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Good Afternoon to all of You, Probably will sound a bit ''funny'' as my ''treatment was quite very low'' in compressing to what I had read on the website but... I had been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder back in 2019, and the treatment prescribed by the psychiatrist was bromazepam 3mg durning the day and 10mg of doxepin before sleep. Going forwards, no one told me for how long should I take them, so from 2019 till now I took them constantly. I managed on the begging of the year to get rid off them but after 3 moths due to some problems I had to come back to the pills. I started to taper them in October, I don't need the doxepin any more but ... If I knew how benzodiazepines work I will never took them. My problem is that I cut every two weeks 0,75mg, but when I reached to 1,5mg and had to go to 0,75 and then take it out for good my body said NO! For a week I have very nasty muscle aches, dizziness, problems with the stomach, hands shakings, I can't sleep properly, cramps and sensation of vomiting. In all this period of 3 years, I done and I'm still doing psychotherapy which helped a lot but my worry is if I'm doing the tapper properly ? Basically to cut every two weeks 0,75 from the pill? I'm doing it too fast? Is normal to have all these sensations? Probably was the worst decision to take Bromazepam. Any reply will be much appreciated. Regards, V

Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Tom, I´m 45 and I struggle 6 years with anxiety/depression. I think it si time to take different aproach because I have no real success with drugs. I have been in several therapies(CBT, group, individual) which help to some degree . Coping strategies are very usefull. I´m staiyng in individul therapy now. I was always irritable person with some perfectionism and litlle anxiety(difficult childhood, rejection) .My story begins in 2014, five years after our son was born. In that period me and my wife have been in constant stress and sleep deprivation raising our baby(birth health issues) and work issues. One year before my breakdown my wife had unexpected abortion with second baby, after that she had to go back to work. It started one year of relationship crisis on top of all that stress. So on summert vacation after long, problematic flight I collapsed in hotel room with panic. Spent couple fo days in hospital in possibility of apendixitidis(psychosomatic reaction). After return home I was put on SSRI and it was total hell and it put me in a place of doom. Since then I didnt recover to previous state. I tried multiple drugs, sometimes in combinations. The higher dose or drug combination , I feel exponentially worse. Years of despair. I don´t have normal response to psych. drugs (except benzos). I have lost several good jobs because I cant stand to much stress and had breakdowns after few weeks at work. No I have dissabilty status and working as gardener in company for people with mental health isuues(almost a year, so big progress). In those years I left my wife so many times and came back. I think I lived in toxic relationship.My wife cheated on me few moths after i have been diagnoised, so it take a big toll on my already bad mental health. I was trouble for her, not feeling real compassion and willing to help me. I was annoying her. We tried to make our marriage work but It didn´t happend. Now we live separatedly 8 months and facing divorce after 20 years together. I can see my son every week which helps. I have to deal with loneliness, never lived alone before, now in different town where only my mother lives. No friends around(lost most of them during my illness). But! I feel better now than six years ago, i think time and therapy helps, not so sure about meds. I know I´m sensitive to normal life stressors, which I try to minimize but facing them. I want to make some progress towards recovery. I spend as much time in nature as I can. I take suplements (B vitamins, magnesium citrate, fish oil). I´m trying to solve relationship issues. My doc is pushing me to take higher doses even if i feel it doesnt help and keep telling him. After all that years with no succes I believe there shoud be some different aproach. So i make some tappering on my own but i don´t want to mess it up. I now take 50mg of Trazodone and 50mg of Lamotrigine plus 0,5mg of Clonazepam per need. I have good days and bad days. I have not been stable for longer period last six years, I have mood swings. Hiking and biking helps me the most. And keep my anxious mind busy, but it´s exhausting. Any advice for me please? Tom

I was directed here from reddit because I wanted to cling on to success stories. I need hope. 8 years ago I had personal and career trauma, and lots of misunderstandings with my mom. I ended up being unable to do my masters thesis which spiralled to escaping via sleeping. Around 2015 I seeked help with Doc A. She was very careful. Ended up with Lexapro, the least uncomfy, but no effect on the depression symptoms. She was always busy on radio shows and late to appointments. I switched to another doc. Doc B said the antidepressants were "brain vitamins" and very very safe. He said I stayed too long with Lexapro with no visible effect so we should change it. He said he took them himself and he was ok. He gave me a list of ADs and told me to get back at him when I found the drug that I was most comfy with. He said try the different brands too coz they have their own "recipe." Paroxetine, Fluoxetine, Duloxetine, Mirtazapine, Venlafaxine... I cannot remember all coz the list was long. I ended up in the hospital after GI issues that nobody could pinpoint the cause/cure. I failed to tell them about the series of meds I cycled through. I was scared so I stopped all the meds. Then I felt panic and pain and other things I could not understand. Doc B was unreachable. I found another doc Doc C who got me back to Lexapro. I finished the prescription, was not able to meet Doc C so I went back to Doc B. He suggested going back to the list. It was March 2020 and we had a feeling that Covid lockdown was imminent. I chose lexapro because it was "safe" and had least chance to land me in a hospital in the middle of lockdown. September 2020 I switched to Doctor D because she was accessible online. I think I did a pause on Lexapro before this. And my anxiety was sky high. My senior citizen dad had heart problems and he got Covid. She gradually reintroduced Escitalopram, then she added Duloxetine, then she added Alprazolam. This whole combo lasted for approximately a year. I still had mood swings, I lashed out when the anxiety became too much, I had minimal advancements to my thesis. I was the only one in the family "fit enough" to drive and go out during lockdown. Around June or July 2021 she swapped to Bromazepam (Lexotan) so the new combo was Escitalopram, Duloxetine and Bromazepam. No guidance why, didn't even tell me alcohol was not allowed with benzos, "checking side effects would just scare you." All throughout, we were doing weekly consults, and I trusted her and hoped she could help with my trauma etc. 1 hr sessions turned into 15 mins. I guess she was just checking if I was still "okay." She had no plans of taking me off. Just supply and supply. I wanted off so I started my bumpy DIY taper around January 2023. Someone recommended a Doc E who was said to be really good but ny sched with her was still on April 2 2023. Withdrawal hit me like a semi so I took some meds and restarted DIY taper. I was completely off by March. Sent an SOS mid-march to Doc E. Withdrawal was awful. Doc E gave me mirtazapine. For mood disorder. I thought she was gonna taper me using this. 1 month of hell. I gained 10kg, groggy, always hungry, aggression, GI issues. April 25 2023 she switched me to Abilify, 3 days later I cried to her and said I am so sorry I cannot take it anymore. She said beware of relapse. She said i did not need to taper the mirta and abilify. She recommended a CBT therapist and told me she can't help me as I did not want meds. The 3 years of benzos were not addressed. May 2023 was great. Mental clarity. Joy. Advancement in thesis. Then I got Covid for a week. I got healed but then the GI issues started. The panic. May 28 2023, I started getting akathisia -like symptoms. Until now. Found out that benzos were for short term only. Found out about VERY slow tapering. I am scared, angry, and really sad. Through this experience, I had a heart to heart with my mom. Maybe we should have tried talk therapy first. The meds did not help maybe because the wounds needed talks and hugs and understanding. 2 months zero benzos. 1 month zero brain drugs. I am still torn if I should go back to the doc and do a slow taper (will they even let me tho?) People in benzo support forum said I should tough it out. I took out 3 meds in just 1 month. I am reading that my chances are slim. But I am scared to go back.

Dear Friends For those that do know me and have followed my progress through SA I want to say that since last December I am Mirtazapine Free... so a little bit of one more month and I will be one year free from this terrible drug. For those that do not know me… before reading this success story just have a look at my initial topic in the link below. Only then you will understand where I was, what I endured and how happy I am that this ordeal has somehow finished and I am able to live, love, work and be there for my family again. I consider myself blessed with the life I have had… ok I am not rich, but I am usually very friendly to people and when you give love you get it back as well. I have been normal all of my life, a bit on the overthinking type of guy which is a characteristic of smart people, and I know that most of the people in SA are the smartest of those who understand that medication is not a way to solve problems. So I am here as many others with a success story and I want to tell you that it can be done. The difference between how I was during medication and how I am now is like day and night. So during my life due to mental sensitivity I have had 1-2 situations which have put me down for short periods of time but they would always resolve and life would go on. But for the last time it was different, my wife was pregnant (my second kid), I acquired a property to start a small business for which I applied for a loan which was delaying, had (and still have ) a job which I did not like anymore, and I carelessly I found my self drinking 1-2 doubles of alcohol per night at least. People say alcohol has the same mechanism of acting on gaba receptors like the benzos, so soon I started finding myself ruminating even more the next day after alcohol. Sleep started deteriorating and I thought I could be ok if I used some small quantities of Xanax to sleep. I had used Xanax before on on and off basis and I knew that it was really addictive but anyway I did not think much and started with very small quantities of it 0.065Mg. As my system seems to have been kindled by the usage of it before I started to create an addiction into a matter of days, and I would find myself terrified during the work day of very simple situations. So to cut things short, during this time I visited more than 4 doctors who gave different solutions and all included medications in various quantities. The last doctor I went in gave me a combination of Amitriptyline and Bromazepam (a benzo) which went up to 6Mg but I never stabilized. I had a good day and then would get hit by 3 bad ones… and so on. After 2 months of visits every 2 weeks and being nowhere near a normal life I decided not to go to the doctor anymore and take my own life into my own hands. So due to what I was reading I did a fast taper of Bromazepam while taking 15Mg of Mirtazapine. Fast tapering of the benzo was terrible, anxiety and depression on unimaginable levels. I closed myself almost totally and was like a zombie in both at work at home… and the only good periods of the day were 1-2 hours at night when I could be available for my just born daughter. All the people around me would not believe that I was doing the right thing. I know it happens to most of you all the time. Just do not blame them. They do not understand what you are going through… but they still love you a lot. They just believe that going to a doctor and get medication is the best thing to do, which we know now it is not. Anyway I tried to continue to live…even though on my very bad days I would just go around a lake near by my home and think to end it all. I continued to read in internet during all these time, and I realized that I was not accepting my situation. If you read my main topic you will notice how terrified I was on specific days, due to the thoughts of not being able to make it. So at a point of time I started to accept my situation and that was good. I knew that I had no other way out of this apart from the conviction of my heart that I would wake up from this bad dream if I continue to follow my plan. After I finished with benzos than it was the Mirt turn. In the beginning I would just cut it by hand, and take approximate doses which now I know it was not good. I was still into the no acceptance phase. Any small problems would terrify me, any task would require out of this world trials from me to complete. At work I was a dumb, avoiding everybody, just closing up and not being able to discuss things due to my crazy emotions. My manager started to go against me and played a very negative role by fighting in many dishonest ways. On the other side I needed the job as I started paying the loan, and some more the new business that I started was a lot of extra stress for me as well. I also visited at this time two Psychotherapists and both of them were telling me that I would finish the tapering but I would be worse. They were also pushing me to listen to the psychiatrists and take the meds… which I was convinced was not an option. So I continued to live my life by learning to ride the waves. Pushing the time in the bad days until evenings when I started to experience windows. My symptoms were crazy since the start but they kept changing. I am trying to make a list below from what I remember. · Terrible anxiety. · Terrible rumination. · Tinnitus. · Out of this world Akathisia (I remember driving to work in the morning in a terrified state with hands that could not hold still at the wheel) · Lack of Sleep. · Flu state after each drop of Remeron. · Full Brain (not able to think at all or argue with people). · Inability to smell aromas (I was not able to feel my little daughter aroma when I would hold her up and that would bring me tears in my eyes) · Devastating Tiredness. · Anhedonia. · Many physical problems, allergy, loose stools, hair fall and so on. ….. and many many more which I can not remember now. The good thing would be that at some point of time they would come all together but at some other some them started to lessen and disappear very slowly. Every symptom that would go away would give me hope to stay the course even in the very bad days. I remember that after two months of no feeling taste or smell due to the antihistaminic mess of mirtazapine suddenly I noticed that when I would kiss my baby daughter would feel her nice baby smell. I had tear in the eyes and could not enjoy more the feeling… J So that moment gave me hope even I would know that after some days that symptom would reappear again. Every wave would set me back. I would start to act normal and than suddenly out of nowhere I would experience 2-3 nights of no sleep, terrible anxiety in the morning, stuffed up brain in the afternoon and so on. I kept some contacts with some members of SA as well as some other friends from a FB group. Their messages were the ones who kept me going. Push push push until the wave goes away, and certainly that goes away. I still experience waves now here and there once in a month but they normally last 1-2 days and are mild compared to the ones during WD. Life is good my friends… Now I know what’s going inside me and the thoughts do not scare me any more. How I learned to understand that my problem was mainly biological and medically induced was simple. I would notice one day that a simple problem would drive me crazy and anxious, and it would look like the end of the world. I would try to calm down and if I had a good sleep the next day the same problem would not scare me any more… So in this way I learned that the problem was not the cause of my rumination but the WD was the culprit. Living without meds started slowly to give me back my lost confidence, I started talking to people again, get involved, not being scared of planning things for the next day bcs I did not know how I would wake up. I know, I know…. Most of you have been there and still are…. And I swear it is just WD playing tricks on you. So do not give up guys… my problems started early 2016 and the last 2.5 years have been the most terrible in my life, but still when I look back I have realized quite a lot during these two years. How can I not be proud while during this period I was able to: · Preserve my integrity. · Hold my job. · Handle the birth of my little daughter (My wife was the actual one who gave birth but I was always there). · Start a new business and have only 2 off days per month. · Continue to payback my loan. · Keep my family together. · Helping other people while in WD. · Having fun and having waves… 🙂 · ……. · ……. · ……. Above all writing this success story… 🙂 So that is a short sum up of my situation. There is a lesson in Withdrawal… just do not give up. Even on your worst moments pull up the strength and push forward. Anxious …??? Take a walk, listen to an hypnosis video, watch a movie, just avoid going to the drawer looking for meds for a short cut solution. Currently I am only taking a soluble magnesium before sleep and a vitamin B and Omega 3 fish oil in the breakfast…. Nothing else. OK my life is not the best that it can be, i still have problems, i still get sad, i still get worried for things but now things do not blow out of proportion. I still do not know how would i do if hit the jacpot... 🙂 but even if i don't, never mind i will do my best with what i have. The blessing of God with two lovely children, a good family and life is the best someone can ask from. I would like to thank from my heart Altostrata, Shep, karenB, AliG, Brassmonkey, Hibari, JanCarol and all the other people in the forum that I might not recall now who have commented into my topic and kept me convinced that this was the true way. I am sooo much indebted to you guys. Anyway I will be around in the forum to help people time after time and I know I can not explain everything that happened to me during this time. If you read my topic and than this success story you will definitely know the difference. You can also ask on certain issues and I will gladly answer to each of you same as the people that I thanked above have done for me. To all the guys who are tapering you are doing right. You have nothing wrong with your brain. It just needs the time to adopt to a life without stimulants. YOU WILL ALL MAKE IT FREE SAME AS ME GUYS…. Just stay the course…. LOVE YOU ALL SANTINO

(mod note)link to teePeer1's benzo forum thread: https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/19092-how-to-taper-the-used-as-needed-benzo-or-sparing-benzo-use/ Dear all, I gradually tapered to 10 mg of paxil from 40 and also tapered off benzo (3mg to 0) both slowly over a period of months. Long story short, I thought I was near the fonish line. However, when I taperedd to 10 mg from 15 mg paxil and stopped a doze of less than .25 benzos things got rough after two weeks. My issues are mostly related to night:severe anxiety, hyper alertness, pounding heart. It was so bad a couple of nights that I resorted to taking a small dose of lexatonil. Now I am afraid of what strategy to follow next. My experience with psychiatrists have been pretty bad during my taper and I am afraid if I go back they will put me on more meds. Should I go back to 15 mg paxil from 10 and is it safe to use half a tablet of benzo at night to brave through the night? (Though i am afraid of benzo withdrawals too) I would appreciate any suggestions on how to stabilize my situation at this stage and dosage?

Link to: Santino's success story topic Dear friends. I am right now in a very big of a situation. My second daughter is coming into this world due in two weeks and i am as much as a wreck as evere. I had used xanax for on and off very small doses but after two weeks of continuous 0.25 mg usage it seems i got hooked and started to have a lot of anxiety and panic attack. Before that i have had twice problems but i managed to pass them with personal power and sort of other CBT. This time was a bit harder. I Somehow stabilized at start of April on 6 MG Bromazepam and 20 MG Anmitryptiline. After the stabilization i started tapering and failed the first time. The amount went big again up to 6 MG and after a period of 10 days i developed some kind of depression even though i managed to stay at work. Doctor prescribed Remeron 15 MG and i was a bit reluctant to take but i am in a very difficult position right now as my wife is giving birth to my second kid within two weeks and apart from that i have a loan to pay and could not afford to be off so i agreed with the doc to start it. Psychologicaly in the beginning i felt good because with Remeron help i started to make big jumps on the Benzo (Bromazepam) and within 3 weeks i have gone from 6 MG to 0.75 Mg currently. I am still scared though because i have never been on an antidepressant before and there are horror stories all around web about all types of them as well. This is the fourth week i am taking Remeron and is not helping to much with sleep some nights due to my worry thoughts, some more it has side effects (high cholesterol and triglycerides are a trend in my family, me no exception to that) and i am only 40 Years old. There are days when i really feel very bad and hopeless in this situation but somehow manage to push it forward. I need help whether i am doing the right thing and in case yes after i am done with bromazepam most probably in 3-4 days how long should i wait to start tapering Remeron.... One mor thing friends... i have never been depressed for all of my life. OKKKK... i have had difficult moments or periods here and there... but only mild situations. This time the doctore tried to cure me with the reason of my fears.... and i think she failed miserably. Anyway.... i was scared out of proportion after three weeks of xanax and some drinking sessions and all went berserk. Give me some opinions on what should i do???!! Should i wait some days and try taper fast Remeron??? (i will be on them total 4 weeks this tuesday). Maybe i am one of those persons who by chance do not have withdrawals... All the best and keep it tight.... WE WILL PREVAIL.... 🙂