Quitting benzos isn't even
that hard if you know what you're doing.
- Don't go cold turkey without medical supervision. You can get delirious and/or receive irreversible brain damage, in addition to feeling unbearably awful with anxiety and craving.
- Benzos give a paradoxical reaction of increasing anxiety not just when quitting, but also when being addicted for a longer time period.
- Benzos are a CNS depressant so they make you depressed and overall worse off.
- Switch to diazepam equivalent dose, could be even 30 mg or higher immediately, even before starting off tapering. It's actually going to feel less anxious at this point. It's less psychologically addictive.
- Get a non-addictive sleep aid, such as antidepresants. Something like an average dose of mirtazapine and/or trazodone will help a lot. You can even get quetiapine in addition to that, but it's going to make you feel more depressed.
- There was a website with a .uk TLD that had tapering plans and diazepam equivalents.
- Taper off diazepam slowly as much as you can, without turning into a shivering mess, at the very start you can decrease it by 2 mg a week, but to be safe you can go all the way by -1 mg till 15-10 mg.
- You can leave the dose for 2 weeks if you get excessive craving, but don't keep it at the dose for more than that or you're going to relapse.
- If you taper off below 10 mg, decrease it by less than 1 mg a week.
- Taper off by less or equal to 10% of the previous dose at a time.
- Tapering off low doses is much more painful
- Now either taper it till 3 mg, or immediately go to rehab.
- Don't go to rehab before changing to diazepam and tapering some off of it. It's going to be more traumatic.
- You're going to be in a complete haze for 2-3 days or even more at rehab. More you taper off beforehand, better for you.
- If you don't go to rehab, just quit after tapering off to 3 mg and staying at the dose for 2 weeks. It's going to feel awful, but only for 2-3 days.
- Don't get discouraged, I finished tapering off at the third attempt after 2 years.
- It helps a lot to be visiting a psychiatrist.
- Now don't take them again, ever.
- Edit: don't drink any alcohol for the duration of quitting. It's going to exacerbate the addiction (you can """fix""" benzo craving by drinking vodka, but alcohol has shorter half-life so don't do that).
- Edit: mixing benzos and alcohol will give you brain damage. Especially when taking large doses of diazepam, as it has a relatively long half-life.
- Edit 2: you can split the diazepam dose into even three daily parts to reduce craving and anxiety, especially when tapering off.
Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, and there's no warranty included (except for moral culpability).
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