my town is dry on xanax again. so I am going through whatever withdrawals, all over again. nothing I do seems to help except stare off into space and try not to think, sleep, eat or drink
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marquis, you make a valid point, but it is not on the money. Xanax withdrawal is definately the nastiest withdrawal I have ever witnessed. When I was briefly in rehab, I met some real winnders... dope fiends, meth addicts, crack heads... but no one was in worse emotional shape than the Xanax addicts.. and you are right about the seizures. but this is conditional with sub factors.. it is ugly withdrawal.
HOWEVER ... just like xanax withdrawals, heroin and Oxi withdrawals also can cause seizure in patients with sub factors which lower the seizure threshold same as xanax..
Valium can also be ugly to come off of, but I would say other benzos like ativan and klonopin are in my opinion, a piece of cake to come off of compared to a hard heroin habit.
So again, I totally agree with you, people should not underestimate the adictive withdrawl potency of Xanax, but I believe "all benzos" is an exxageration, and to say it makes dope withdrawal look like a vacation is also a bit exeragerated. It is sort of like apples and oranges.. both are very ugly places to be, and I would urge everyone to not get addicted to either.
I was using some hyperbole there to make a point about just how nasty benzo w/d is. And I did generalize, not every benzo habit is harder to break than every dope habit, but generally that is the case. Xanax seems to be the easiest benzo to get hooked on, and the worst to come off. I'm a big proponent of tapering with diazepam (it seems to work best) very slowly. The worst kick I've ever seen was a good friend of mine who had been taking valium since she was like ten, and was now in her forties. She'd been on 80+ for the last 20+ years. Even with a super slow taper it was horrific to watch. I've had a few big opioid habits that I've kicked and a few benzo habits and the benzos were always worse. You gotta love the feeling of fire ants crawling on your brain stem. /a friend of mine jumped through a wall length window because of ativan withdrawal and still can't figure out why she did it. I'm aware that opioid withdrawal can cause seizures, but nowhere near as easily as benzos (which all have that risk). Also, death from opioid withdrawal requires other contributing factors much more than death from benzo withdrawal does. And yes, the best advice is to not do opioids or benzo at all, but if you must be very careful to use them infrequently to avoid dependence.
HOWEVER ... just like xanax withdrawals, heroin and Oxi withdrawals also can cause seizure in patients with sub factors which lower the seizure threshold same as xanax..
Valium can also be ugly to come off of, but I would say other benzos like ativan and klonopin are in my opinion, a piece of cake to come off of compared to a hard heroin habit.
So again, I totally agree with you, people should not underestimate the adictive withdrawl potency of Xanax, but I believe "all benzos" is an exxageration, and to say it makes dope withdrawal look like a vacation is also a bit exeragerated. It is sort of like apples and oranges.. both are very ugly places to be, and I would urge everyone to not get addicted to either.
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I'm aware that opioid withdrawal can cause seizures, but nowhere near as easily as benzos (which all have that risk). Also, death from opioid withdrawal requires other contributing factors much more than death from benzo withdrawal does.
And yes, the best advice is to not do opioids or benzo at all, but if you must be very careful to use them infrequently to avoid dependence.
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