Protracted Benzo withdrawal

P.s. what state you live in I live in Oregon hardly any help. ??

I am 66 yrs old been on this crap for over 10 yrs. I'm on lower dose but I have low resistance to drugs. Anyway I was taking .5, 6 months ago I went down to 1/2 , that. Now I'm depressed cant eat hardly. So I shaved a quarter more off and not take 3/4, but still have depression. Do you think its withdrawals or am I just now depressed and need anti depressant. I hope not. I'm sick of depending on pills. Please answer and help. God bless thank you

Hi @joylin, you may have noticed I moved your post to this discussion so that you can have your posts in one place. Simply click VIEW AND REPLY in your email notification to get to your post.

While we wait for others to respond, have you had a chance to see your doctor to ask them about this?

Sorry for your problems. Ativan is a Benzo and all Benzos cause depression while taking them and more as you cut back. Just as all of the anticholesterol drugs cause depression( this was in the Lancet Journal of medicine in 2018 and that cholesterol had nothing to do with heart attacks. Wonder if anydoctor read that.).About a third or more of all prescription drugs are made with fluoride( that stuff they put in toothpaste) and it interferes with and prevents iodine from being absorbed so messes with your thyroid, besides the fact that fluoride is more poisonous than lead but slightly less than arsenic. I am sorry to tell you that the only help for Benzo withdrawal is slow withdrawal and then time to heal. The Ashton paper on benzo written by a professor Ashton in Great Britain in the 1980's or 1990's has the most information. The AMA refuses to say that prolonged Benzo withdrawal syndrome is real but you can get a lot of info from wickepedia on it. Some advice, do not drink any beverages with caffeine, no alcohol, no NSaids which means no prescription arthritis medication. Do not think that marijuana will help, it won't and might make you manic and out of our head for a few hours or a day and a half as it did my husband. The Benzos mess with the Gabba receptors and so do a lot of things that is why no alcohol etc. Opiod pain medications supposedly affect the my site, so are suppose to be ok. I doubt that. My husband began taking more opiod in Jan and FEBRUARY into early March and his withdrawal symptoms, which are many, have gotten a lot worse. There is no help from the medical people. My husband is going to a pain clinic because of all the pain that he has since weaning off of Xanax but the doctor told him that if it was really the Xanax, he should go back on it. His own doctor gave him Klonopin, another Benzo, which he mistakenly took one at two different times and it might have prolonged it more. It is like telling an alcoholic that he should stop hard liquor but go ahead and drink wine. The stupidity that you are faced with in a physician's office is mind boggling. You can find a lot of people on utube talking about their withdrawal from Benzo experience and it can be awful. Just make sure that you have the support of at least one person or more if possible because you will have suicide thoughts which you should NOT act on. It will pass with time. One woman had terrible pain in her teeth, which my husband has, and so she had her teeth pulled. It did not help her and when she eventually got over all the withdrawal symptoms, she regretted pulling her teeth. Good luck and pray a lot.

Sorry, but we do not eat procesed foods because of the junk in them and never have. I always canned a lot of our foods, buy local beef and pork and chickens and eat organic eggs and organic butter. I grew up on nasty margerine but in my 20's realize it was a lie and was poison so switched to butter. My husband's problems have not been caused food but by a stupid doctor who put him on Xanax for his headaches!! Benzos are only suppose to be prescribed three weeks at most and this was known in 1970! My husband was on Xanax 22 years and was put on antidepressants ( Benzos cause depression according to Harvard) and on an antipsychotic for sleep( unbelievable! Like I would want him to develop tardive dyskenesia!) and an epileptic drug( he is not epileptic!). . For 22 years every other year we went to some specialist for wierd, oddball symptoms which now I realize was caused by Xanax because it lasts 4 hours and then you go into withdrawals! He only took his Xanax once a day or twice so was ALWAYS in withdrawals!! I had him slowly wean off of everything over months, the Seroquel took two tries because he did it in only two months and paid for that. The Xanax he did in 6 months but not correctly because he was still drinking coffee, drinking a beer occasionally, taking his prescription arthritis pills all of which can help cause prolonged withdrawal syndrome because they work on the same receptor site. He goes to a pain clinic for an opiod for pain caused by the xanax withdrawal by since startng that he has gotten worse. Opiods work on a different site, the MU site but I think that is not true and they still somehow affect he bnzo withdrawal..He has been off of Xanax for 26 months but started having withdrawal symptoms 18 months ago and they have progressively worsened. MSU neurologists(3 different ones), know that his nerves are not conducting adequately to his muscles but do not know why. They so far have ruled out the MS,Parkinson's, and other things. We were told that if it was a serious disease process he would be dead or in a nursing home by now but no diagnosis. Well , it is PROLONGED BENZO WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME! Read the Ashton paper from Great Britain. I have spent the last 5 years trying to figure out his problems, first by spending over 80 hours reading about the methylation system and what his particular snips could be doing( he had his DNA checked) because he NEVER got rid of his headaches but got a lot more symptoms THANKS TO XANAX. Thanks to the internet, I can read about a lot of studies done at universities and not just in this country and also get information from the Lancet Journal of medicine.So please do not try to make me feel better about anything. I am very angry at the whole medical system as it is based on mountains of lies. In 2018, Harvard said in their medical journal that cholesterol had nothing to do with heart attacks and cholesterol lowering drugs cause depression, not to mention dementia. Was that on the news? No! The Psychiatric group met in Zurich, Switzerland and in February of last year and released a statement saying that GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER was made up by he pharmaceutical industry to sell their anxiety drugs. I am looking for answers to my husband's PROLONGED BENZO WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME not someone to patronize me.

To @aarniek, do not try a detox center for help. They do not know anything about Benzos. I am sorry that at 81 you are still going through PAWS. My husband is 73 and going through PAWS almost two years now. We think he did it incorrectly because asking your family doctor to guide you in Benzo withdrawal is like asking a beautician because neither one knows anything about it. Look up the prolonged Benzo withdrawal syndrome on wikepedia, there are quite a few good points and not so much reading. The Ashton Journal by profeser Ashton of Great Britain has information but I am afraid that it basically comes down to time. I have been scourering the Internet for 5 years trying to figure out my husband's problems and only in the last year come across PAWS. A case of too late smart so I do not think any of the information can help us. Big Pharma knew what Benzos did in 1970 but just wanted to make money so hid it. A special place in hell for those people.

My doctor is a neurologist and should not be allowed to prescribe a benzo as he gave me every medicine in the book in my first year of PAWS ,to help me and not only diid none of them help,i am sure thats why i have never improved,,only got worse in the last 6+ years !

The only thing is to not put anything in your body that stimulate the GABA receptors. No caffiene alcohol sugar sucralose aspartame gabonza beans monounsodium glutamate. This may not be a complete list. MSG is in anything that is processed. Anything boxed or canned. Fresh or frozen. Check out keto and paleo diet. I promise this helps.

I am weaning off klonopin too. Was at 2.0 and down to .75 mg. But have not seen any improvements in symptoms. I still feel as terrible as I did in the beginning. Used for many, many years, mainly for sleep. What symptoms did others have that triggered your decision to wean off?
I had severe fatigue, weight loss, blurred vision, BP spikes and later nausea, especially after meals. Still having all these, even after reduction in dosage.
How about others out there?

Good for you!