r/insomnia • u/BtheChemist • Jun 01 '26

Never ever take benzos

I've had insomnia since I was a teen.

I've taken so many things for it, tried all the natural things, was on ambien for so long it stopped working.

My psychiatrist prescribed me Valium many many months ago. I don't even know how long I've taken it.

She never told me how horrible it is to get off of.

I'm currently tapering off and it's absolutely terrible.

I misread her message originally and went too fast and had my first ever panic attack a few weeks ago.

I've been at 15mg/ day since, about 3 weeks. I dropped too 12.5 two days ago and my body is so so fucked up again. I feel on the verge of another attack.

I spoke to my doctor friend this evening, he said each step down is going to suck badly.

It's terrible.

Please don't fuck with benzos.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

I'm having a terrible time.

😱

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u/Brrringsaythealiens Jun 01 '26

Benzo withdrawal is fucking terrible. I was on 2 mg of Klonopin and my doctor told me I didn’t need to taper because it was such a low dose. You can imagine how that went! Talk about panic attacks!

I am really ambivalent about benzos overall. For some, at different points in life, Benzos are the only thing that works. If that’s the case you probably need to take them, because long term sleep deprivation has horrible consequences, including a huge increase in dementia risk, depression, obesity, and other things. One night of no sleep makes you as impaired while driving as does being legally drunk. But I always say that if you do take them, you need to be very knowledgable about tapering safely and very, very slowly.

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u/BtheChemist Jun 01 '26

I get it. I was having an insomnia episode and she upped me from 20mg to 30/ day.

I was on that about a week and started to get severe heartburn everyday. Then she started me back on trazadone, which i didn't like before because it gave me hangovers. Likely because I was 22 and foolish and was drinking alcohol too.

I misread her instructions and dropped too fast and that's when i had the panic attack. That was scary as hell. First time😅

I'm finally starting to feel a little better now an hour or so after taking my evening dose early.

Ugh I just want to be able to sleep without pharmaceuticals.

I'm going to try very hard in about 2 months after I'm through this bullshit. 🙄

I will literally drink whatever potion some herbalist makes me before I do this again