and it's hard to get motivated for anything. I feel like I am going pyschotic or something at times. I hate xanax for what it has done to me. It helped at first but now i regret ever taking it.


----------



## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Are you tapering slowly? I would like to know how much you've been taking for how long?

I've heard that even a decent stint deserves a 3 month taper process. And as Dreamer says - Take as long as you need... Or yeah you end up in hell.

I would like to know some information about your situation because I was thrown headfirst into Klonopin ~2mg a day and I need to know at what point i'm bringing hell to myself.

BTW some people taper to a crazy degree. Like practically shaving the pill less and less each week..... so sad.


----------



## dreamingoflife (Oct 22, 2006)

Well I am not a daily user of it but on this go around but I've been taking xanax on and off for 4 years now. Back in 2006 i took .50mg daily for 6 months and then stopped cold turkey with no issues at all, then over the next 2.5 years i took it only when i had bad dp or a panic attacks which sometimes i would go 3-4 months without one. About 10 months ago I had a vertigo spell in public and it caused me to have bad anxiety because of was scared of having those spells again so anytime i would go somewhere I would take a small dose usually .25mg-.50mg (sometimes .75mg) like twice a week and i have been doing it this way for the last 10 months but now in between doses I am having major freak outs with all the above symptoms i mentioned. So I am not tapering or cutting I have just been using it the same way as I mentioned. I think my body has build up tolerance and now I am dealing with all the withdrawals when I don't take one and it's pure hell at times. I am contemplating doing a taper schedule and take it daily and slowly cut down even though i haven't taken the daily since 2006 but this anxiety is killing me.


----------



## reason (Jul 12, 2010)

dreamingoflife said:


> I am dealing with xanax withdrawal and was just wondering if anyone else here has? It's making my dr/dp a lot worse, my anxiety is through the roof lately, the simpliest things send me into panic, I can't sit still sometimes, I get a racing mind,my eyes jump and it's hard to focus on stuff, I get depressed sometimes and it's hard to get motivated for anything. I feel like I am going pyschotic or something at times. I hate xanax for what it has done to me. It helped at first but now i regret ever taking it.


that sucks. i read about that the other day brah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_withdrawal_syndrome


----------



## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

I quit benzos in december after being on them for 3 years. I went off 1 mg/day. The first 30 days were rough. I took depakote, an anti seizure med for 30 days and also trazadone for sleep. I was in rehab and so i was forced to constantly stay busy and be around people which is ultimately what saved me because it caused me to pay as little attention to it as i could. Before this I tried going off by myself for 9 days and almost went crazy because i locked myself in my room. My best advice would be to stay around people as much as possible even though it's super uncomfortable. Let them know what you are going through. Can you go to your parents house or a friends during the day everyday? Also taking something for sleep is important. Even melatonin which is a natural over the counter sleep aid will probably help you a lot. Know that it will be rough but it won't be forever. For me I really didn't have much of a problem after 30 days. By 60 days I felt almost completely normal (normal as can be with dp meh). By 90 days the anxiety wasn't even bothering me. I was really scared when I first went off them because I read stories telling me that it would take many months, up to a year to feel normal again. That was totally not true in my case. In fact it wasn't at all as bad as I had it built up to be in my head.


----------



## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Jesus fucking christ. Man benzos are the devil. I don't think you were taking all too much Dreamingoflife. I expected you to say you'd been doing like 1-3mg every day for 1-3 years. Its different for everybody I hear. I'm sorry man. I hope you can do some sort of tapering thing. Talk to hardcore professionals on it. Doctors can be so stupid, but perhaps you could find a way to get a lot of docs oppinions on it and see what keeps coming up. Loads of internet searching and what not.

Man I have so many questions. I'm currently taking about 1.5 total a day of Klonopin. Its not supposed to be as addictive as Xanax cause of its longer half-life. I'm supposed to take a mid day .5mg but sometimes i forget.. or "forget". and honestly it hasn't bothered me yet. I did it consistently for weeks and then I miss some and nothing really seemed to happen. Though i've never gone more than like 15 hours with out some kind of dose.

I don't even know how long i've been on these things. All I know is I should probably not exceed 3 or 4 months total at the rate i'm going. anybody have any oppinions on that?

I don't know what hte withdrawels are like. can you still work? I have to work!! can you function at all? Do most people have to go on some sort of sick leave? I'm doomed if it gets really bad. doomed.

DreamingofLife: I've done research myself before even starting benzos (first was xanax for me. Only took xanax like 6 times total and .5 mg max) and got what information I could on withdrawel and tapering. Sadly being that I normally have a hard time remembering things and then you throw DP in there I can hardly remember shit! hahahha. oh







. But in my looking around there is this thing called Protracted Withdrawel Syndrome. You could look into that. I don't wanna give you googleitis or whatever but its a rare case in which somebody has a heavy withdrawel reaction to a drug. Basically in a short ammount of time the body/brian goes. GIMME GIMME GIMME and I believe theres rare cases of people who will take benzos normally for like 1 month and then have heavy heavy withdrawel for like a year! That doesn't seem to be the case with you due factors in your story though.

I was going to ask you about "regret" but I think I see it. You werent really using xanax all that much and your in hell right now. I like to hear about the regret because it can give me an idea if and when I should taper off this crap. For some people its a life saver to the end. For me so far I kinda see them as helping me a lot. For some though no matter what once they hit withdrawel it just wasn't worth it. So any input on that is good. I don't want to be like you in 4 months, coming on here going "OMG SOMEBODY KILL ME NOW!"


----------



## dreamingoflife (Oct 22, 2006)

BlueTank said:


> Jesus fucking christ. Man benzos are the devil. I don't think you were taking all too much Dreamingoflife. I expected you to say you'd been doing like 1-3mg every day for 1-3 years. Its different for everybody I hear. I'm sorry man. I hope you can do some sort of tapering thing. Talk to hardcore professionals on it. Doctors can be so stupid, but perhaps you could find a way to get a lot of docs oppinions on it and see what keeps coming up. Loads of internet searching and what not.
> 
> Man I have so many questions. I'm currently taking about 1.5 total a day of Klonopin. Its not supposed to be as addictive as Xanax cause of its longer half-life. I'm supposed to take a mid day .5mg but sometimes i forget.. or "forget". and honestly it hasn't bothered me yet. I did it consistently for weeks and then I miss some and nothing really seemed to happen. Though i've never gone more than like 15 hours with out some kind of dose.
> 
> ...


I was on a pretty low dose of xanax but from my understanding xanax is a little bit more harsh when trying to get off of it because of the amount of time it lasts, which for me i got about 6 hours max from a pill but now i get maybe 3 if I am lucky. I just got tolerate to .50-.75mg and I refuse to take more than that so I have no choice but to just stop taking it all together. I don't know much about klonopin but I go to another forum for people getting off benzos and that is where I try and get a little more information. I can give you the link if you are interested in it. There are people on all sorts of benzos and other drugs like it on there that are tapering off. Be cautious of the horror stories though because just like on here there are those people on there that will scare the crap out of you too. I have seen people on the website that are tapping or C/T their meds and still manage to hold down a job but then others can't get out of bed. It varies on the person and also how much and how fast you taper too. Right now I am to the point of saying "Somebody kill me" at times because I can't concentrate and I get so anxious and dr'd I can't think straight but I have been messing with xanax for 4 years and i think my body has had enough and I am dealing with an cumulative effect. I am not going to give you any advice about if you should stay on it or not but I will say DO NOT DO COLD TURKEY! It can mess you up beyond belief. I just wished I would have been informed about xanax like I know now so I could have passed up on taking it because I feel like a mess right now. When the xanax worked it done miracles i won't lie, i felt soo good but now I am paying for it like i never thought i would. Just do some research, talk to your doctor and taper off it. Those drugs are no joke.


----------



## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

BlueTank said:


> Jesus fucking christ. Man benzos are the devil. I don't think you were taking all too much Dreamingoflife. I expected you to say you'd been doing like 1-3mg every day for 1-3 years. Its different for everybody I hear. I'm sorry man. I hope you can do some sort of tapering thing. Talk to hardcore professionals on it. Doctors can be so stupid, but perhaps you could find a way to get a lot of docs oppinions on it and see what keeps coming up. Loads of internet searching and what not.
> 
> Man I have so many questions. I'm currently taking about 1.5 total a day of Klonopin. Its not supposed to be as addictive as Xanax cause of its longer half-life. I'm supposed to take a mid day .5mg but sometimes i forget.. or "forget". and honestly it hasn't bothered me yet. I did it consistently for weeks and then I miss some and nothing really seemed to happen. Though i've never gone more than like 15 hours with out some kind of dose.
> 
> ...


First of all Dreaming of life is not going to have withdrawal for a year. Telling someone that with DP while withdrawing isn't the best idea. I was on 8 mg xanax at one point and now have not used benzos in over 7 months and I have severe DP, so it is definitely doable. It didn't take me a year to withdrawal either. In fact I was pretty much fine after 30 days. Tapering properly is important but Dreamingoflife said she wasn't on more than 1 mg and wasn't using daily. Don't get too caught up in stories you hear of people withdrawing from benzos. Maybe if you have been using for 10 years 4+ mg/day then maybe it will take months and months but probably not for someone using less than 1 mg periodically.

Also BlueTank you asked for advice on benzos so I figure I'll throw my 2 cents in. I think that it really depends on the person and each of us are different. For me personally I was taking benzos and it really didn't help me. Sure it made me feel slightly better but I was still DP'd and also it made me slower and killed my sex drive. I knew it was something I didn't want to be on for life and felt like it may have even been preventing me from getting better from DP so I decided to stop taking them to see if I could get better without them. It's been around 7 months now and I am glad to be off them even with the DP still being here. There are other people though who they seem to do the trick for. For some people it seems like benzos make them feel practically recovered. In that case, hell, i'd be downing them by the bottle lol. You have to be aware though, and this is something that your doctor probably didn't tell you, that if you decide to stay on klonopin (or any benzo) long term you will become dependent on it and if you decide to stop some day you will face withdrawal. Also most people seem to build a tolerance so you may have to keep upping the dose to get the desired result. In which addiction is taking place sometimes without you even knowing it.


----------



## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Surfing is fun. Sorry I had no intention at all in scaring. at all. If you read at the end I said its very rare and that it doesn't sound like it would be teh case with her because of her story. I only brought it up because of the dose vs the "please god kill me". It was just meant as more information, which I know can be bad. too much info is bad. Sorry I brought it up. It wasn't a story from the internet, It was in wikipedia researching for myself so I knew what I was getting into. I'm that guy that likes to know what percentage of sky divers die every year before jumping. Especially since I got crazy Myocolonic Jerks from Seroquel! I wasn't saying she has it, which is why i brought up "googlitis"... I said "I don't want to give you googleitis" as a warning. I should have said that at the beginning of the paragraph because I know bringing things up can lead to more and more crap - hypocondria aka googlitis









anyways

Thanks for the info man!

I did a lot of research before taking anything. Honestly the plunge to take it revolves a lot around being suicidal. I have another topic somewhere about if I should go for it or not and that was one of the factors. I believe I started taking quite a bit, but so far it seems to be helping me. Like you said about it helping DP/DR or not, it honestly doesn't do too much for that. I initially felt like it helped DP and racing thoughts a bit but didn't help DR too much. So really if its doing anything its holding back anxiety and getting me out there to see that I can live with DP/DR. That I can do stuff with the visual disturbances. So far its helping. But I would like to be on-point when It comes to knowing when to start tapering off. If i can do it sooner than later. then great. and fingers crossed it doesn't hit me hard.

Yeah there are a lot of stories out there and ofcourse the worst of the worst are going to post first. Some people can stop no problem. Some can't. I guess you could say dreamingoflifes story is one of the scary ones for me







. haha. So yeah. 2 way street on that!







hehe.


----------



## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

BlueTank said:


> Surfing is fun. Sorry I had no intention at all in scaring. at all. If you read at the end I said its very rare and that it doesn't sound like it would be teh case with her because of her story. I only brought it up because of the dose vs the "please god kill me". It was just meant as more information, which I know can be bad. too much info is bad. Sorry I brought it up. It wasn't a story from the internet, It was in wikipedia researching for myself so I knew what I was getting into. I'm that guy that likes to know what percentage of sky divers die every year before jumping. Especially since I got crazy Myocolonic Jerks from Seroquel! I wasn't saying she has it, which is why i brought up "googlitis"... I said "I don't want to give you googleitis" as a warning. I should have said that at the beginning of the paragraph because I know bringing things up can lead to more and more crap - hypocondria aka googlitis
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hey no worries, I wasn't trying to bash on you or anything. If it keeps you alive it keeps you alive, you know. How much are you taking and when are you planning on tapering? I like your avatar btw.


----------



## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

surfingisfun001 said:


> Hey no worries, I wasn't trying to bash on you or anything. If it keeps you alive it keeps you alive, you know. How much are you taking and when are you planning on tapering? I like your avatar btw.


All good. Um right now i'm taking basically Klonopin .5mg around 10am. .5mg around 4pm and 1mg around 10pm daily.

The doctor wants me to just keep improving on getting out there and hanging out with people. going to movies. doing whatever. Funny thing is I sit around on the computer a lot anyways. So a lot of it is just chatting with my friends/family like i used to. Then taper off as I no longer need it.

So I really don't know. I think going over 4 months total at this rate is probably not too good and that I should start tapering off around that time. Saying "I take a total of 2mg klonopin a day" sounds bad. It would be nice to just take like 1 in the morning or something. I've skipped my 4pm dose a few times and I personally dont' really notice any difference. I don't get home form work til late usually anyways. I don't see much of a difference. So I might try cutting that out first.

Yeah I actually really like that cover of the Feeling Unreal book. Its a cool painting. I need to get the jet pack and merge back together!

thanks man


----------



## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

How long have you been on it? If I were you (assuming you want to stop taking them) I would probably take .75 in the am and .75 in the pm for 2-3 weeks. then take .5 in the am and .5 in the pm for another 2-3 weeks. then take either .25 in the am and .25 in the pm or just .5 once/day for 2-3 weeks. then either stop and not go back on, or do just .25 once/day for anther 2-3 weeks, but at that point it's such a low dose you might want to just stop all together.


----------



## Surfingisfun001 (Sep 25, 2007)

however let me add, I'm not saying I think you should quit. only quit if you want to quit. i am neither for or against the use of benzos. i think it really depends on the individual, and if it's something that helps you get out and socialize/function better then it may be worth it to be on them right now. whatever you do, good luck.


----------

