Snowdoveee & benzo WD's...

[wait2long]

I am not sure if anyone here will remember a member that was here a while ago, her name was snowdoveee. well i just heard from her personally, the first time in months.  she has not been around or able to post, so she asked me to tell all of you why and what happened to her..this is her story the best i can tell it....
she is one of the sweetest ladies i have ever met...i met her about 5-6 months ago on this very forum, at the time she was addicted to benzos...xanax if i remember correctly. she was taking an extremely high dose at the time and was trying to taper , she was trying to stop the cycle of addiction even though she had real anxiety and panic problems, i spoke to her daily for quite a while, off the forum also.  then one day i didnt hear from her, days went by,and turned into weeks, then over a month had passed, still no word from Snowdoveeee, i was getting quite worried..about 5-6 weeks later, i received an e-mail from her daughter to inform me that snowdovee had a stroke and had been in the hospital ever since the last time i spoke with her...it was caused from her tapering off benzos...she had tried to cold turkey off them once before until i warned her of the dangers, so she started taking them again because of my warnings and decided at that point to taper with a doctors help...well from what i understand,(please excuse me if i am wrong Snow) she wasnt honest with the doctor about the amount of benzos she was taking probably out of shame?, embarrassment? stigma?,..whatever the reason, it didnt matter...she had a stroke and has life long problems from this, upcoming surgeries, a lot of work ahead of her, and days upon days of nothing but sleeping just to recover,..the doctors said she would be LUCKY if she is able to recover in a years time because of the damage of trying to get off the benzos...so anyone out there with an addiction to benzos, or just messing around with benzos or just starting on benzos...please head this as a warning...this is an extremely dangerous drug to get off...do not ever lie to your doctor about your meds, always be honest, do not be in a rush to get off benzos, it must be a slow process with a doctors help...you never know what these types of meds can do to you...this is not a post to judge anyone...
if you ask why i write this?
because i just promised this sweet lady, who is having a hard time typing that i would do this for her, i would put out her story about the dangers of getting off benzos...i promised her.
she wants everyone who is having ANY issues with benzos to please. please take this as a warning and get the proper help, you could end up paying for this for the rest of your life....
PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!!!

[wait2long]

BUMP

[lostmarbles]

i hope your'e well... it's so good that they are letting you know how things are going for snow..please keep us informed of her progress and yours of course.. lots of love Mx

[wait2long]

I have received an e-mail from snowdovees 3 daughters...they are amazed and are so grateful for the amount of love, care and support you people have shown for snow, even though most of you dont know her...they are EXTREMELY grateful!!!
thanks to all who responded to this post!!

[wait2long]

bump again...
i want everyone to have the chance to see this...

[lostmarbles]

bump!!!

[wait2long]

sorry guys, gotta bump again, i see a lot of posts asking about addiction to klonipins and xanax and other benzos...they need to read this...

[lostmarbles]

i have read so many stories here about taper plans off other meds.. and some include taking xanax to help them taper.. im confused by this as surely its going from one addiction to the other.. i simply dont understand..

[sadinmichigan]

Thankyou for being her voice. People really don't understand the seriousness of xanax and the rest of the benzo's. I saw a woman have a seizure at counseling because she had just decided she no longer needed them. It's tragicabout your friend. Please let her know that I will be praying for her and her family. I hope even one person heeds the advice.

[wait2long]

BUMP!!!  i want everyone to see this...

[VicUser]

Well, it's been many many years since I have smelt the smoking kind. But I get excited when it's time to start mowing and a little depressed when it's time to put the mowers away for winter

[lostmarbles]

i love the smell of grass.... the mowing kind, not the smoking kind!!!

[VicUser]

It's just past midnight here, and the weather is supposed to be rainy and then get cold again tomorrow evening. It was up to 14C today. I can't wait for spring to get out side and mow grass

[lostmarbles]

its up already.... ive eaten a huge packet of cereal from last night!!!

[VicUser]

The sun will be coming up there soon won't it?

[lostmarbles]

hello again!!!! I like you.... if you and the missus are ever in the uk.. look me up... icant wait for sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!! you do make me giggle lots!!

[VicUser]

Wait till you get old like me, tired by 10:00 and then up two or three times during the night. I think I would rather be up 24 hrs and then sleep well.

[lostmarbles]

funny you should say that but I am awake now 48 hours straight... it seems that i do not sleep at all for a couple of days and then by the third night im like a zombie and sleep for 12-16 hours.. i have learnt now to not drive myself mad as I only get worse!! When i was 27 i was on another benzo, tamazepam, because I suffered from insomnia.. i took that for a year and came off it with no problem.. in fact to be honest I may have had a mild cold following my coming off it but no where near as bad as the w/ds i got from the xanax.... i am now trying simply to not wallow in my lack of sleep but instead keep myself occupied by being on this site, reading, writing, eating cereal !!, anything really other than get stressed about being awake...I know how crazy lack of sleep can make us.. when the doctor put me on xanax I had no idea it was a benzo, i certainly didnt know it was addictive until it started controlling my life... i went to see the doctor because I was suffering from anxiety, stress and insomnia!!! please let me know how you get on...

you can message me anytime xx

[kimmieb]

wow, that's wonderful that  you're finally clean off the benzos.  Me?  I'm still on them.  however, I've found a GREAT doctor who knows his stuff and has a very specific plan for "chipping away" at the ativan....slowly and successfully.  He said that the biggest mistake people on benzos make when they want to taper off is that they taper off WAY too quickly (not so much a fault of their own, but caused because some of these pills don't come in very large strengths to begin with,and trying to cut down a small percentage at a time is impossible -- in reality, with a benzo, you're only supposed to cut down 2% every week or two, so you can imagine the time it would take to really do it successfully!  Anyway, I'm looking forward to one day being off of these.....but my problem is, I'll still have the same presenting problem I went in to the doctor with -- complete insomnia!!!  

How do you now feel after 11 days off?  Are you able to sleep?  Was that ever an issue for you before (like before you started on the benzo)?

Thanks.....

[lostmarbles]

I can so relate... your experience is awful too... I dont know why some doctors just hand them out as you said week after week, year after year.. they are truly dangerous... I just stopped my intake a few weeks ago not knowing the consequences of these meds and went in to complete c/t followed by severe w/d's not knowing what was happening to me.. after days and days of zero sleep i went back to the same doctor and asked for help - NOT meds, just help... she then promptly wrote another prescription of xanax out along with a script for sleeping pills as well as a script for anti depressants... i was begging her at this point saying i didnt want them but that i needed help for what I was going through, not realising I needed a taper plan of some kind but she was adamant i TAKE THEM ... i went home and woke up in hospital on a heart monitor because I overdosed... not intentionally but nonetheless it almost killed me.. i was unconscious for a few days and have no recollection of how and why... i can only guess that i was so distressed and dilirious at the state i was in trying to get through it, noy knowng what was happening to me that I think I just took the lot... its very frightening what these benzos can do to you... anyhow im with another doctor and have tapered off successfully and have been clean bow for 11 days.... just wanted to share that with you.

[Goldrush1971]

Yes... I'm sure... I asked him what he would recommend and he mentioned both Chantex and Xanax.... He said he's has heard a lot of negatives about Chantex so he wasn't too confident in it..... I told him to write me a script for whatever he recommends.... He said "let’s go with the Xanax".... I actually have the script.... I've only taken a couple tablets... They don't seem to do much... I'm not  going to take anymore.... I just know how I am.......I just can’t go down that road again……. This Dr doesn’t know about my addiction problem... I should probably tell him.....

[kimmieb]

Tragic, tragic story.  I hate these benzos....and I hate the doctors who feel the need to prescribe them....and I had the diseases which REQUIRE benzos to be taken.  I was almost another one of those statistics about 10 months ago.  Back in April, I had a radical hysterectomy.  For years, I'd been on a small amout of ativan, taken religiously every night before bedtime, to aid with insomnia.  I had been on it for YEARS.  Well, long story short, I ran out, shortly after I got out of the hospital after my surgery, but with recovery and everything else topsy turvy after the surgery, I didn't think much about it.  At that point in my life, I was a little more naive about this drug and thought it was like any other -- being off of it for just a few days couldn't be THAT bad, right?  Just needed time to call me doctor for a refill (he knew I'd just had surgery and wouldn't be able to see him for a few more weeks, and he's always good at just refilling in cases like that).  WEll, nice doctor, he chose THAT time to decide no more refills until I see him.  I was out of the hospital 2 days, experiencing severe surgically-induced menopause at the age of 46, and was going through life-threatening benzo wd's (although I didn't know it at the time -- I thought ALL of the symptoms were severe menopausal symptoms!!!)  I was shaking, tremoring, chilled to the bone, no sleep  and I mean not a minute of sleep for nights and nights, until I took an ambien and got 2 hours.  Anyway, I finally put two and two together and figured out I was wd'ing from the 2 mg. of ativan I'd usually taken every night for the past years.  My husband called my doctor, who was rude on the phone to him and very cranky about calling in a prescription......even though I could have stroked out or worse, DIED!  Unbelievable.  Needless to say, I never stepped foot in that doctor's office again. Here he had put me on those benzos years ago and continued to write out prescriptions, month after month,year after year, then when it was REALLY critical, he decided no more.  I'm still not sure what triggered in him to behave like that.  All I know is that he told my husband he was still reeling from another phone call he'd just gotten from yet another husband of a long-time patient of his, and the husband was having an absolute fit because he just had to admit his wife to an in-patient drug facility to detox off of some drug that this doctor had been prescribing for her.  Still, as a DOCTOR, in his particular situation, he SHOULD have known better, wouldn't you agree???  It wasn't as if I'd ever abused the drug before.  Just took it as prescribed.  Anyway, it's a week of my life I will never, ever forget, as long as I live.  And, because of that terrifying, dreadful experience, I'm balking about trying to taper and eventually stop taking the lortabs I take for head and neck pain, too.  I can't help think of one potential wd without thinking of what I went through (unintentionally) with the other wd symptoms.  They were BAD.  They were worse than bad.  I was asking God to just take me then, as I was lying shaking and trembling on the couch after the 2nd or 3rd night.  Now, I'm scared to death to try going off the lortabs.  But, regardless, I just wanted to add that the story of this poor woman is tragic and is very real.  Benzos are not to be taken lightly.  I can speak from personal experience.  PLEASE PLEASE, if you do take them, just try to take them very responsibly, and if you feel yourself getting out of hand with them, talk to your doctor immediately so that he can get you back on track.  It's not worth stroking out or dying just because we're embarrassed to tell our doctor what we've been taking.  A truly good doctor would understand, maybe wouldn't be happy, but would understand (cuz it happens all the time anyway!!) and would take matters into his hands the way a doctor should.  Just don't go to the doctor I was seeing at the time.  Stay away from him!!!! :-(

God bless this woman and her recovery.....

[wait2long]

sorry i was wrong..it is benzodiazepine  not "pam", in this case...

[wait2long]

just try to google benzodiazepam   and see what you get...maqybe that may list them all?  there are so many...

[wait2long]

are you sure he didnt recommend "chantex".. this is a new drug to aid in quitting smoking...?  just curious, if not stay away from the benzos...seems like cigarettes may be the lesser of 2 evils here...good luck!