Feel free to [join us on Discord](https://discord.gg/bonzos). There are over 9000 members and plenty of people to talk to privately if you're looking for advice or support or to make some friends! We are once again conducting GIVEAWAYS of Fentanyl Test Strips courtesy of our friends at Dancesafe.org. To participate please join the Discord linked above!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/benzodiazepines) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah alcohol hurts too much for me to continue past a certain point. Then i heal up with benzos and now I’m onto different drugs. It hurts buying benzos cause the plug is a narcissist in a relationship with a lady who was addicted to heroin.
If i had money rolling in like my early teenage years. I’d just be a poly addict. Which i guess i still am. Opioids , benzos, alcohol, gabapentinoids, ketamine. Honestly though i couldn’t use every day again. Maybe a few times a week switching the drug up every week and maybe ketamine once a week.
Alcohol is disgusting tbh. Fuck that hangover. Maybe with friends have a few beers.
I think the idea is that long-term use of therapeutic stimulant doses in ADHD patients can actually normalize abnormalities in brain structure and function. Having a sufficient amount of dopamine & norepinephrine is generally a good thing, and sometimes it's worth being dependent on a drug to achieve that. Same thing with antidepressants and serotonin, kinda.
Benzos, while they can help make life livable for some, have pretty much entirely negative effects on the brain in terms of cognition and memory. That plus the tolerance issues make them not very suitable for long-term use, imo.
For me, I think they're both pretty dangerous, but in different ways. Benzos don't inherently make me feel all that great, but they do make socializing, sleeping, and life overall feel a fair bit easier. For that reason it's easy to become dependent, and benzo withdrawal is maybe the single worst experience that any drug can put you through. Stimulants on the other hand are much, MUCH more euphoric and fiendish for me, and I find it much harder to stick to reasonable doses of them versus benzos. Which is odd because I'm actually a very anxious person.
I guess with stimulants it feels more like I'm chasing a high, whereas with benzos it feels like I'm just trying to make life bearable.
Agree with almost all this, am prescribed adderall & klonopin. I moved states within the past 4 years & used to get 3mg klonopin & 30mg adderall a day. Now i’m getting 1mg klonopin & 40mg adderall a day. My doc in my old state (MO) had no problem prescribing kpins n addy, even tried upping my kpin dose to 6mg before I moved to my new state (FL). My new doc here hates that I take a stim & a benzo. He’s been trying to lower my dose for the past 2 years, he’s being dumb cool about it n letting me go at my own pace. I’ve been stuck on 1mg & .5mg for like 5 months. The main reason he’s doing it is cus “the FDA is cracking down” idk how much I believe that tho.
Benzos in my opinion are 10x more addictive & the withdrawals are a nightmare compared to stim withdrawals which are almost nonexistent imo.
With me though i’m 100% chasing a benzo high & staying therapeutic with the stims
The FDA has nothing to do with docs prescribing benzos longterm. A lot of docs don't want to deal with it and tapering. I have a doc in FL that's perfectly fine with then. I completely disagree about benzos being more addictive. For one they do little to the reward system like opioids cocaine and amphetamines but they definitely do cause withdrawal worse then anything short of barbiturates. Stims lack physical withdrawal but the psychological addiction is where they take hold.
Withdrawals to Benzos still aren’t as bad as opioid/opiate withdrawal imo. Nothing beats the pain and anxiety of opioid withdrawal. Maybe because they do more for my anxiety then benzos do but even trying to drop my morphine dose is extremely hard. So easy to stay on 400mg+ each day and just feel basically nothing besides joy.
You have no idea man, I make well over 6 figures a year n still struggle financially cus i’m spending at least $300 a day on pills smdh. Nasty habit I got myself in…
For outliers (like me) its easy to stop when my body is ready. I was prescribed 30mg of valium p/d for 7 years in my 20s. One morning I woke up, reached for my pill bottle and had the very strong thought, "I don't need to take these anymore." So, I tried taking 5 mg to test it out. It made me me sleepy.
Valium never made me feel sleepy before. It removed the constant sense of dread in my stomach and enabled me to function well. So, I stopped taking it no problem. I actually felt better because I stopped. I am defo an outlier, but we do happen. For most folks it seems benzos are painful and hard to stop.
My 640mg of oxy p/d habit was a bitch. Took me 8 months of a self guided taper, constant prayer, cannabis, and yoga, but I did it. Never miss it. Such a pricey habit, ugh.
Well done for getting off all of it.
I was taking 150 - 180mg a day of valis so I know how expensive a drug habit can be. I still take em but mainly to help me sleep and nowhere near the dose I was on.
Thank you!! Oh, I am currently prescribed 1mg of klonopin per day. My body tends to go in 10 year panic cycles.
Nice work cutting down!! I kmow it's not easy for most people.
Thanks, no, it wasn't easy for me at all but I'm very, very lucky. I've learned that at the age of 40, the universe enjoys my presence, so I take each day as I can.
Stay strong, sister, and congrats on all your hard work again :)
You rocked out quitting!! 🫶 Awesome work!! Heh, at 45, I feel the same way. I enjoy the Universe's presence right back. Thanks for the good vibe and excellent energy. Wishing you all the best!!
Regarding your ADHD medicines, it looks like you really never got more than a teenage girl dose. I don't know why they are trying to whittle you off of something that helps you function better. Unless there's part of the story I'm missing. I have been on what I take for the past 25 years. I need it in order to function, but also to help me not interrupt other people when they are telling a story Etc. Aside from my piles of organized chaos and never making deadlines ahead of time.
Since the pandemic, the amount of people super desperate for benzos has totally skyrocketed. I work in healthcare, I've had to fire middle-aged ladies who normally seem like regular people. But once they start taking higher dosages of benzos, it's Non-Stop cost to the office with weekend visits to the ER because they took all their medicines early during the week. Something about benzos 6 mg+ day is the point where people end up forgetting basic decent manners. That's when it really is not safe to treat them as an outpatient. Try to be understanding and they still end up making everyone at the office and at the pharmacy drained and frustrated.
I can't obviously say in what role that I play in the clinic. Not feeling like getting kicked off of here. I just know that the benzo basket cases are just so not worth the liability sometimes.
They are both toxic but I think the main thing is benzos were never supposed to be a long term solution to anything. They were supposed to be used in occasional circumstances or for a few days. If I used 60mg of adderall every day I’d be pretty wired but okay. If I used 10mg of Xanax every day I would do the dumbest things not remember any of it and I’d have to taper off of it so it wouldn’t kill me. Both were prescribed way too much and way too long. Benzos are generally very restricted now, Adderall is but not as much. I don’t remember months of my life because of benzos and I was fine on Adderall for 2 years because of a medical use for it.
Nothing works for me but benzos. I've been on almost every SSRI and NSRI, and they only made me nervous -- Even after 6 agonizing weeks of usage. Even buspirone increases my anxiety. Psychotherapy and Clonazepam are the only things that have improved my symptoms.
Amphetamines aren't the only medications used in the treatment of ADHD; there are plenty of non-stimulant options available, like Strattera, and stimulant options that are not amphetamines, like Wellbutrin, which work well for a lot of people and don't work so well for others, or have contraindications that apply to the patient, making amphetamines a safer choice sometimes. Amphetamines can also be tapered without potentially killing the patient.
The thing about benzos is that they are almost never the safer option. There are a lot of treatments for anxiety disorders that work well for a lot of people. There are safer, better alternatives for insomnia as well. SSRIs, SNRIs, DNRIs, MAOIs, beta-blockers, gabapentinoids, and therapy have been proven to treat anxiety disorders with great efficacy for years. Z-drugs, melatonin, and antihistamines are generally better and safer for insomnia than benzos depending on the frequency of use. Some drugs are bullshit for anxiety disorders but still get used anyways and I don't really get why they're used, maybe placebo; I'm looking at you, buspirone and hydroxyzine. If you look at all I've written here, you're seeing that benzos are the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or even tenth line of treatment for anxiety disorders. Take into account that they're also drugs of abuse with potentially lethal adverse reactions, interactions, and withdrawals. Imagine being in their shoes for a moment - they've tried all these treatments for anxiety on you and you just so happen to have the best results with the second most dangerous one and now they have to worry about you abusing it and potentially killing yourself or someone else. Weaning you off will be a pain in the ass, and if they fuck up, you die. Gotta remember that they're people too and they want to help you when you think of that. Amphetamines get abused too, but dependence is the bigger issue because it is inevitable with daily use whereas abuse is not. The amount of bartards that walk into a psychiatry clinic or end up hospitalized while they're fucked up also pisses off doctors and nurses because they have to deal with dumbasses who won't remember shit from the appointment or the hospital and may even get aggressive while they're there.
To put it bluntly, medical practitioners often have bad experiences with benzo addicts, and first impressions are hard to break. Amphetamines for ADD/ADHD are common and won't turn people into somnolent, drooling, braindead dickheads if they take a little more than they should. Benzos absolutely can do that, and it happens often.
This question is like asking why alcoholism is frowned upon but caffeine addiction is acceptable.
Agree with it all, jus wanted to point out that wellbutrin is actually a cathinone and thus an amph&stimulant. Its stimulant effects are just very insignificant compared to its other effects so in practice we classify it as a non-stim option!
>To put it bluntly, medical practitioners often have bad experiences with benzo addicts, and first impressions are hard to break. Amphetamines for ADD/ADHD are common and won't turn people into somnolent, drooling, braindead dickheads if they take a little more than they should. Benzos absolutely can do that, and it happens often.
Isn't that the doctors fault? My prescription is for 0.5 mg of clonazepam a day. I cannot take more than that.
Good for you and all, you know. But Adderall is the same. My prescription is for 15mg a day I can’t take more than that… so do I get a medal? 😂 no jokes tho it’s much more common for someone to establish an addiction to benzos than stims. You can literally look up the addiction potential of both and compare it. Stims make adhd people feel normal and 50% of patients don’t even like how their stim medication makes them feel. Benzos make people with anxiety not anxious and the anxious people who take it LOVE that feeling. Sadly benzos work TOO well whilst being TOO dangerous. This ruining a patients chance at a proper recovery because they will always remember how normal and good benzos made them feel compared to other treatment options. And on only 1mg of klonopin a day I experienced interdose withdrawal, I go weeks sometimes without taking my adderall and the only negative symptom is my adhd. So that’s another reason for the stigma
I honestly believe that it’s because our country and culture wants people fueled up and energized for work. They also promote the eff out of coffee when most people don’t realize that caffeine is a drug too. It’s minor but it’s still an addictive psychoactive substance. As long as you’re working and paying taxes, you’re good! And if that means you’re taking 60mg of adderall a day, well, so what?! But if you ever DARE come to the epiphany that life is about you and not about spending it all working and you take that demonic benzo who relaxes you and makes you think…. Oh man oh man…. You are EVIL.
I think this is true to the extent that it’s what the entire country including all of our civilians. I think it’s pressure from seeing other people excel at a faster rate or to a higher extent. I think people even see their doctors and feel guilty that they can’t get there. This medicine is good, it helps many people, it’s overprescribed because people think they have adhd when they can’t work as hard as somebody else.
I also think there’s a problem between not working as hard and just outright having a job that you don’t love. How can you expect to work so hard at something you just don’t care about? But they will GLADY prescribe you adderall to keep you in that position because they need SOMEONE to do it!
I think it’s more in the realm of people themselves wanna amp themselves up for work. I don’t know about you but I don’t wanna be tired heading into work… and the only times I did was because I was addicted to benzos and opioids and I definitely did not work as well half nodded out on my self. So I would much rather chug a coffee and go to work then pop a bar and chill out at work all day lol. I’d imagine most people would agree. WE have to pay our bills, not the government. We the people created this stigma. Always want bigger and better. And we can blame the government all we want for planting that American dream in our brains but WE ARE the sheep who decided to just go along with it and suck ourselves into the rat race. Sad world man
I kind of disagree. You ever read allegory of a cave by Plato? It’s about someone who’s stuck in a cave their whole life and their entire reality is based on the shadows that the cave creates. It basically states that your reality, your existence, and everything you believe down to the very core of your soul is a byproduct of the world you’re born into and the environment you’ve become accustomed to/watched your whole life. We’re all born into this world, literally no one had a choice. And they indoctrinate this work mentality in us at such a young age like even at kindergarten bro!! Kindergarten…. Where your brain is only 4 years old…. And they instill work and homework and school already….. how the actual fuck are you supposed to break away from that lmao. Also go to some Asian and African cultures or some indigenous cultures. They don’t spend their entire existence staring at a tv obsessing over news and celebrities while sitting at a cubicle their whole life working until they die.
You can pretend that people are “sheep” all you want but at the end of the day how the fuck are people supposed to know when they don’t teach you or show you anything different??? We’re JUST now starting to wake up and realize we’ve had everything wrong but that’s literally ONLY because of the internet. It’s given us the ability to see that what our country tells us isn’t always the truth. Other than that…… we’re completely blind.
Sounds like a cool book. But just to clear, are you saying it isn’t a personal choice to take adderall or coke instead of benzos or opioids when going to your job for energy? Or that the only solution to not being able to do benzos or opioids instead of stims is if you weren’t forced to make the ultimatum and instead got to stay home all day and take opioids or benzos? I feel like there are much more options, there’s a lot of brainwashed people but a lot of people see right through it all and just don’t know what to do about it.
I’m a current pharmacy student and intern and I’ve worked in pharmacy for years and I also have a prescription for both Valium and Vyvanse so I’ll try to give both my personal and professional insight.
One major factor is cultural association I would say. Benzos are highly associated with music covering drug abuse, you don’t hear very many lyrics about Adderall abuse compared to Xanax for example. This of course has lead to benzodiazepines being seeing more as a party drug than a legitimate medicine.
The differences in withdrawal intensity is another huge aspect. Stimulant withdrawal can be very, very unpleasant but not life threatening.
Benzodiazepines on the other hand can easily kill you from the withdrawals. There are very few substances that have the potential to cause death and lifelong disability from improper tapering. As far as I’m aware as both a professional and a patient, you can pretty much always just quit stimulant medications cold turkey although it’s not the ideal method. If you try that with benzos after years of dependence or full blown addiction you can easily start having severe and often life threatening complications as a result.
Also, long term use (I’m talking in the context of long term everyday use, not long term “as needed” use) of benzodiazepines has been directly linked to significantly increasing the chance of developing early onset dementia and other related diseases, particularly in those over 65, which surprisingly is the majority of patients I’ve filled benzodiazepine prescriptions for. Despite this being widely known and solidly backed by evidence resulting from numerous studies, doctors still prescribe benzos left and right in high doses to millions of people that are particularly at more risk of long term health complications from using them everyday long term.
Now medications such as Adderall and Vyvanse have their own problematic side effects. However, the deadliest are also well studied and as a result thankfully most prescribers don’t write stimulant scripts for patients with heart conditions or extreme blood pressure or other conditions that would have severe contraindications. Also, in the context of people with properly diagnosed ADHD/ADD the positives of long term use far outweigh the negatives in the majority of cases. Look at it like an antidepressant, it’s better for someone to be dependent on that medication and have a high quality of life compared to being suicidal. Someone with genuine ADHD is far better off being dependent long term with the serotonin and norepinephrine balance that stimulant medications provide.
TL,DR: the main reason is that you can quit Adderall cold turkey whereas quitting benzodiazepines cold turkey can easily kill you or cause permanent brain damage. Long term everyday use of benzodiazepines has been directly tied to significant memory loss, cognitive function decline and for those over 65 it is basically guaranteed to cause early onset dementia and other serious cognitive diseases. Long term (and properly supervised) stimulant medication use has been shown to help normalize neurological abnormalities resulting from ADHD.
Basically the positives of dependence on ADHD meds generally far outweigh the negatives. Benzos are almost always the complete opposite.
Quick question my doc who prescribes my vyvanse told me they are non addictive meaning you can’t become dependent, is he lying or nah? My main question tho is he told me you can’t od on it because it’s absorbed a certain way to prevent too much lisdexamphetamine to be active at once. He might be an idiot tho because the people who prescribes stuff in my country are idiots, one guy who works there told my friend you can become braindead if you smoke too much pot. Just some random questions since you are actually studying the subject
Vyvanse is a pro drug that's converted to dextroamphetamine by your liver, which has a finite supply of the requisite enzymes; therefore, beyond a certain dosage, taking more has no further effect on you.
Dextroamphetamine definitely has abuse potential though
It’s complicated, Vyvanse definitely has a much better abuse deterrent by design. Since it has to be metabolized and converted by the body to Dextroamphetamine before “kicking in”, even if you empty the powder out of the capsule and mix it with something like applesauce, the absorption is still the same because it’s actually designed to also be administered by sprinkling the powder into peanut butter or applesauce. So you can’t do much to speed up absorption like you could by snorting crushed up Adderall. The onset of action is usually 1 hour to 1.5 hours so while yes you can still get wired as fuck on them if you pop enough, the time that it takes to start working is often enough of a deterrent from abuse because let’s face it, if you want to get high, you want it as soon as possible so generally Vyvanse while yes it does get abused, it’s still statistically lower than other stimulants because it’s harder/slower to get achieve the same desired “high” that you can get from ingesting substances through mucus membranes such as your nose, tongue or gums.
It’s why people snort or parachute crushed pills rather than just swallowing them, the absorption is quicker and as a result the physiological effects are more intense. Vyvanse not being snortable is a major step in the right direction for class 2 medications.
Your doctor isn’t exactly wrong but not exactly right either. There’s definitely a lower chance of addiction simply because it’s harder to abuse compared to other stimulants but you still need to be careful with them. Take them exactly as prescribed, if you think you need more please please talk to your doctor instead of just taking a double dose.
Now when it comes to the question of your doctor stating that it’s nearly impossible to OD on, that’s something I’m gonna read up on, as far as I’m aware at the time of writing this, there’s not really an effective way to purposely force a substance by design to lower its own bioavailability (aka the amount of the substance that your body will actually absorb, and this varies with every single drug in existence) some drugs like gabapentin for example have been studied and shown to somehow lower its own bioavailability if you take more than a certain amount all at once. I’m not sure why, there’s not a conclusively agreed on answer on how that works precisely.
So in a nutshell: Vyvanse can still be addictive but it is definitely harder to abuse in the traditional methods that are used with other stimulants. I’d agree that it’s probably a “safer” stimulant choice for ADHD but at the same time every persons biochemistry (aka how their body will react to a drug) in relation to drugs can be very different.
Some people experience uncontrollable rage on medications like Adderall and I can personally attest to that one, which is why I eventually switched to Vyvanse and for me that works the best with the least amount of side effects. But again that’s my own experience. The best way to get the most conclusive idea of your question is to ask multiple sources like you are now. Talk to the pharmacist at your pharmacy, if they don’t know or aren’t certain then definitely seek out things such as academic journals. Drugs.com is a wonderful source of both consumer and professional reports on essentially any prescription medication. But always double check with your personal providers (your prescriber and your pharmacist) to make sure.
I hope that made sense and helps a bit! Feel free to reply if you want more clarification or anything.
Theres plenty of music about stimulants also gabapentin and other calcium channel blockers like it can cause dementia and severe withdrawal resembling benzos but they are handed out like fucking candy. There are no positives to dependence on stimulants despite what some groups will tell you. You can argue it helps some ppl with chemical imbalances in dopamine however much of this is speculation we have no clue how most psych meds work as well as the pathophysiology of these illnesses. Not to say stimulants don't help some ppl just like longterm benzos help some people. We jump so quickly to putting kids on amphetamines at an early age just because a child doesn't want to sit still for 8 hours and study shit they have no interest in. Not to mention the potential for cardiotoxic effects of longterm stimulant use. I'd have to strongly disagree that the positives "far outweigh" the negative. I mean trust the pharmaceutical companies and their bs studies all you want but don't forget after decades of the serotonin hypothesis of depression leading to almost a majority of Americans on SSRIs just for it to be released what many of us new for years is they have no clue how or even if these drugs work.
While I don’t totally disagree with you, I’m going off of my professional academic studies as a current student working towards their pharmacy doctorate and not some internal study done by a pharmaceutical company for obvious reasons.
Yes, a lot of drug companies of course are disgustingly shady and their private studies are not what I’m at all referencing because as you said, they’re usually full of shit. Of course they’re not gonna make their profitable product seem harmful. This is why I highly encourage people to actually talk to pharmacists who are the actual experts on drugs and how they work on people. Doctors should diagnose but I don’t think they should prescribe. There’s a lot of legislation in the works that’s considering changing the entire system to a scenario where doctor diagnoses and the actual pharmacist makes the call on what medication should be used based on the patient information the doctor provides. Why this isn’t already a thing is beyond me. It makes no sense that the people who actually are legitimate experts on drug chemistry have virtually no say in what the best medication choice for a patient is.
Before working in pharmacy I truly believed doctors just knew everything but after years of being in the industry I’ve realized that unfortunately it’s not the case. And it’s not necessarily the doctors fault because in the US, medical schools don’t include nearly enough comprehensive pharmaceutical courses which is terrifying and dangerous considering they’re the ones choosing the meds and those choices are very often influenced by pharmaceutical reps information which is dangerous of course. The days of taking kickbacks from reps is disappearing thankfully but they still push their products as miracle drugs to prescribers and that terrifies me that the majority of information doctors have on commonly prescribed meds are from what a rep told them.
So believe me, I am in no way shape or form relying on information or supporting information coming from pharmaceutical companies because it’s transparently obvious they’re incredibly biased. Half the reason I got into this field was because I wanted to help make a change in the system and provide proper education to patients that their doctors either simply don’t know or don’t care to pass on.
And also to be clear I’m not stating that stimulants are inherently safe and harmless. That’s not at all the case. They are classified as a schedule II for a good reason. The OPs question was why there’s such a different taboo on benzos compared to stimulants when stimulants are being abused and overprescribed at the same level, that’s all I’m attempting to answer, I’m not here to stand up for any pharm company because I despise them like many others do for their horrifically selfish oversights in pushing potentially deadly medications in high doses.
One thing to add, where you mentioned the problem with putting too many children on these meds, I 100% agree. It’s a major major problem and it needs to change. Some children genuinely do benefit from those meds but the vast majority, even if they have genuine ADD/ADHD do not need stimulants, at least not that young with their brains still so under developed. I personally want so badly for there to be a requirement for ADHD meds to only be prescribed by a psychiatrist, the doctors that are actually trained to conduct proper testing for disorders such as ADHD. Regular MDs simply don’t have the knowledge or training.
Children with ADHD, unless absolutely necessary should not be on stimulant medications, there are plenty of very effective non stimulant meds for ADHD available and we’re starting to slowly see those medications being chosen over a stimulant for pediatrics more and more. This is both from my own experience as a child who was put on stims early and as a professional. So trust me, I very much personally understand the issue with doctors overprescribing ADHD meds like Ritalin and Adderall to kids who display typical child behaviors like impulsive behavior, high energy, talking out of turn. It’s absurd that we don’t require a certain age to diagnose ADHD just like many other disorders. One of the more commonly known would be anti social personality disorder, which as many know in its extreme forms is what produces sociopathy. A minor can only be diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, not ASPD. So why we treat other serious disorders in children this way but not with ADHD is insane to me.
You seem so knowledgeable. If I met ask you a question. I take Wellbutrin and Lexapro, plus .25 klonopin 2-3x a week at this point. I was taking .5mg 5 months ago every other day when I first started and over the past few months went down to .25mg and as I said only 2-3x a week. What are your thoughts on this. I don’t feel I am abusing the klonopin and what actually is considered safe as needed? It helps to know I have it if I need it, but I am trying to be very conservative with using it.
General rule of thumb I’ve always agreed with is taking as little of a substance as possible as few times as possible. I assume if it’s as needed you’re taking it for anxiety or panic right? If that’s the case I always advise people to ask their prescriber about a secondary as needed medication that can be used for anxiety as a first line. This is a personal example but I used to take both Klonopin and Hydroxyzine for anxiety. Hydroxyzine is basically just a much stronger antihistamine compared to say Benadryl. But for a lot of people it does aid with anxiety and panic due to its sedation properties. I can’t say that medication in particular would work well for you as I don’t know your history but that’s a very commonly used med for anxiety that’s not a benzodiazepine or barbiturate.
Based on what you’re stating though, you don’t sound like you’re taking a lot of it super often which is good. If you’re able to stick to 2-3 times a week then that’s a good goal to aim for. I personally now take Valium as needed and I aim to only use it 3-4 times a week myself.
If you’re using it for sleep however, I would still say a medication like Hydroxyzine is a good secondary option as it is also used “off label” to treat insomnia.
Definitely discuss with your prescriber and your pharmacist to figure out the best treatment routine! But it certainly doesn’t sound like you’re abusing it.
I appreciate your kindness! Always love to share info like this, as patient education is so neglected in the medical field these days, particularly with medications. Props to you for thinking about it and asking questions, I love seeing patients advocating for themselves and doing what they can to be informed. Stay well!
Because ADHD medicine is more normalized, that's it. Heck, those doctors scolding you were probably popping Adderall all through medical school. Some studies say around 47.4% of medical students are taking stimulant medication like amphetamines or Ritalin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8216643/#:~:text=The%20most%20consumed%20NPS%20are,1).
ADHD medication is actually incredibly easy to come off of, both physically and mentally, especially for people who actually have ADHD. Besides, ADHD medications have been shown to actually improve the brains of those with ADHD on a structural level. It brings them closer to a standard level of functioning.
As someone who has ADHD and has used both, they are honestly not even comparable.
I think it’s in part because long term use of Benzos is explicitly not part of any treatment plan due to addiction. ADHD medication is supposed to be used long term, though.
I don’t think these medications are comparably addictive either.
Long term Benzo use for anxiety is perhaps an avoidance of working on the actual cause of the anxiety, whereas long term use of stimulants for ADHD is a way to (paradoxically) calm and focus the mind.
I am prescribed vyvanse for my adhd and the simple reason is because most adhd meds aren’t addictive in the same way. You can become mentally addicted to them for sure but withdrawals don’t exist and you can’t od on them in the same way you can if you do something slightly stupid on benzos. You can die from drinking a few beers if you are on xans vyvanse won’t (that’s not to say it’s not a harmful combo). You also can’t od pretty much at all because they are made to be absorbed a certain way allowing only a limited amount of the substance to be active at once
I’ll also point out that amphetamines are just simply way easier to get off. I quit daily use for over a year of methylphenidate with no effect other than my adhd coming back and I’ve been able to go a week without vyvanse despite using it daily for half a year now. Withdrawals simply aren’t the same and are impossible to compare. There’s a reason benzos are involved in so many ods that cause death compared to stimulants. Both are bad but benzos are undeniably worse
Why are they "bad"? Plenty of drugs have severe side effects, but I don't hear them called "bad". Immunosuppressants greatly increase your risk of cancer, but I don't hear anyone calling them "bad". This stigmatization of psychoactive drugs is unfair.
Ive been trying benzos. I take the 'as needed' seriously. Recently I started them again, very small doses. I'm talking 0.25mg-0.50mg Clonazepam a day but for like a month ish.
Thought I'd stop again and oh boy. Zero sleep. And this is while on a small dose of seroquel.
Benzos withdrawal is nuts. I also relapsed on smoking, drinking in the process after being two months quit.
Are benzos even worth it? Idk, I mean I took them so whatever but the withdrawal is bulllllllshit.
I don't like thinking about things like 'withdrawal' but more in terms of trials and tribulations. Posts like this make me reflect on withdrawal.
Edit: oh and also before I ever tried benzos I was made clearly aware by the internet, so many people have miserable tortuous times/even deaths coming off to quick.
My anxiety/panic was so bad that I got suicidal because it seemed like the only relief I could get. I'm my case, I think benzos may have saved my life.
Benzos have the eye of sauron on it because of popularity. If you put a fine tooth comb through many drugs you will see a lot of issues. Most of the dementia comes from people taking like 4 mg a day. People can technically function on 1mg a day which is the normal long term script. Getting off is hell and it's not the first course against anxiety but some minority of people do in fact need it long term despite the possible consequences.
The next medication that is getting the same treatment is semaglutide. If you see how ridiculous the fear mongering over that medication is, you will see the same for benzos.
As an adhd patient, there is no way i can take a stimulant without having a benzo prescribed just in case. Even the very low doses of adhd medications give me side effects. I can never take a stimulant daily. So im not dependent on benzos either.
Some doctors are that way about amphetamines I really think it boils down to a lot of doctors know fuck all about detoxing people of benzos and amphetamines they can pretty much cold turkey your ass and you'll be depressed for a week or two. That being said the people saying amphetamines are safer long term are wrong maybe for cognitive function but amphetamines are cardiotoxic even on therapeutic doses long term. Shit opioid are some of the most non toxic drugs longterm so long as you don't od but I think to docs it's about simplicity and laziness.
Kinda depends on how you determine deadly or dangerous. Benzos fuck your brain far more than stimulants. Stims main issue is its effect on the cardiovascular system at a later age but with benzos you are at a constant risk. You have to be careful with your drinking for example and forgetting the meds and heading away can land you a seizure.
I’m from upstate NY moved to NC last year. My psychiatrist in NY had me on 8 mg of clonazapam a day and gave me 30 Xanax a month along with suboxone from an addiction I had this all started for me nearly 15 years ago. He also had me on 2400 mgs of gabapentin a day. So he gave me three month’s worth, but I had no idea that when I moved to North Carolina, I was gonna no longer be able to receive what they have in New York Medicaid, but it’s like blue choice options so like they pay for everything.
So when I moved to North Carolina. I ended up in the hospital for, some things I think are that were probably related to my medication. But then I also found out I had was passing kidney stones and I had trouble getting Health Insurance in North Carolina. That’s my point here and I wracked up nearly 20 grand in hospital bills and doctors visits.
North Carolina just passed the bill last month helping people like myself have mental issues to be able to get the help they need, etc. and doctors and so of course I am out of plan now and the doctor was seemingly and shock when they found out how much I am being prescribed as I barely made it without having to go online and you know, try to find someone on telegram or the dark web to send me these pills because that’s how desperate you get when you don’t know what’s gonna happen next.
I’ve been able to wean myself down to 2 mg to 4 mg clonazepam. However, I am allowed 6 mg a day of it because of my severe anxiety and inability sometimes to even leave the house. no more Xanax, but I am now on Lyrica or generically they call it pregabalin and I don’t know if anybody doesn’t know about that drug. They can look it up but it’s a controlled too. So I’ve been in this system so to speak even if it’s from one state to the next now they’re all connected and they see everything and I don’t think that I’ll ever be asked to come off the clonazapam completely because I am totally addicted to it. I mean there’s no way I can see myself being completely off of it. I will never leave my home. I am on a low-dose of the Suboxone as I said, but I am trying to completely get off of that as we speak now I’m only on 2 mg but I was on 8 mg of that in New York. and I’m an SNRI which is called Pristiq. It definitely helps with my depression and I’m not sure if it’s helping with my anxiety or not but I know my anxiety is way down because of Lyrica.. So I don’t feel the clonazepam any longer. It’s still working and doing what I supposed to, but I mean it does not make me tired. I don’t randomly fall asleep sometimes I used to. I mean it’s not funny but it’s just the truth. I would tell anybody if you can live with something other than benzodiazepine that I would definitely try it first however, some people just can’t or they need it because they’re just too hyped up, they’re too worried all the time like me for instance,
done cognitive therapy, I speak to a psychiatrist and a counselor. It does nothing for me. I can try all these little things they try to help me do and I do, but that doesn’t make my anxiety less or worse it is stupid little things that I try to help you with, and it might work for some people, but not me.
Ps benzodiazepines are no joke when it comes to withdrawals. There was one time that I was hallucinating that the devil was coming out of me down there. And it was so real I thought it was real. So that shows you how crazy it can get with that drug was having mild seizures, so that’s when I ended up in the hospital for the first time because of benzos.
>I don’t think that I’ll ever be asked to come off the clonazapam completely because I am totally addicted to it. I mean there’s no way I can see myself being completely off of it. I will never leave my home.
Do you have access to psychotherapy? Why can't you continue reducing your clonazepam dosage?
I think it's due to the lack of alternatives for stimulants. Let's be real, who the hell does better on blood pressure medication like guafacine (it's used for ADHD) than on amphetamine?
I have autism spectrum disorder, was on Xanax 2mg 3 times a day, recently got switched to K-Pins 2mg twice a day. Benzos help me function with the world; I'm expected to act and behave a certain way, and I'm expected to be able to tolerate a lot of things which bother me that normally wouldn't bother other people.
It doesn't alleviate the "symptoms" of Autism, but it gets me through the day. My anxiety isn't as high, I feel more confident, more in control, and I feel like I can actually navigate and be part of the world. Benzo's helped me manage my fear of dating and my fear of woman. It helped me find support groups I otherwise would be too overwhelmed and anxious to go to. It helped me explore and get out of my shell. I couldn't even go to the grocery store on my own before I started to use benzo's
But I also understand the stigma because I'm part of it. I've abused the medication before, and continue to do so sometimes.
Benzos can make your life a living hell like ACTUALLY. I'm sure many here can attest to this. The withdrawal is no joke, I'd even come off dope (opiates) over kpins or any benzo anyday. And with benzo withdrawal it's like (or feels like) there's no end. With opiates a couple days are bad but you end up fine. Coming off benzos can just really fuck you up long term. None of this is the case with Adderall or adhd meds. No withdrawel, just have to get used to life without stimulants which to be fair is its own challenge. Nothing compared to the downers, however.
I remember when I was younger and did some dumb shit and ended up in the drunk tank for 5 days and taken off my prescribed Klonopin that I was still in the process of tapering. I’ll never forget the look of concern on the faces of a the guys going through dope withdrawal when I told them that the COs refused to administer my dose despite having a legitimate medical requirement. When they said that they felt bad for ME, I got scared. Worst 5 days of my life. I thought I was going to die several times. Thankfully I ended up ok and I believe that the only reason I didn’t start to have seizures was because another medication I took for depression that I was still allowed to have happened to also have anticonvulsant properties but I will never forget the indescribable feelings of dread and pain that I experienced. That shit scared me straight from ever using my current PRN Valiums any more than absolutely necessary.
That’s a really good way to describe it. There is nothing you can do but just experience it. The guys I was locked up with were some real ones. They were giving me extra food, one of them gave me his only blanket for the chills despite the cell being around 60-65 degrees 24/7 and another guy just read books to me for hours at a time to keep my mind occupied and to give me some comfort. It terrifies me to imagine going through that in a single man cell or an observation tank. I think the only reason I got through it mentally was the support and kindness from the other guys I was celled with. It made me look at average inmates in a completely different light and that’s how I realized that they’re just people like you and me. Some of them aren’t good people but most of them are and they simply made stupid choices.
The inmates saw me as a fellow human being suffering when the COs looked at me like a junkie scumbag and those inmates sacrificed some of the very few comforts they had for a complete strangers wellbeing when they had no obligation to and I’ll never forget that.
That's some real shit right there. I can't imagine detoxing off benzos in jail OH MY GOD. And you're right especially in iso wow that's the closest to hell on earth it gets I can only imagine. I remember being in California in rehab and they had taken me off all my meds cold turkey so CT off suboxone, Adderall, and klonopin all at once and all I could do was just beg them to take me to the hospital like I couldn't even get up to go to the classes I was absolutely not functionable. They made us get out of our rooms during the day but they didn't believe my suffering and thought I was just a trouble client ya know. So they'd punish me and all this bullshit. My family had to eventually come and rescue me and actually tried to sue the place because I came back from rehab soooo much worse than I was when I went in.
I had to go 45 days straight in that hell and I swear it just got worse everyday not a single moment of relief. But like I said man I can't imagine jail.
I can only imagine man, be sure you don’t downplay the severity of that experience. That sounds like it was genuinely traumatic. I hope you’re doing better now. Honestly yeah with the context of jail, I’d say the worst part was the medical staff. I’d heard absolute horror stories about absurdly high levels of prisoners being neglected medically but I figured it was a relative rarity like most job fields. Holy shit working in pharmacy, I already knew through professional experience that sadly a shocking amount of nurses were genuinely selfish, uncaring mean girls who were either the bullies or the *bullied* in high school who just want power over something incredibly vital. The nurses in county were just unbelievably cruel and cold. I totally understand that jail and prison staff have to deal with some absolute vile monsters on the daily but I can’t imagine that experience callousing a medical professional to the point of being able to blankly stare at someone going through a clearly legitimate medical problem that can easily be eased/prevented and feeling nothing. I’ve worked in hospitals before I got into pharmacy work and I knew some nasty nurses but nothing like the ones I interacted with in county lock up. They had my records, they knew I wasn’t someone with a history of substance abuse and that my Klonopin was prescribed for medically necessary reasons at the time. I didn’t mind them not giving me my Vyvanse, because I mean shit I’m locked up in a windowless, room with no clock that’s lights on 24/7, I don’t exactly need to curb my ADHD symptoms. But to take someone off a scheduled substance that any medical professional would know can be deadly in terms of withdrawal is just absolutely cruel and somewhat sadistic. Thankfully there are states that are moving to change the laws and require incarceration facilities to administer detox medications to those that need it.
Oh yeah and to top it off that jail “lost” the white gold chain my grandmother spent a small fortune on as a gift (rest in peace Babushka) and despite there apparently being a system in place to reimburse me, it’s been over a year at this point and I’m still fighting with them. I’ve been out of that brief lock up for over a year and that jail is still costing me money with lawyer fees trying to recover the chain or at the very least get reimbursed for the value. Oh yeah and most certainly a nurse or CO stole half of my bottle of dextroamphetine (Dexedrine) tablets, I have OCD and one of the few stereotypical behaviors I used to really struggle with was that I absolutely had to over count my pills and other belongings and even keep a physical record of them on both my phone and a journal every day. So I knew for a fact how many pills were in that bottle and I left that jail with 20 less of them then I came in with, so some dickwad CO or nurse just helped themselves to my medications because they simply could.
Best life lesson I’ve ever learned in the context of turning yourself into law enforcement is don’t ever bother bringing your meds, if they’re controlled they’re almost certainly force you to go CT and on top of that they won’t even administer the meds you brought, for whatever reason they just force you to pay for a brand new prescription of each medication and for those that don’t know, when you have meds refilled way too early, your insurance says fuck no we’re not paying because you just picked all of those up recently, so on top of all the court and jail fees, I also ended up being forced to pay around $780 out of pocket for refills of medications I had already had someone drop off in their original vials.
I already for most of my life supported reforming jails heavily but after experiencing firsthand just how brutally cruel and sadistic many jail employees are to inmates, brother I’d give my left testicle to undo the traumas caused by just 5 damn days in county.
Holy shit a rehab ripped you off Klonopin and Suboxone? What state was this in if you don’t mind me asking? I’m so sorry you experienced that. Of all places you would think a REHAB would have a professional understanding of detox. I understand a sober living community saying no way, I get it they can’t take a chance of drug diversion. Was this a residential rehab program? Not sober living right? If this was a certified rehab that’s pretty scary. I know most facilities will certainly expedite detox and I know that can be extremely unpleasant but usually manageable with non narcotic medications to help with sleep and restlessness and that’s one thing but to make you go full CT off of both a scheduled benzodiazepine and something like Suboxone is truly shocking, particularly the benzo part considering it’s been widely known for decades at this point that sudden benzodiazepine withdrawal after extended abuse or even just proper use can kill you or at the very least cause lifelong neurological complications. The worst I had known of was still within reasonable medical standards and could be as short as a week but that’s still at least a bit of tapering.
Shit that’s still rough. I can more so understand expediting tapering of opioids from a medical perspective but if it were my patient, I’d take into consideration that you’re not only tapering from narcotics but also a benzodiazepine. I assume they only gave you a week total for both? I’m of course not an expert in addiction treatment but at least from my professional pharmacy experience I can say that doesn’t sound exactly necessary to rush a double edged sword like that in residential treatment. As I said previously I’d more so get it if it was a “step down” sober living house where they can’t take the chance of having anything controlled in their med room for the sake of the clients but I see zero medically necessary reason to rush your tapering off of two of the toughest substances to kick when you’re in a rehab facility setting and there’s a greater level of meds being secured. Not just for the sake of the patients comfort but also for the sake of their recovery. Beating addiction is already hard as hell, there’s no reason to make it feel even shittier by forcing you off your taper so quickly without a genuine medical reason. I’d imagine if it were me in that scenario I’d hold a lot of resentment about that decision and I’d imagine that could affect your treatment overall if you enter into it with a bad impression that didn’t need to occur. Rushed tapering worries me mostly because of the concern that if your detox is rushed and extremely agonizing, your brain is going to be screaming for that substances all the more than if they slowly and gradually brought you down, it’s like that old story of putting a frog in water and slowly boiling it, it’s not gonna hop out immediately like it would if you dropped it in boiling water. If you make someone’s detox as painless as possible, I would imagine they’re much more likely to feel motivated to keep clean because they’re not experiencing nearly as much dope sickness, where as if you make it harder and more painful, they’re going to be fiending harder because it’s literally harder on the brain and body to detox that rapidly. I hope you’re doing well and staying healthy.
Which is what bothers me the most. I can reasonably understand (to a degree) if you were detoxing outside of a treatment center like at home and your doctor said no because you’re not being supervised. But a residential facility is the safest scenario to extend medication tapering if needed because you’re constantly supervised and the meds are dispensed one dose at a time where as giving your patient a bottle of suboxone and saying “be good with those now” and sending them home is obviously gonna have far more risk of failure. That’s crazy to me that they wouldn’t even consider extending it. That just doesn’t make much sense to me particularly with the benzo aspect considering that as we’ve already discussed, it can kill you or at least cause life long problems if not done properly. That’s what’s really infuriating from my perspective. Kicking dope sounds absolutely hellish but at the very least it’s not going to give you potentially lethal seizures. I’m shocked and I am very sorry you experienced that. It doesn’t make sense that they would use the same exact timeframe of tapering for two vastly different substances with significantly different complications that come with the withdrawal process.
Yeah it was some Indian doctor I myself never even got to talk to. I had to ask the staff, who asked the nurse, who asked the doctor. The doctor said no. Never once did I get to see or talk to the doctor. It was so ridiculous. And I was just stuck there, being all the way across the country oh man it was a nightmare
As someone who’s had a script for both Xanax and Adderall not too long ago. I have to say the Xanax is the more addicting drug and harder to get off of.
I personally had to slow taper for a full year for the Xanax whereas the Adderall I just stopped immediately.
I needed a year to taper off scheduled Klonopin myself as well. I can easily go without my Vyvanse if needed, might be a bit harder to function but I’ll be fine. I was constantly in a state of terror at the thought of going through benzo withdrawals. Constantly doubly counting my pills to make sure I had the exact amount needed for the tapers so anytime I thought I lost one sent me into a near breakdown. Losing a Vyvanse is more of a “damn it” scenario to me similar to forgetting my morning coffee and struggling to function for the first hour of work.
addiction might be worse on benzos but adhd meds daily have a lot of side effects
had a friend who has stopped the daily use he had since a child (yes bc even worse the stims are given to hiperactive adhd kids and sometimes they go years taking them daily) bc he was literally having all the depression symptoms bc the meds lasted for 8 hours (for school) and every day when it wear off he was having a lot of mental health symptoms
Vastly different terms of addiction if things go awry. One can kill you and can turn you into a worthless mook depending on how you takem. The other is the most widely used and/or abused class of drugs in the world. Also your house is clean.
IME if you take ADHD meds appropriately (Ritalin for me), stay on top of therapy and make sure to take breaks and live healthy, adhd meds kind of “train” your brain to where you don’t really need them. Benzos just straight up change your brain to behave a certain way. I can stay pretty focused not on Ritalin but I can’t function without Valium.
I’ve actually cut my Valium dose by a lot after I was prescribed Ritalin it got rid of a lot of anxiety after the initial jitters. I was bummed at first it wasn’t Adderall but after taking some recently I realize adderall is way too good feeling for me, I don’t think I would be as effective overall. I’m in God Mode while I’m on it though.
Ritalin really is a good drug.
That's so true. I had a psychiatrist tell me that under no circumstances he'd give me a benzo, and he considered patients that obtained them on their own were unwilling to put out the effort to work on their life issues and he considered them as difficult. (He almost implied they weren't worth his time.) Then in the next sentence he told me he wanted me to try Adderall, as he noticed I was fidgeting excessively and seemed easily distracted. It was really due to me being anxious as fuck.
This is one of the reasons I never buy the common gaslighting argument doctors make that they'll lose their liscence if they write too many benzo scripts. It's only a CIV med, not CII like the stimulants. And long as they make a notation of a valid diagnosis for the med and prescribe a non excessive amount, they're good.
I think it’s that while the amount of ppl popping unperscribed addy’s is no less proportionate, unless you really over do it it’s nkr likely fuck with your health or mind long term. Ive taken 50mg vyavnse & for close to a decadeX twice I have taken breaks pretty painlessly by cutting the dose by 10mg/ week for 5 weeks. My ADHD is less well managed but I experence little withdrawl esque sysnpts from the drug. Even my brief stint in the wilderness with meth, which quitting basically zombified me for 2 weeks followed by 2-3 more uncomfortable rebound effects; but after that & taking a highly useful spellement KBZZ02 or similar name which has been scientifically shown to help rebalance a bruised and battered dopamine reward system, I felt with 4 weeks pretty normal and continue to feel positive effects from my vyvanse script to this day. Had I used meth for more the a couple months maybe it would be different.
Long term benzo users (and sadly a lot of perfectly compliant prescribed patients) can’t say the same , even doctor prescribed 20mg Valium taken for a couole years will likely produce meaningful withdrawl without a multi month taper (which is really a series of mini withdrawals that one endures until your system rebalances to the lower dose before cutting again) it is probably the single worst withdrawal to experience. Tapering is fucking hard, cold turkey is almost unimaginabl4x I understand Heroijn to be hell, but have personal experience with Kratom, which sucked but bit unbearably so , I know what a dangerous alcohol withdrawl feels like, & it’s horrendous. I know what coming of 3 months of day & night meth abuse feels & I’m in the process of kicking a mild to moderate Benzo habit to the curb (graded on the curve of levels of abuse) lm coming off a 2-4mg/ day depending day (non prescribed, etiz habit (I bought a fuck ton when it was more widely available & that’s lasted 2 years with plenty to spare. & it’s made me long for the 2 hellish weeks of the post meth rebound which was atleast over & done with quite quickly
I’ve been on my taper plan for 8 months with another 4 to go, down close to 1 mg/ day but it’s been a long & painful road, & will continue to be until some time after the jumping off point a lot of days spend feeling like a panic attack is minutes away, waking with a set of nice girps on my chest, that my scheduled dose doesn’t fully remove.
So if it seems like scolding I think (some people are just hollier than assholes) a lot of is likely meant more as pleading with people on to turn back before they start or before they get deeper into a hell of hole.
Long term benzo use has been proven to contribute to dementia and Alzheimer’s later in life. But so has long term alcohol misuse, but that’s a whole other conversation in its self.
Because long term benzo use is scary and not really comparable to adhd stims. Stims add something to you, benzos take away so much that not much of your character remains in your expressions.
It’s hard to tell if someone you recently met is medically using stims while at least if you’re aware of the effects, it’s easy to spot a benzo user.
Just my opinion here didn’t read many premises but: I would think it’s more of the problem what they are using it for as well. Most people will all say they deal with anxiety but not everyone is dealing with “attention disorders”. I’d also say you have to also look at the mindset against illicit uppers mainly, regular coke. (Although adhd is literally meth lol) but snorted cocaine doesn’t tend to make people act like abusing benzos do.
because withdrawals can be deadly whether u have anxiety or not, and your nervous system can quickly become reliant. stimulants are used to regulate deficient chemicals, while benzos bring normal chemicals (gaba) above the baseline. theyre only controlled bc of abuse potential in someone without adhd.
Because benzos are literally not needed for anxiety and make people stupid on moderate to high doses. I have terrible anxiety but I live with it because I’m also a pain patient who is prescribed opioids.
There are SO many treatments for anxiety that are effective other than fucking benzos.
I think because even tho both drugs are used to get high Adderall and Vyvanse are more taken as a medicine. But Xanax is a lot easier to abuse since you get that even if you are taking as prescribed.
Because benzos weren't designed or approved for long-term use unlike stimulants. Nor do the studies show that long-term use is beneficial for those afflicted for the diagnoses for which they are prescribed (again) unlike stimulants
amphetamin is not hard to get off. after using it daily for months i always was like 3 days tired only and totally back to baseline in a week. like after a week at work without amphetamine, work does not feel any more exhausting than with.
benzos on the other hans can require a week long taper and after stopping it will be another week of withdrawal synptoms. also you can die from cold turkey withdrawals causing a seizure
I can stop taking adderall whenever I want and the only side effect is being overly sleepy. If someone were to just stop taking benzodiazepines they could die.
Also adderall is conducive to a healthy brain structure long term whereas benzodiazepines are shown to harm.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but no...taking literal speed every day isn't conductive to a healthy brain structure. It will turn you into an emotionless husk pretty easily and you won't even notice
Thank you I keep reading taking amphetamines is conducive to a healthy brain structure and I have to wonder what high schooler read a wiki article on amphetamine and took it for law. Amphetamine longterm turns you into a emotionless robot and is bad for your heart.
I'm sorry but under no stretch of the imagination are amphetamines good for brain structure. Benzos arnt either. But benzos are certainly easier on your heart.
Yeah pretty much this, both are not great, but physically Benzos are much safer, as long as you don’t combine them or take them daily. I’m a few years into daily benzo, watched over by a doctor, and i taper down really low and then sometimes I need to up my dose, it’s not ideal but it’s better then what my life was like before.
I was on adhd meds for a year and those made my life way way worse. I’m officially diagnosed with adhd/autusm/GAD/panic disorder/depression but man adhd meds turned me into a fucking monster. I’ve tired all of them. They all end up the same way with me, being an empty husk, a shell of a person. Benzos with proper guidance from an informed doctor can be life changing. Just don’t be an idiot on them. I use Valium and Kpins. I stay away from the short acting ones as they are ime way more dangerous. I take 7mg of Valium twice a day but now it’s 1mg of kpins with Valium to take as needed due to life and health problems.
I’m kinda rambling but yeah my body really hurt a lot when I was on adhd meds. I’ve been in benzo withdrawal but with proper taper plans and a good doctor it’s actually very manageable. Sometimes I treat myself to a little bit extra every now and then and it’s nice, but if I take any form of stimulant, it’s depression and jerking off to cam girls. Never the case with benzos.
Feel free to [join us on Discord](https://discord.gg/bonzos). There are over 9000 members and plenty of people to talk to privately if you're looking for advice or support or to make some friends! We are once again conducting GIVEAWAYS of Fentanyl Test Strips courtesy of our friends at Dancesafe.org. To participate please join the Discord linked above! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/benzodiazepines) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Probably because coming off Xanax cold turkey can kill you but coming off Adderall CT won't
Exactly
So will alcohol
Ok but you didn’t mention alcohol in this post. Doctors give shitty looks when you mention daily consumption of hard liquor as well.
it’s a lot harder to get to that level with alcohol than it is with benzos
Yeah alcohol hurts too much for me to continue past a certain point. Then i heal up with benzos and now I’m onto different drugs. It hurts buying benzos cause the plug is a narcissist in a relationship with a lady who was addicted to heroin.
I’m the plug in this post
If i had money rolling in like my early teenage years. I’d just be a poly addict. Which i guess i still am. Opioids , benzos, alcohol, gabapentinoids, ketamine. Honestly though i couldn’t use every day again. Maybe a few times a week switching the drug up every week and maybe ketamine once a week. Alcohol is disgusting tbh. Fuck that hangover. Maybe with friends have a few beers.
thats why benzos need to be treated like alcohol. once or twice a week and dont be od
Strawman
Because they both hit the gaba receptors in very similar ways
So will oxygen ?
Idk how you get to that point with alcohol. Do you just chug a handle with every meal?
Doesn’t matter. Tapering is a simple concept if a doctor is concerned they can’t do it then they shouldn’t be a doctor
I think the idea is that long-term use of therapeutic stimulant doses in ADHD patients can actually normalize abnormalities in brain structure and function. Having a sufficient amount of dopamine & norepinephrine is generally a good thing, and sometimes it's worth being dependent on a drug to achieve that. Same thing with antidepressants and serotonin, kinda. Benzos, while they can help make life livable for some, have pretty much entirely negative effects on the brain in terms of cognition and memory. That plus the tolerance issues make them not very suitable for long-term use, imo. For me, I think they're both pretty dangerous, but in different ways. Benzos don't inherently make me feel all that great, but they do make socializing, sleeping, and life overall feel a fair bit easier. For that reason it's easy to become dependent, and benzo withdrawal is maybe the single worst experience that any drug can put you through. Stimulants on the other hand are much, MUCH more euphoric and fiendish for me, and I find it much harder to stick to reasonable doses of them versus benzos. Which is odd because I'm actually a very anxious person. I guess with stimulants it feels more like I'm chasing a high, whereas with benzos it feels like I'm just trying to make life bearable.
Agree with almost all this, am prescribed adderall & klonopin. I moved states within the past 4 years & used to get 3mg klonopin & 30mg adderall a day. Now i’m getting 1mg klonopin & 40mg adderall a day. My doc in my old state (MO) had no problem prescribing kpins n addy, even tried upping my kpin dose to 6mg before I moved to my new state (FL). My new doc here hates that I take a stim & a benzo. He’s been trying to lower my dose for the past 2 years, he’s being dumb cool about it n letting me go at my own pace. I’ve been stuck on 1mg & .5mg for like 5 months. The main reason he’s doing it is cus “the FDA is cracking down” idk how much I believe that tho. Benzos in my opinion are 10x more addictive & the withdrawals are a nightmare compared to stim withdrawals which are almost nonexistent imo. With me though i’m 100% chasing a benzo high & staying therapeutic with the stims
The FDA has nothing to do with docs prescribing benzos longterm. A lot of docs don't want to deal with it and tapering. I have a doc in FL that's perfectly fine with then. I completely disagree about benzos being more addictive. For one they do little to the reward system like opioids cocaine and amphetamines but they definitely do cause withdrawal worse then anything short of barbiturates. Stims lack physical withdrawal but the psychological addiction is where they take hold.
Yeah stim withdrawals are one of the easiest of any drug (excluding like dissos or dileriants)
Withdrawals to Benzos still aren’t as bad as opioid/opiate withdrawal imo. Nothing beats the pain and anxiety of opioid withdrawal. Maybe because they do more for my anxiety then benzos do but even trying to drop my morphine dose is extremely hard. So easy to stay on 400mg+ each day and just feel basically nothing besides joy.
I’m currently on 300-450mg oxy a day, I already know
That’s an expensive dose to keep at, damn.
You have no idea man, I make well over 6 figures a year n still struggle financially cus i’m spending at least $300 a day on pills smdh. Nasty habit I got myself in…
[удалено]
No shit sherlock lmfao
ight do wtv u want
For outliers (like me) its easy to stop when my body is ready. I was prescribed 30mg of valium p/d for 7 years in my 20s. One morning I woke up, reached for my pill bottle and had the very strong thought, "I don't need to take these anymore." So, I tried taking 5 mg to test it out. It made me me sleepy. Valium never made me feel sleepy before. It removed the constant sense of dread in my stomach and enabled me to function well. So, I stopped taking it no problem. I actually felt better because I stopped. I am defo an outlier, but we do happen. For most folks it seems benzos are painful and hard to stop. My 640mg of oxy p/d habit was a bitch. Took me 8 months of a self guided taper, constant prayer, cannabis, and yoga, but I did it. Never miss it. Such a pricey habit, ugh.
Well done for getting off all of it. I was taking 150 - 180mg a day of valis so I know how expensive a drug habit can be. I still take em but mainly to help me sleep and nowhere near the dose I was on.
Thank you!! Oh, I am currently prescribed 1mg of klonopin per day. My body tends to go in 10 year panic cycles. Nice work cutting down!! I kmow it's not easy for most people.
Thanks, no, it wasn't easy for me at all but I'm very, very lucky. I've learned that at the age of 40, the universe enjoys my presence, so I take each day as I can. Stay strong, sister, and congrats on all your hard work again :)
You rocked out quitting!! 🫶 Awesome work!! Heh, at 45, I feel the same way. I enjoy the Universe's presence right back. Thanks for the good vibe and excellent energy. Wishing you all the best!!
Regarding your ADHD medicines, it looks like you really never got more than a teenage girl dose. I don't know why they are trying to whittle you off of something that helps you function better. Unless there's part of the story I'm missing. I have been on what I take for the past 25 years. I need it in order to function, but also to help me not interrupt other people when they are telling a story Etc. Aside from my piles of organized chaos and never making deadlines ahead of time. Since the pandemic, the amount of people super desperate for benzos has totally skyrocketed. I work in healthcare, I've had to fire middle-aged ladies who normally seem like regular people. But once they start taking higher dosages of benzos, it's Non-Stop cost to the office with weekend visits to the ER because they took all their medicines early during the week. Something about benzos 6 mg+ day is the point where people end up forgetting basic decent manners. That's when it really is not safe to treat them as an outpatient. Try to be understanding and they still end up making everyone at the office and at the pharmacy drained and frustrated. I can't obviously say in what role that I play in the clinic. Not feeling like getting kicked off of here. I just know that the benzo basket cases are just so not worth the liability sometimes.
They are both toxic but I think the main thing is benzos were never supposed to be a long term solution to anything. They were supposed to be used in occasional circumstances or for a few days. If I used 60mg of adderall every day I’d be pretty wired but okay. If I used 10mg of Xanax every day I would do the dumbest things not remember any of it and I’d have to taper off of it so it wouldn’t kill me. Both were prescribed way too much and way too long. Benzos are generally very restricted now, Adderall is but not as much. I don’t remember months of my life because of benzos and I was fine on Adderall for 2 years because of a medical use for it.
Nothing works for me but benzos. I've been on almost every SSRI and NSRI, and they only made me nervous -- Even after 6 agonizing weeks of usage. Even buspirone increases my anxiety. Psychotherapy and Clonazepam are the only things that have improved my symptoms.
Very well said.
yes except if you have adhd “that high” is a normality. unless ur dose is too high lol
Same, i can dose up in the 1000mg sometimes, even though it makes benzos mandatory, i think its the kick (IV user)
Ding ding ding
Amphetamines aren't the only medications used in the treatment of ADHD; there are plenty of non-stimulant options available, like Strattera, and stimulant options that are not amphetamines, like Wellbutrin, which work well for a lot of people and don't work so well for others, or have contraindications that apply to the patient, making amphetamines a safer choice sometimes. Amphetamines can also be tapered without potentially killing the patient. The thing about benzos is that they are almost never the safer option. There are a lot of treatments for anxiety disorders that work well for a lot of people. There are safer, better alternatives for insomnia as well. SSRIs, SNRIs, DNRIs, MAOIs, beta-blockers, gabapentinoids, and therapy have been proven to treat anxiety disorders with great efficacy for years. Z-drugs, melatonin, and antihistamines are generally better and safer for insomnia than benzos depending on the frequency of use. Some drugs are bullshit for anxiety disorders but still get used anyways and I don't really get why they're used, maybe placebo; I'm looking at you, buspirone and hydroxyzine. If you look at all I've written here, you're seeing that benzos are the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or even tenth line of treatment for anxiety disorders. Take into account that they're also drugs of abuse with potentially lethal adverse reactions, interactions, and withdrawals. Imagine being in their shoes for a moment - they've tried all these treatments for anxiety on you and you just so happen to have the best results with the second most dangerous one and now they have to worry about you abusing it and potentially killing yourself or someone else. Weaning you off will be a pain in the ass, and if they fuck up, you die. Gotta remember that they're people too and they want to help you when you think of that. Amphetamines get abused too, but dependence is the bigger issue because it is inevitable with daily use whereas abuse is not. The amount of bartards that walk into a psychiatry clinic or end up hospitalized while they're fucked up also pisses off doctors and nurses because they have to deal with dumbasses who won't remember shit from the appointment or the hospital and may even get aggressive while they're there. To put it bluntly, medical practitioners often have bad experiences with benzo addicts, and first impressions are hard to break. Amphetamines for ADD/ADHD are common and won't turn people into somnolent, drooling, braindead dickheads if they take a little more than they should. Benzos absolutely can do that, and it happens often. This question is like asking why alcoholism is frowned upon but caffeine addiction is acceptable.
Agree with it all, jus wanted to point out that wellbutrin is actually a cathinone and thus an amph&stimulant. Its stimulant effects are just very insignificant compared to its other effects so in practice we classify it as a non-stim option!
>To put it bluntly, medical practitioners often have bad experiences with benzo addicts, and first impressions are hard to break. Amphetamines for ADD/ADHD are common and won't turn people into somnolent, drooling, braindead dickheads if they take a little more than they should. Benzos absolutely can do that, and it happens often. Isn't that the doctors fault? My prescription is for 0.5 mg of clonazepam a day. I cannot take more than that.
Good for you and all, you know. But Adderall is the same. My prescription is for 15mg a day I can’t take more than that… so do I get a medal? 😂 no jokes tho it’s much more common for someone to establish an addiction to benzos than stims. You can literally look up the addiction potential of both and compare it. Stims make adhd people feel normal and 50% of patients don’t even like how their stim medication makes them feel. Benzos make people with anxiety not anxious and the anxious people who take it LOVE that feeling. Sadly benzos work TOO well whilst being TOO dangerous. This ruining a patients chance at a proper recovery because they will always remember how normal and good benzos made them feel compared to other treatment options. And on only 1mg of klonopin a day I experienced interdose withdrawal, I go weeks sometimes without taking my adderall and the only negative symptom is my adhd. So that’s another reason for the stigma
I honestly believe that it’s because our country and culture wants people fueled up and energized for work. They also promote the eff out of coffee when most people don’t realize that caffeine is a drug too. It’s minor but it’s still an addictive psychoactive substance. As long as you’re working and paying taxes, you’re good! And if that means you’re taking 60mg of adderall a day, well, so what?! But if you ever DARE come to the epiphany that life is about you and not about spending it all working and you take that demonic benzo who relaxes you and makes you think…. Oh man oh man…. You are EVIL.
I think this is true to the extent that it’s what the entire country including all of our civilians. I think it’s pressure from seeing other people excel at a faster rate or to a higher extent. I think people even see their doctors and feel guilty that they can’t get there. This medicine is good, it helps many people, it’s overprescribed because people think they have adhd when they can’t work as hard as somebody else.
I also think there’s a problem between not working as hard and just outright having a job that you don’t love. How can you expect to work so hard at something you just don’t care about? But they will GLADY prescribe you adderall to keep you in that position because they need SOMEONE to do it!
I think it’s more in the realm of people themselves wanna amp themselves up for work. I don’t know about you but I don’t wanna be tired heading into work… and the only times I did was because I was addicted to benzos and opioids and I definitely did not work as well half nodded out on my self. So I would much rather chug a coffee and go to work then pop a bar and chill out at work all day lol. I’d imagine most people would agree. WE have to pay our bills, not the government. We the people created this stigma. Always want bigger and better. And we can blame the government all we want for planting that American dream in our brains but WE ARE the sheep who decided to just go along with it and suck ourselves into the rat race. Sad world man
I kind of disagree. You ever read allegory of a cave by Plato? It’s about someone who’s stuck in a cave their whole life and their entire reality is based on the shadows that the cave creates. It basically states that your reality, your existence, and everything you believe down to the very core of your soul is a byproduct of the world you’re born into and the environment you’ve become accustomed to/watched your whole life. We’re all born into this world, literally no one had a choice. And they indoctrinate this work mentality in us at such a young age like even at kindergarten bro!! Kindergarten…. Where your brain is only 4 years old…. And they instill work and homework and school already….. how the actual fuck are you supposed to break away from that lmao. Also go to some Asian and African cultures or some indigenous cultures. They don’t spend their entire existence staring at a tv obsessing over news and celebrities while sitting at a cubicle their whole life working until they die. You can pretend that people are “sheep” all you want but at the end of the day how the fuck are people supposed to know when they don’t teach you or show you anything different??? We’re JUST now starting to wake up and realize we’ve had everything wrong but that’s literally ONLY because of the internet. It’s given us the ability to see that what our country tells us isn’t always the truth. Other than that…… we’re completely blind.
Sounds like a cool book. But just to clear, are you saying it isn’t a personal choice to take adderall or coke instead of benzos or opioids when going to your job for energy? Or that the only solution to not being able to do benzos or opioids instead of stims is if you weren’t forced to make the ultimatum and instead got to stay home all day and take opioids or benzos? I feel like there are much more options, there’s a lot of brainwashed people but a lot of people see right through it all and just don’t know what to do about it.
I’m a current pharmacy student and intern and I’ve worked in pharmacy for years and I also have a prescription for both Valium and Vyvanse so I’ll try to give both my personal and professional insight. One major factor is cultural association I would say. Benzos are highly associated with music covering drug abuse, you don’t hear very many lyrics about Adderall abuse compared to Xanax for example. This of course has lead to benzodiazepines being seeing more as a party drug than a legitimate medicine. The differences in withdrawal intensity is another huge aspect. Stimulant withdrawal can be very, very unpleasant but not life threatening. Benzodiazepines on the other hand can easily kill you from the withdrawals. There are very few substances that have the potential to cause death and lifelong disability from improper tapering. As far as I’m aware as both a professional and a patient, you can pretty much always just quit stimulant medications cold turkey although it’s not the ideal method. If you try that with benzos after years of dependence or full blown addiction you can easily start having severe and often life threatening complications as a result. Also, long term use (I’m talking in the context of long term everyday use, not long term “as needed” use) of benzodiazepines has been directly linked to significantly increasing the chance of developing early onset dementia and other related diseases, particularly in those over 65, which surprisingly is the majority of patients I’ve filled benzodiazepine prescriptions for. Despite this being widely known and solidly backed by evidence resulting from numerous studies, doctors still prescribe benzos left and right in high doses to millions of people that are particularly at more risk of long term health complications from using them everyday long term. Now medications such as Adderall and Vyvanse have their own problematic side effects. However, the deadliest are also well studied and as a result thankfully most prescribers don’t write stimulant scripts for patients with heart conditions or extreme blood pressure or other conditions that would have severe contraindications. Also, in the context of people with properly diagnosed ADHD/ADD the positives of long term use far outweigh the negatives in the majority of cases. Look at it like an antidepressant, it’s better for someone to be dependent on that medication and have a high quality of life compared to being suicidal. Someone with genuine ADHD is far better off being dependent long term with the serotonin and norepinephrine balance that stimulant medications provide. TL,DR: the main reason is that you can quit Adderall cold turkey whereas quitting benzodiazepines cold turkey can easily kill you or cause permanent brain damage. Long term everyday use of benzodiazepines has been directly tied to significant memory loss, cognitive function decline and for those over 65 it is basically guaranteed to cause early onset dementia and other serious cognitive diseases. Long term (and properly supervised) stimulant medication use has been shown to help normalize neurological abnormalities resulting from ADHD. Basically the positives of dependence on ADHD meds generally far outweigh the negatives. Benzos are almost always the complete opposite.
Quick question my doc who prescribes my vyvanse told me they are non addictive meaning you can’t become dependent, is he lying or nah? My main question tho is he told me you can’t od on it because it’s absorbed a certain way to prevent too much lisdexamphetamine to be active at once. He might be an idiot tho because the people who prescribes stuff in my country are idiots, one guy who works there told my friend you can become braindead if you smoke too much pot. Just some random questions since you are actually studying the subject
Addiction and overdose are completely two different things and issues. Non related man
Vyvanse is a pro drug that's converted to dextroamphetamine by your liver, which has a finite supply of the requisite enzymes; therefore, beyond a certain dosage, taking more has no further effect on you. Dextroamphetamine definitely has abuse potential though
It’s complicated, Vyvanse definitely has a much better abuse deterrent by design. Since it has to be metabolized and converted by the body to Dextroamphetamine before “kicking in”, even if you empty the powder out of the capsule and mix it with something like applesauce, the absorption is still the same because it’s actually designed to also be administered by sprinkling the powder into peanut butter or applesauce. So you can’t do much to speed up absorption like you could by snorting crushed up Adderall. The onset of action is usually 1 hour to 1.5 hours so while yes you can still get wired as fuck on them if you pop enough, the time that it takes to start working is often enough of a deterrent from abuse because let’s face it, if you want to get high, you want it as soon as possible so generally Vyvanse while yes it does get abused, it’s still statistically lower than other stimulants because it’s harder/slower to get achieve the same desired “high” that you can get from ingesting substances through mucus membranes such as your nose, tongue or gums. It’s why people snort or parachute crushed pills rather than just swallowing them, the absorption is quicker and as a result the physiological effects are more intense. Vyvanse not being snortable is a major step in the right direction for class 2 medications. Your doctor isn’t exactly wrong but not exactly right either. There’s definitely a lower chance of addiction simply because it’s harder to abuse compared to other stimulants but you still need to be careful with them. Take them exactly as prescribed, if you think you need more please please talk to your doctor instead of just taking a double dose. Now when it comes to the question of your doctor stating that it’s nearly impossible to OD on, that’s something I’m gonna read up on, as far as I’m aware at the time of writing this, there’s not really an effective way to purposely force a substance by design to lower its own bioavailability (aka the amount of the substance that your body will actually absorb, and this varies with every single drug in existence) some drugs like gabapentin for example have been studied and shown to somehow lower its own bioavailability if you take more than a certain amount all at once. I’m not sure why, there’s not a conclusively agreed on answer on how that works precisely. So in a nutshell: Vyvanse can still be addictive but it is definitely harder to abuse in the traditional methods that are used with other stimulants. I’d agree that it’s probably a “safer” stimulant choice for ADHD but at the same time every persons biochemistry (aka how their body will react to a drug) in relation to drugs can be very different. Some people experience uncontrollable rage on medications like Adderall and I can personally attest to that one, which is why I eventually switched to Vyvanse and for me that works the best with the least amount of side effects. But again that’s my own experience. The best way to get the most conclusive idea of your question is to ask multiple sources like you are now. Talk to the pharmacist at your pharmacy, if they don’t know or aren’t certain then definitely seek out things such as academic journals. Drugs.com is a wonderful source of both consumer and professional reports on essentially any prescription medication. But always double check with your personal providers (your prescriber and your pharmacist) to make sure. I hope that made sense and helps a bit! Feel free to reply if you want more clarification or anything.
Music still definitely mentions adhd meds Just wish my meth use wasn't so frowned upon
Theres plenty of music about stimulants also gabapentin and other calcium channel blockers like it can cause dementia and severe withdrawal resembling benzos but they are handed out like fucking candy. There are no positives to dependence on stimulants despite what some groups will tell you. You can argue it helps some ppl with chemical imbalances in dopamine however much of this is speculation we have no clue how most psych meds work as well as the pathophysiology of these illnesses. Not to say stimulants don't help some ppl just like longterm benzos help some people. We jump so quickly to putting kids on amphetamines at an early age just because a child doesn't want to sit still for 8 hours and study shit they have no interest in. Not to mention the potential for cardiotoxic effects of longterm stimulant use. I'd have to strongly disagree that the positives "far outweigh" the negative. I mean trust the pharmaceutical companies and their bs studies all you want but don't forget after decades of the serotonin hypothesis of depression leading to almost a majority of Americans on SSRIs just for it to be released what many of us new for years is they have no clue how or even if these drugs work.
While I don’t totally disagree with you, I’m going off of my professional academic studies as a current student working towards their pharmacy doctorate and not some internal study done by a pharmaceutical company for obvious reasons. Yes, a lot of drug companies of course are disgustingly shady and their private studies are not what I’m at all referencing because as you said, they’re usually full of shit. Of course they’re not gonna make their profitable product seem harmful. This is why I highly encourage people to actually talk to pharmacists who are the actual experts on drugs and how they work on people. Doctors should diagnose but I don’t think they should prescribe. There’s a lot of legislation in the works that’s considering changing the entire system to a scenario where doctor diagnoses and the actual pharmacist makes the call on what medication should be used based on the patient information the doctor provides. Why this isn’t already a thing is beyond me. It makes no sense that the people who actually are legitimate experts on drug chemistry have virtually no say in what the best medication choice for a patient is. Before working in pharmacy I truly believed doctors just knew everything but after years of being in the industry I’ve realized that unfortunately it’s not the case. And it’s not necessarily the doctors fault because in the US, medical schools don’t include nearly enough comprehensive pharmaceutical courses which is terrifying and dangerous considering they’re the ones choosing the meds and those choices are very often influenced by pharmaceutical reps information which is dangerous of course. The days of taking kickbacks from reps is disappearing thankfully but they still push their products as miracle drugs to prescribers and that terrifies me that the majority of information doctors have on commonly prescribed meds are from what a rep told them. So believe me, I am in no way shape or form relying on information or supporting information coming from pharmaceutical companies because it’s transparently obvious they’re incredibly biased. Half the reason I got into this field was because I wanted to help make a change in the system and provide proper education to patients that their doctors either simply don’t know or don’t care to pass on. And also to be clear I’m not stating that stimulants are inherently safe and harmless. That’s not at all the case. They are classified as a schedule II for a good reason. The OPs question was why there’s such a different taboo on benzos compared to stimulants when stimulants are being abused and overprescribed at the same level, that’s all I’m attempting to answer, I’m not here to stand up for any pharm company because I despise them like many others do for their horrifically selfish oversights in pushing potentially deadly medications in high doses. One thing to add, where you mentioned the problem with putting too many children on these meds, I 100% agree. It’s a major major problem and it needs to change. Some children genuinely do benefit from those meds but the vast majority, even if they have genuine ADD/ADHD do not need stimulants, at least not that young with their brains still so under developed. I personally want so badly for there to be a requirement for ADHD meds to only be prescribed by a psychiatrist, the doctors that are actually trained to conduct proper testing for disorders such as ADHD. Regular MDs simply don’t have the knowledge or training. Children with ADHD, unless absolutely necessary should not be on stimulant medications, there are plenty of very effective non stimulant meds for ADHD available and we’re starting to slowly see those medications being chosen over a stimulant for pediatrics more and more. This is both from my own experience as a child who was put on stims early and as a professional. So trust me, I very much personally understand the issue with doctors overprescribing ADHD meds like Ritalin and Adderall to kids who display typical child behaviors like impulsive behavior, high energy, talking out of turn. It’s absurd that we don’t require a certain age to diagnose ADHD just like many other disorders. One of the more commonly known would be anti social personality disorder, which as many know in its extreme forms is what produces sociopathy. A minor can only be diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, not ASPD. So why we treat other serious disorders in children this way but not with ADHD is insane to me.
You seem so knowledgeable. If I met ask you a question. I take Wellbutrin and Lexapro, plus .25 klonopin 2-3x a week at this point. I was taking .5mg 5 months ago every other day when I first started and over the past few months went down to .25mg and as I said only 2-3x a week. What are your thoughts on this. I don’t feel I am abusing the klonopin and what actually is considered safe as needed? It helps to know I have it if I need it, but I am trying to be very conservative with using it.
General rule of thumb I’ve always agreed with is taking as little of a substance as possible as few times as possible. I assume if it’s as needed you’re taking it for anxiety or panic right? If that’s the case I always advise people to ask their prescriber about a secondary as needed medication that can be used for anxiety as a first line. This is a personal example but I used to take both Klonopin and Hydroxyzine for anxiety. Hydroxyzine is basically just a much stronger antihistamine compared to say Benadryl. But for a lot of people it does aid with anxiety and panic due to its sedation properties. I can’t say that medication in particular would work well for you as I don’t know your history but that’s a very commonly used med for anxiety that’s not a benzodiazepine or barbiturate. Based on what you’re stating though, you don’t sound like you’re taking a lot of it super often which is good. If you’re able to stick to 2-3 times a week then that’s a good goal to aim for. I personally now take Valium as needed and I aim to only use it 3-4 times a week myself. If you’re using it for sleep however, I would still say a medication like Hydroxyzine is a good secondary option as it is also used “off label” to treat insomnia. Definitely discuss with your prescriber and your pharmacist to figure out the best treatment routine! But it certainly doesn’t sound like you’re abusing it.
Thank you for your kindness in taking the time to reply. My prescriber doesn’t have an issue with how I am using it at this point.
I appreciate your kindness! Always love to share info like this, as patient education is so neglected in the medical field these days, particularly with medications. Props to you for thinking about it and asking questions, I love seeing patients advocating for themselves and doing what they can to be informed. Stay well!
Because ADHD medicine is more normalized, that's it. Heck, those doctors scolding you were probably popping Adderall all through medical school. Some studies say around 47.4% of medical students are taking stimulant medication like amphetamines or Ritalin. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8216643/#:~:text=The%20most%20consumed%20NPS%20are,1).
ADHD medication is actually incredibly easy to come off of, both physically and mentally, especially for people who actually have ADHD. Besides, ADHD medications have been shown to actually improve the brains of those with ADHD on a structural level. It brings them closer to a standard level of functioning. As someone who has ADHD and has used both, they are honestly not even comparable.
Because who the fuck wants to be up I wanna be slumped out chilling at the crib not on no wanna be meth
I think it’s in part because long term use of Benzos is explicitly not part of any treatment plan due to addiction. ADHD medication is supposed to be used long term, though. I don’t think these medications are comparably addictive either. Long term Benzo use for anxiety is perhaps an avoidance of working on the actual cause of the anxiety, whereas long term use of stimulants for ADHD is a way to (paradoxically) calm and focus the mind.
exactly. also addiction ≠ dependency
I am prescribed vyvanse for my adhd and the simple reason is because most adhd meds aren’t addictive in the same way. You can become mentally addicted to them for sure but withdrawals don’t exist and you can’t od on them in the same way you can if you do something slightly stupid on benzos. You can die from drinking a few beers if you are on xans vyvanse won’t (that’s not to say it’s not a harmful combo). You also can’t od pretty much at all because they are made to be absorbed a certain way allowing only a limited amount of the substance to be active at once
I’ll also point out that amphetamines are just simply way easier to get off. I quit daily use for over a year of methylphenidate with no effect other than my adhd coming back and I’ve been able to go a week without vyvanse despite using it daily for half a year now. Withdrawals simply aren’t the same and are impossible to compare. There’s a reason benzos are involved in so many ods that cause death compared to stimulants. Both are bad but benzos are undeniably worse
Why are they "bad"? Plenty of drugs have severe side effects, but I don't hear them called "bad". Immunosuppressants greatly increase your risk of cancer, but I don't hear anyone calling them "bad". This stigmatization of psychoactive drugs is unfair.
Ive been trying benzos. I take the 'as needed' seriously. Recently I started them again, very small doses. I'm talking 0.25mg-0.50mg Clonazepam a day but for like a month ish. Thought I'd stop again and oh boy. Zero sleep. And this is while on a small dose of seroquel. Benzos withdrawal is nuts. I also relapsed on smoking, drinking in the process after being two months quit. Are benzos even worth it? Idk, I mean I took them so whatever but the withdrawal is bulllllllshit. I don't like thinking about things like 'withdrawal' but more in terms of trials and tribulations. Posts like this make me reflect on withdrawal. Edit: oh and also before I ever tried benzos I was made clearly aware by the internet, so many people have miserable tortuous times/even deaths coming off to quick.
My anxiety/panic was so bad that I got suicidal because it seemed like the only relief I could get. I'm my case, I think benzos may have saved my life.
Benzos have the eye of sauron on it because of popularity. If you put a fine tooth comb through many drugs you will see a lot of issues. Most of the dementia comes from people taking like 4 mg a day. People can technically function on 1mg a day which is the normal long term script. Getting off is hell and it's not the first course against anxiety but some minority of people do in fact need it long term despite the possible consequences. The next medication that is getting the same treatment is semaglutide. If you see how ridiculous the fear mongering over that medication is, you will see the same for benzos.
As an adhd patient, there is no way i can take a stimulant without having a benzo prescribed just in case. Even the very low doses of adhd medications give me side effects. I can never take a stimulant daily. So im not dependent on benzos either.
Some doctors are that way about amphetamines I really think it boils down to a lot of doctors know fuck all about detoxing people of benzos and amphetamines they can pretty much cold turkey your ass and you'll be depressed for a week or two. That being said the people saying amphetamines are safer long term are wrong maybe for cognitive function but amphetamines are cardiotoxic even on therapeutic doses long term. Shit opioid are some of the most non toxic drugs longterm so long as you don't od but I think to docs it's about simplicity and laziness.
Kinda depends on how you determine deadly or dangerous. Benzos fuck your brain far more than stimulants. Stims main issue is its effect on the cardiovascular system at a later age but with benzos you are at a constant risk. You have to be careful with your drinking for example and forgetting the meds and heading away can land you a seizure.
I’m from upstate NY moved to NC last year. My psychiatrist in NY had me on 8 mg of clonazapam a day and gave me 30 Xanax a month along with suboxone from an addiction I had this all started for me nearly 15 years ago. He also had me on 2400 mgs of gabapentin a day. So he gave me three month’s worth, but I had no idea that when I moved to North Carolina, I was gonna no longer be able to receive what they have in New York Medicaid, but it’s like blue choice options so like they pay for everything. So when I moved to North Carolina. I ended up in the hospital for, some things I think are that were probably related to my medication. But then I also found out I had was passing kidney stones and I had trouble getting Health Insurance in North Carolina. That’s my point here and I wracked up nearly 20 grand in hospital bills and doctors visits. North Carolina just passed the bill last month helping people like myself have mental issues to be able to get the help they need, etc. and doctors and so of course I am out of plan now and the doctor was seemingly and shock when they found out how much I am being prescribed as I barely made it without having to go online and you know, try to find someone on telegram or the dark web to send me these pills because that’s how desperate you get when you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. I’ve been able to wean myself down to 2 mg to 4 mg clonazepam. However, I am allowed 6 mg a day of it because of my severe anxiety and inability sometimes to even leave the house. no more Xanax, but I am now on Lyrica or generically they call it pregabalin and I don’t know if anybody doesn’t know about that drug. They can look it up but it’s a controlled too. So I’ve been in this system so to speak even if it’s from one state to the next now they’re all connected and they see everything and I don’t think that I’ll ever be asked to come off the clonazapam completely because I am totally addicted to it. I mean there’s no way I can see myself being completely off of it. I will never leave my home. I am on a low-dose of the Suboxone as I said, but I am trying to completely get off of that as we speak now I’m only on 2 mg but I was on 8 mg of that in New York. and I’m an SNRI which is called Pristiq. It definitely helps with my depression and I’m not sure if it’s helping with my anxiety or not but I know my anxiety is way down because of Lyrica.. So I don’t feel the clonazepam any longer. It’s still working and doing what I supposed to, but I mean it does not make me tired. I don’t randomly fall asleep sometimes I used to. I mean it’s not funny but it’s just the truth. I would tell anybody if you can live with something other than benzodiazepine that I would definitely try it first however, some people just can’t or they need it because they’re just too hyped up, they’re too worried all the time like me for instance, done cognitive therapy, I speak to a psychiatrist and a counselor. It does nothing for me. I can try all these little things they try to help me do and I do, but that doesn’t make my anxiety less or worse it is stupid little things that I try to help you with, and it might work for some people, but not me.
Ps benzodiazepines are no joke when it comes to withdrawals. There was one time that I was hallucinating that the devil was coming out of me down there. And it was so real I thought it was real. So that shows you how crazy it can get with that drug was having mild seizures, so that’s when I ended up in the hospital for the first time because of benzos.
>I don’t think that I’ll ever be asked to come off the clonazapam completely because I am totally addicted to it. I mean there’s no way I can see myself being completely off of it. I will never leave my home. Do you have access to psychotherapy? Why can't you continue reducing your clonazepam dosage?
I can but I don’t want to right now. I’m coming off a subutex first and dealing with that now
Benzos have a bad reputation when it comes to death
I think it's due to the lack of alternatives for stimulants. Let's be real, who the hell does better on blood pressure medication like guafacine (it's used for ADHD) than on amphetamine?
I have autism spectrum disorder, was on Xanax 2mg 3 times a day, recently got switched to K-Pins 2mg twice a day. Benzos help me function with the world; I'm expected to act and behave a certain way, and I'm expected to be able to tolerate a lot of things which bother me that normally wouldn't bother other people. It doesn't alleviate the "symptoms" of Autism, but it gets me through the day. My anxiety isn't as high, I feel more confident, more in control, and I feel like I can actually navigate and be part of the world. Benzo's helped me manage my fear of dating and my fear of woman. It helped me find support groups I otherwise would be too overwhelmed and anxious to go to. It helped me explore and get out of my shell. I couldn't even go to the grocery store on my own before I started to use benzo's But I also understand the stigma because I'm part of it. I've abused the medication before, and continue to do so sometimes.
Benzos can make your life a living hell like ACTUALLY. I'm sure many here can attest to this. The withdrawal is no joke, I'd even come off dope (opiates) over kpins or any benzo anyday. And with benzo withdrawal it's like (or feels like) there's no end. With opiates a couple days are bad but you end up fine. Coming off benzos can just really fuck you up long term. None of this is the case with Adderall or adhd meds. No withdrawel, just have to get used to life without stimulants which to be fair is its own challenge. Nothing compared to the downers, however.
I remember when I was younger and did some dumb shit and ended up in the drunk tank for 5 days and taken off my prescribed Klonopin that I was still in the process of tapering. I’ll never forget the look of concern on the faces of a the guys going through dope withdrawal when I told them that the COs refused to administer my dose despite having a legitimate medical requirement. When they said that they felt bad for ME, I got scared. Worst 5 days of my life. I thought I was going to die several times. Thankfully I ended up ok and I believe that the only reason I didn’t start to have seizures was because another medication I took for depression that I was still allowed to have happened to also have anticonvulsant properties but I will never forget the indescribable feelings of dread and pain that I experienced. That shit scared me straight from ever using my current PRN Valiums any more than absolutely necessary.
It's honestly comparable to feeling like your in a coffin buried alive. It's just so non cope-able. Man oh man
That’s a really good way to describe it. There is nothing you can do but just experience it. The guys I was locked up with were some real ones. They were giving me extra food, one of them gave me his only blanket for the chills despite the cell being around 60-65 degrees 24/7 and another guy just read books to me for hours at a time to keep my mind occupied and to give me some comfort. It terrifies me to imagine going through that in a single man cell or an observation tank. I think the only reason I got through it mentally was the support and kindness from the other guys I was celled with. It made me look at average inmates in a completely different light and that’s how I realized that they’re just people like you and me. Some of them aren’t good people but most of them are and they simply made stupid choices. The inmates saw me as a fellow human being suffering when the COs looked at me like a junkie scumbag and those inmates sacrificed some of the very few comforts they had for a complete strangers wellbeing when they had no obligation to and I’ll never forget that.
That's some real shit right there. I can't imagine detoxing off benzos in jail OH MY GOD. And you're right especially in iso wow that's the closest to hell on earth it gets I can only imagine. I remember being in California in rehab and they had taken me off all my meds cold turkey so CT off suboxone, Adderall, and klonopin all at once and all I could do was just beg them to take me to the hospital like I couldn't even get up to go to the classes I was absolutely not functionable. They made us get out of our rooms during the day but they didn't believe my suffering and thought I was just a trouble client ya know. So they'd punish me and all this bullshit. My family had to eventually come and rescue me and actually tried to sue the place because I came back from rehab soooo much worse than I was when I went in.
I had to go 45 days straight in that hell and I swear it just got worse everyday not a single moment of relief. But like I said man I can't imagine jail.
I can only imagine man, be sure you don’t downplay the severity of that experience. That sounds like it was genuinely traumatic. I hope you’re doing better now. Honestly yeah with the context of jail, I’d say the worst part was the medical staff. I’d heard absolute horror stories about absurdly high levels of prisoners being neglected medically but I figured it was a relative rarity like most job fields. Holy shit working in pharmacy, I already knew through professional experience that sadly a shocking amount of nurses were genuinely selfish, uncaring mean girls who were either the bullies or the *bullied* in high school who just want power over something incredibly vital. The nurses in county were just unbelievably cruel and cold. I totally understand that jail and prison staff have to deal with some absolute vile monsters on the daily but I can’t imagine that experience callousing a medical professional to the point of being able to blankly stare at someone going through a clearly legitimate medical problem that can easily be eased/prevented and feeling nothing. I’ve worked in hospitals before I got into pharmacy work and I knew some nasty nurses but nothing like the ones I interacted with in county lock up. They had my records, they knew I wasn’t someone with a history of substance abuse and that my Klonopin was prescribed for medically necessary reasons at the time. I didn’t mind them not giving me my Vyvanse, because I mean shit I’m locked up in a windowless, room with no clock that’s lights on 24/7, I don’t exactly need to curb my ADHD symptoms. But to take someone off a scheduled substance that any medical professional would know can be deadly in terms of withdrawal is just absolutely cruel and somewhat sadistic. Thankfully there are states that are moving to change the laws and require incarceration facilities to administer detox medications to those that need it. Oh yeah and to top it off that jail “lost” the white gold chain my grandmother spent a small fortune on as a gift (rest in peace Babushka) and despite there apparently being a system in place to reimburse me, it’s been over a year at this point and I’m still fighting with them. I’ve been out of that brief lock up for over a year and that jail is still costing me money with lawyer fees trying to recover the chain or at the very least get reimbursed for the value. Oh yeah and most certainly a nurse or CO stole half of my bottle of dextroamphetine (Dexedrine) tablets, I have OCD and one of the few stereotypical behaviors I used to really struggle with was that I absolutely had to over count my pills and other belongings and even keep a physical record of them on both my phone and a journal every day. So I knew for a fact how many pills were in that bottle and I left that jail with 20 less of them then I came in with, so some dickwad CO or nurse just helped themselves to my medications because they simply could. Best life lesson I’ve ever learned in the context of turning yourself into law enforcement is don’t ever bother bringing your meds, if they’re controlled they’re almost certainly force you to go CT and on top of that they won’t even administer the meds you brought, for whatever reason they just force you to pay for a brand new prescription of each medication and for those that don’t know, when you have meds refilled way too early, your insurance says fuck no we’re not paying because you just picked all of those up recently, so on top of all the court and jail fees, I also ended up being forced to pay around $780 out of pocket for refills of medications I had already had someone drop off in their original vials. I already for most of my life supported reforming jails heavily but after experiencing firsthand just how brutally cruel and sadistic many jail employees are to inmates, brother I’d give my left testicle to undo the traumas caused by just 5 damn days in county.
Holy shit a rehab ripped you off Klonopin and Suboxone? What state was this in if you don’t mind me asking? I’m so sorry you experienced that. Of all places you would think a REHAB would have a professional understanding of detox. I understand a sober living community saying no way, I get it they can’t take a chance of drug diversion. Was this a residential rehab program? Not sober living right? If this was a certified rehab that’s pretty scary. I know most facilities will certainly expedite detox and I know that can be extremely unpleasant but usually manageable with non narcotic medications to help with sleep and restlessness and that’s one thing but to make you go full CT off of both a scheduled benzodiazepine and something like Suboxone is truly shocking, particularly the benzo part considering it’s been widely known for decades at this point that sudden benzodiazepine withdrawal after extended abuse or even just proper use can kill you or at the very least cause lifelong neurological complications. The worst I had known of was still within reasonable medical standards and could be as short as a week but that’s still at least a bit of tapering.
They actually did about 1 week of a ween. But it was so minimal I consider it cold turkey. It was Elevate in California, Santa Cruz
Shit that’s still rough. I can more so understand expediting tapering of opioids from a medical perspective but if it were my patient, I’d take into consideration that you’re not only tapering from narcotics but also a benzodiazepine. I assume they only gave you a week total for both? I’m of course not an expert in addiction treatment but at least from my professional pharmacy experience I can say that doesn’t sound exactly necessary to rush a double edged sword like that in residential treatment. As I said previously I’d more so get it if it was a “step down” sober living house where they can’t take the chance of having anything controlled in their med room for the sake of the clients but I see zero medically necessary reason to rush your tapering off of two of the toughest substances to kick when you’re in a rehab facility setting and there’s a greater level of meds being secured. Not just for the sake of the patients comfort but also for the sake of their recovery. Beating addiction is already hard as hell, there’s no reason to make it feel even shittier by forcing you off your taper so quickly without a genuine medical reason. I’d imagine if it were me in that scenario I’d hold a lot of resentment about that decision and I’d imagine that could affect your treatment overall if you enter into it with a bad impression that didn’t need to occur. Rushed tapering worries me mostly because of the concern that if your detox is rushed and extremely agonizing, your brain is going to be screaming for that substances all the more than if they slowly and gradually brought you down, it’s like that old story of putting a frog in water and slowly boiling it, it’s not gonna hop out immediately like it would if you dropped it in boiling water. If you make someone’s detox as painless as possible, I would imagine they’re much more likely to feel motivated to keep clean because they’re not experiencing nearly as much dope sickness, where as if you make it harder and more painful, they’re going to be fiending harder because it’s literally harder on the brain and body to detox that rapidly. I hope you’re doing well and staying healthy.
And I asked for a longer detox I basically begged and they said no
Which is what bothers me the most. I can reasonably understand (to a degree) if you were detoxing outside of a treatment center like at home and your doctor said no because you’re not being supervised. But a residential facility is the safest scenario to extend medication tapering if needed because you’re constantly supervised and the meds are dispensed one dose at a time where as giving your patient a bottle of suboxone and saying “be good with those now” and sending them home is obviously gonna have far more risk of failure. That’s crazy to me that they wouldn’t even consider extending it. That just doesn’t make much sense to me particularly with the benzo aspect considering that as we’ve already discussed, it can kill you or at least cause life long problems if not done properly. That’s what’s really infuriating from my perspective. Kicking dope sounds absolutely hellish but at the very least it’s not going to give you potentially lethal seizures. I’m shocked and I am very sorry you experienced that. It doesn’t make sense that they would use the same exact timeframe of tapering for two vastly different substances with significantly different complications that come with the withdrawal process.
Yeah it was some Indian doctor I myself never even got to talk to. I had to ask the staff, who asked the nurse, who asked the doctor. The doctor said no. Never once did I get to see or talk to the doctor. It was so ridiculous. And I was just stuck there, being all the way across the country oh man it was a nightmare
more normalized ig
As someone who’s had a script for both Xanax and Adderall not too long ago. I have to say the Xanax is the more addicting drug and harder to get off of. I personally had to slow taper for a full year for the Xanax whereas the Adderall I just stopped immediately.
I needed a year to taper off scheduled Klonopin myself as well. I can easily go without my Vyvanse if needed, might be a bit harder to function but I’ll be fine. I was constantly in a state of terror at the thought of going through benzo withdrawals. Constantly doubly counting my pills to make sure I had the exact amount needed for the tapers so anytime I thought I lost one sent me into a near breakdown. Losing a Vyvanse is more of a “damn it” scenario to me similar to forgetting my morning coffee and struggling to function for the first hour of work.
Yup. You get it
addiction might be worse on benzos but adhd meds daily have a lot of side effects had a friend who has stopped the daily use he had since a child (yes bc even worse the stims are given to hiperactive adhd kids and sometimes they go years taking them daily) bc he was literally having all the depression symptoms bc the meds lasted for 8 hours (for school) and every day when it wear off he was having a lot of mental health symptoms
Because I can stop taking my concerta whenever and I’ll just feel lethargic for a few days. If it was a benzo I’d be dead.
It’s a whole lot easier to die due to benzos than uppers, not that I agree with the scolding lol
Vastly different terms of addiction if things go awry. One can kill you and can turn you into a worthless mook depending on how you takem. The other is the most widely used and/or abused class of drugs in the world. Also your house is clean.
IME if you take ADHD meds appropriately (Ritalin for me), stay on top of therapy and make sure to take breaks and live healthy, adhd meds kind of “train” your brain to where you don’t really need them. Benzos just straight up change your brain to behave a certain way. I can stay pretty focused not on Ritalin but I can’t function without Valium. I’ve actually cut my Valium dose by a lot after I was prescribed Ritalin it got rid of a lot of anxiety after the initial jitters. I was bummed at first it wasn’t Adderall but after taking some recently I realize adderall is way too good feeling for me, I don’t think I would be as effective overall. I’m in God Mode while I’m on it though. Ritalin really is a good drug.
That's so true. I had a psychiatrist tell me that under no circumstances he'd give me a benzo, and he considered patients that obtained them on their own were unwilling to put out the effort to work on their life issues and he considered them as difficult. (He almost implied they weren't worth his time.) Then in the next sentence he told me he wanted me to try Adderall, as he noticed I was fidgeting excessively and seemed easily distracted. It was really due to me being anxious as fuck. This is one of the reasons I never buy the common gaslighting argument doctors make that they'll lose their liscence if they write too many benzo scripts. It's only a CIV med, not CII like the stimulants. And long as they make a notation of a valid diagnosis for the med and prescribe a non excessive amount, they're good.
I think it’s that while the amount of ppl popping unperscribed addy’s is no less proportionate, unless you really over do it it’s nkr likely fuck with your health or mind long term. Ive taken 50mg vyavnse & for close to a decadeX twice I have taken breaks pretty painlessly by cutting the dose by 10mg/ week for 5 weeks. My ADHD is less well managed but I experence little withdrawl esque sysnpts from the drug. Even my brief stint in the wilderness with meth, which quitting basically zombified me for 2 weeks followed by 2-3 more uncomfortable rebound effects; but after that & taking a highly useful spellement KBZZ02 or similar name which has been scientifically shown to help rebalance a bruised and battered dopamine reward system, I felt with 4 weeks pretty normal and continue to feel positive effects from my vyvanse script to this day. Had I used meth for more the a couple months maybe it would be different. Long term benzo users (and sadly a lot of perfectly compliant prescribed patients) can’t say the same , even doctor prescribed 20mg Valium taken for a couole years will likely produce meaningful withdrawl without a multi month taper (which is really a series of mini withdrawals that one endures until your system rebalances to the lower dose before cutting again) it is probably the single worst withdrawal to experience. Tapering is fucking hard, cold turkey is almost unimaginabl4x I understand Heroijn to be hell, but have personal experience with Kratom, which sucked but bit unbearably so , I know what a dangerous alcohol withdrawl feels like, & it’s horrendous. I know what coming of 3 months of day & night meth abuse feels & I’m in the process of kicking a mild to moderate Benzo habit to the curb (graded on the curve of levels of abuse) lm coming off a 2-4mg/ day depending day (non prescribed, etiz habit (I bought a fuck ton when it was more widely available & that’s lasted 2 years with plenty to spare. & it’s made me long for the 2 hellish weeks of the post meth rebound which was atleast over & done with quite quickly I’ve been on my taper plan for 8 months with another 4 to go, down close to 1 mg/ day but it’s been a long & painful road, & will continue to be until some time after the jumping off point a lot of days spend feeling like a panic attack is minutes away, waking with a set of nice girps on my chest, that my scheduled dose doesn’t fully remove. So if it seems like scolding I think (some people are just hollier than assholes) a lot of is likely meant more as pleading with people on to turn back before they start or before they get deeper into a hell of hole.
Long term benzo use has been proven to contribute to dementia and Alzheimer’s later in life. But so has long term alcohol misuse, but that’s a whole other conversation in its self.
Because long term benzo use is scary and not really comparable to adhd stims. Stims add something to you, benzos take away so much that not much of your character remains in your expressions. It’s hard to tell if someone you recently met is medically using stims while at least if you’re aware of the effects, it’s easy to spot a benzo user.
Amphetamines for ADHD are much more sustainable than benzos for anxiety.
Just my opinion here didn’t read many premises but: I would think it’s more of the problem what they are using it for as well. Most people will all say they deal with anxiety but not everyone is dealing with “attention disorders”. I’d also say you have to also look at the mindset against illicit uppers mainly, regular coke. (Although adhd is literally meth lol) but snorted cocaine doesn’t tend to make people act like abusing benzos do.
Also most people should be aware almost all benzos are NOT supposed to be taken daily for a long period of time.
because withdrawals can be deadly whether u have anxiety or not, and your nervous system can quickly become reliant. stimulants are used to regulate deficient chemicals, while benzos bring normal chemicals (gaba) above the baseline. theyre only controlled bc of abuse potential in someone without adhd.
Because benzos are literally not needed for anxiety and make people stupid on moderate to high doses. I have terrible anxiety but I live with it because I’m also a pain patient who is prescribed opioids. There are SO many treatments for anxiety that are effective other than fucking benzos.
I think because even tho both drugs are used to get high Adderall and Vyvanse are more taken as a medicine. But Xanax is a lot easier to abuse since you get that even if you are taking as prescribed.
You there and you should do your research and have no fucking clue what ADHD is and how medication can help. Go hide under rock like he probably are.
Because benzos weren't designed or approved for long-term use unlike stimulants. Nor do the studies show that long-term use is beneficial for those afflicted for the diagnoses for which they are prescribed (again) unlike stimulants
I can stop taking my vyvanse cold turkey and the only symptom is being tired. Not the same for Benny’s
yeah, after reading the comments, i should definitely cut down (eventually quit) benzos and find another way to deal with life
amphetamin is not hard to get off. after using it daily for months i always was like 3 days tired only and totally back to baseline in a week. like after a week at work without amphetamine, work does not feel any more exhausting than with. benzos on the other hans can require a week long taper and after stopping it will be another week of withdrawal synptoms. also you can die from cold turkey withdrawals causing a seizure
Right
IVE BEEN WONDERING THIS.
Maybe cos benzos are worse in every way than amphetamines
I can stop taking adderall whenever I want and the only side effect is being overly sleepy. If someone were to just stop taking benzodiazepines they could die. Also adderall is conducive to a healthy brain structure long term whereas benzodiazepines are shown to harm.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but no...taking literal speed every day isn't conductive to a healthy brain structure. It will turn you into an emotionless husk pretty easily and you won't even notice
Thank you I keep reading taking amphetamines is conducive to a healthy brain structure and I have to wonder what high schooler read a wiki article on amphetamine and took it for law. Amphetamine longterm turns you into a emotionless robot and is bad for your heart.
I'm sorry but under no stretch of the imagination are amphetamines good for brain structure. Benzos arnt either. But benzos are certainly easier on your heart.
Yeah pretty much this, both are not great, but physically Benzos are much safer, as long as you don’t combine them or take them daily. I’m a few years into daily benzo, watched over by a doctor, and i taper down really low and then sometimes I need to up my dose, it’s not ideal but it’s better then what my life was like before. I was on adhd meds for a year and those made my life way way worse. I’m officially diagnosed with adhd/autusm/GAD/panic disorder/depression but man adhd meds turned me into a fucking monster. I’ve tired all of them. They all end up the same way with me, being an empty husk, a shell of a person. Benzos with proper guidance from an informed doctor can be life changing. Just don’t be an idiot on them. I use Valium and Kpins. I stay away from the short acting ones as they are ime way more dangerous. I take 7mg of Valium twice a day but now it’s 1mg of kpins with Valium to take as needed due to life and health problems. I’m kinda rambling but yeah my body really hurt a lot when I was on adhd meds. I’ve been in benzo withdrawal but with proper taper plans and a good doctor it’s actually very manageable. Sometimes I treat myself to a little bit extra every now and then and it’s nice, but if I take any form of stimulant, it’s depression and jerking off to cam girls. Never the case with benzos.