Opinions - how has benzos changed your life

[calmascanbe]

Swim has been on benzos sense 1973. In the beginning the worked wonders for SWIM and the docs agreed. Now SWIM has to self medicate to have a half way normal life.SWIM has had countless detoxes through the years and had to suffer without any pity from the medical profession.In fact they claim all I want is a fix for my addiction.One time while in rehab ,many years ago, SWIM had to take 2mg. of valium IM in the ass because the doctor thought all SWIM wanted was drugs and SWIM wouldn't go through with the detox if it was so painfull.When SWIM was taking 40mg. of valium a day.
SWIM has lost it's trust in doctors and would like to hear more about the professions neglect of patients problems.
P.S. SWIM has had 2 bad head injuries early in life which made symptoms worse .

[alanp007]

swim lost a couple jobs and got into a hell of a lot of trouble cuz of benzos...swim used to be a junkie, and that got him into a lot of trouble too, but when on benzos swim would do things he would have never done normally and got arrested for a few things related to benzos..

[dr ACE]

benzos are very addictive for sure

[Fantasian]

i still dont get this, SWIM takes benzo's off and on especially valium and has never had a problem stopping or limiting his use.

[calmascanbe]

If your referring to this SWIM I didn't want to write a novel and SWIM should have given more info on the horrible detoxes and the inability to live any sort of normal life without benzos.Here in the US ,until recently ,a benzo addict was very misunderstood and treated as it wasn't a physical addiction.The medical profession guinee-pigged SWIM for years and had to go through hell with very bad side-effects and detoxes and was pushed away when nothing but benzos worked.
There was nothing easy or controllable when it came to living with an addiction and trying to live without something to control the anxiety and panic attacks.I don't know how doctors treat patients in the UK for people that experienced head injuries and as a result have horrible anxiety and panic attacks,but in the US we were experiments that didn't work and pushed out to live with our own problems . That's where SWIM is today, on it's own.

[mark_v]

Benzo's fucked SWIM's life up good !
Self medicating, using them recreationally at high dosage for couple of months, daily...
Had some nast withdrawl effects, felt depressed, anti-social, numb...
Never had any problems in the past, but after abusing benzo's, SWIM got symptons of anxiety and panic attacks, insomnia and depression.
Now SWIM is on Xanax XR (2-3 mg daily), some AD's and Lorametezepam (2mg), just to feel 'normal'.
SWIM's advice : stay away from them if you don't 'need' them.

[calmascanbe]

Mark v- I agree with you , if I hadn't listend to my army of doctors my life might have been different. Before I was prescribed benzos ,back in the 70's when valium was a "wonder drug" I might have found an alternative to drugs . At the time I was an occational drinker that helped . Then the doctors showed me a newspaper article about valium, stating it was a wonder drug and was prescribed 40mg. a day for anxiety.After that day I couldn't drink and my tolerance went sky high because valium was not a controlled substance.Under the influance of valium I found how to transfer my scripts to another pharmacy and had 4-6 scipts going at once .I admit I was out of controll and could get as many as I wanted .I know I sound like a hypocrite ,but I had no controll of myself and had a huge dependecy to valium.After 2 years of this I went to find help. The only problem the doctors had no idea what to do except add many experimental drugs along with valium in hopes there was a change in me.Nothing worked and was sent to detox off valium ,which doctors had no experiance to my problem. I had no chance to give them my input and had to suffer terrible withdrawl.Now I'm ranting and better slow down . But after the first detox I became 'The Experiment" and was treated as if my addiction was all in my head.I do not want to go through that again and lost all trust in doctors .I was a big part of the addiction had and have to live with that.
If you or anyone else can find an alternative to benzos try it first. I have a head injury and have seemed to confused doctors and I was turned into a guineepig.
Don't take benzos unless you have taken every avenue to fix your problem. P.S. sorry for the rant. Just remember that a small scipt can cause a huge problem with benzo addiction.

[psyche]

Swim doesn't know if it has changed his life, but he did something stupid under benzos(xanax). They were many years old, out-of-date, and they weren't so potential. Swims quite careful with drugs and has relatively little experience with them. So he had a quarter-of-milligram at first. As time passed and he didn't notice anything, he took another one. Somehow benzos really are deceitful, as Swim ended up taking more and more, snorting them and adventually staggering around the house.

Then he got this clever idea to go buy some beer with my motorcycle altough he wasn't even walking straight. Driving was ok(as far as swim remembers) at first. After buing some beer he crashed in the sidewalk. Some people were telling him to put the moto away but he was very convinced he's fine, he'll just have to drive a bit more careful.

To make thing more dangerous, he went for a beer in the bar before driving home. Swim got quite confused and doesn't remember so clearly anymore. When he was on his way home he saw two roads instead of one and steering was quite difficult. It was also dark to make the seeing of the road really tough. Swim started paying attention to driving when he got to roadside and could've been crashed in the column. Back home he started watching movie with my brothers and took some more beer. The next thing he remembers is waking up; he was obviously passed out at some point of movie.

This is the singe stupidest thing Swim's done. He haven't done much of anything stupid when drunk or on drugs, so this depressed him for some time. From time to time Swims been pondering if he could've had some kind of braind damage because of just one time. He feels like he can't recall things as well as he used to. Alcohol and benzos/other downers indeed are bad combination for brain.

[calmascanbe]

Benzos realy make you commit life errors and you don't realize what youv'e done till someone informs you the idiocy after the fact.
I wish SWIM can controll much more of it's drug indused actions.

[calmascanbe]

I've also made some idiotic mistakes while on xanax and one was a car accident that I could have avoided if not for being on the influance.Xanax slowed down my reaction time and I realy regret it now.
I try to take clonazepam instead of xanax it keeps me on an even footing ,unlike xanax.

[skitz0frantic]

I was really interested in benzo's.. especially good ones.. so I ended up scoring a script of lorazepam.. then "uprgraded" with my doc to clonazepam.. He gave me 56 0.5.mg a week! I started to notice my script would be gone in just a few days. I notice I've forgotten some months where I'd just pop so many.. and I didn't realise what it was doing to me. Now I strictly use them to sleep if I need to.. or after a long day instead of a beer... and always at low doses. Soon, I'm actually looking forward to have my doc say "i'm taking you off the benzo's".. cus I don't think I could live with myself by telling him to cancel my script.. 56 a week! So just becareful, you can lose alot of things, and your state of mind is so numb that you don't realise what path you're taking until you stop your meds. Moral of this.. just be careful.

[calmascanbe]

I relapsed and used my whole presciption without even knowing it . I realy screwed up.

[Sk2005]

Originally Posted by Fantasian

i still dont get this, SWIM takes benzo's off and on especially valium and has never had a problem stopping or limiting his use.

Same with me. What have benzos done for me? They made me sleep. End of story. Go get some Ambien form your doc. It's the same thing, I swear!

[kellydgkh]

Benzos have ruined my life, but fortunately swim is fucked up on some bars now so I am not thinking about all the horrible choices i have made, near- death experiences and my absolute unimportance in society. But tomorrow I will probably cry.

[Nagognog2]

In that none of you bother to read the rules:

Before proceeding to post in these forums, you MUST first familiarize yourself with the rules here. Pay close attention to the rules regarding self-incrimination and learn to use SWIM (Someone Who Isn't Me) or equivalent. Proceeding without abiding by our rules can and will get you banned.

The rules can be found here:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/ann...t.php?f=43&a=1

Now this thread is closed.