I truly understand how you feel, I too have a dependency on ativan, another brand of benzos and as I've said before, I didn't really have any issues with this med, it controlled my anxiety and panic attacks and I was never aware of any specific side affects. I always knew it was a drug that becomes addictive but no one ever bothered me about my usage...sometimes my family doctor would say that it's a tough medication to stop but he never enforced me to try. In recent years this medication started getting more attention and it primarily linked up with the pain medication epidemic because it was highly lethal to combine the two meds. Now everyone is getting on board with trying to eliminate these meds because they don't want a bigger problem so now they are putting undue pressure on patients who've been taking them a long time, in fact the majority of these people are in their older ages, it's just cruel to push all these desperate people away because the doctor doesn't want to be associated associated with these drugs, hence they abandon their patients without conscience... I've notice that doctors are more apathetic today, they don't really care as much anymore, they complain about being overworked, etc. I understand they are human but their job is to help people in trouble and to be there for them, instead they just want to sweep you under the carpet like a bad secret. Someone mentioned here a subject called med shaming, I was initially startled to see this but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was happening to me as well, I just didn't connect the dots at the time. I truly don't know what they plan to do with people like us, stopping our meds is just going to lead to more problems not to mention it's heartless and cruel, after all it's like they want to punish us as though we're solely responsible for getting into this mess.