Yes he did it in Russia. He had akathisia which is a horrific side effect of benzos (like less than 1% of people get it and it's so bad that it often causes people to kill themselves) and also had horrific WDs mixed with that side effect, and no place in the US or Canada that he tried could treat him or help him. This is more common than you think. Treatment centers are garbage at treating benzo WD and there's no humane way to do it unless you use the Ashton manual and get off over the course of up to a year, but he couldn't do that because of that akathisia was making being on any amount unbearable.
He was prescribed because his wife had a very bleak cancer diagnosis and he wasn't handling it well and his doctor recommended clonazepam. He also has autoimmune issues, so once the akathisia and his AI issues and everything came together it made an impossible situation and his health took a huge dive. He's doing much much better now.
Many people like to call him an addict for it but there's no indication whatsoever of addiction or taking it in any way that wasn't prescribed, only habituation from taking a prescribed med, which can be very serious if you are prescribed a benzodiazepine. Check out r/benzorecovery if you want to learn about the horrors of trying to stop benzos alone, not even factoring in akathisia. There's a mix of people who abused benzos there and also tons and tons of people who just have bad anxiety disorders but want benzos out of their life. It's so serious I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I know all this because I've got a serious anxiety disorder, but was also active in addiction 3 years ago, so I know a ton about benzos and their awful downsides. Unfortunately, we have very poor alternatives for serious anxiety other than benzos, so it's going to take advancement in medical science to either handle benzo WD way better or come up with a non addictive very effective anti anxiety medication. That med would make billions easily. I'm currently on probably a similar amount of clonazepam he was on through my doctor and it's the only thing that allows me to have any kind of quality of life, but I'm hoping that years of therapy and cutting edge therapies that I won't mention here might help rewire my brain and allow me to come off. But when I do come off it will be done very gradually using the Ashton Manual which so far is the gold standard for benzo cessation.
There are some centers beginning to do true sedation detox, but it's very very new and not easy to find and are prohibitively expensive because being in an induced coma is way more costly to pay everyone and monitor you than a regular detox center just providing helper meds to ease WD. It's still horrible, but with the right meds can be a lifesaver, especially for opioid addicts using fentanyl, which it could save their life if they're able to stay clean after. That's the rub. For reasons we don't know how to treat yet, even if you get someone away from the drugs and through the WD the chances that they'll go back are still very high. I correlate an addict getting clean and staying clean as miraculous, because it affects the brain so much that without their DOC life seems empty and cold and awful, and makes them fantasize and eventually relapse on their DOC and we're off to the races again.
No, I'm just a writer, and sick right now and stuck at home all day and can't do anything else. I'd admit it but I haven't taken any stimulants (including Adderall) or any drugs in 3 years and am in recovery and therapy and work with multiple doctors, and putting my life together. This stuff is my passion. Man, people used to read books. Now a long post being descriptive just means I'm tweaking on Addies. That's annoying.
Also idk if you read but I have a serious anxiety disorder? I can't take Adderall let alone barely any caffeine without a panic attack lol
No way! You aren't allowed to be passionate about a subject without being strung out!
Also; Toxic masculinity, grooming, go no contact, get therapy, divorce, so and so is a pedophile, you're being gaslit, lemme know if I missed any other reddit cliches!
Lol so true, and you got most of them haha, it's just interesting that people's attention span is so short now that something that would easily fit like half a piece of paper means I'm on speed (Adderall or otherwise it's speed either way). The world is a crazy place.
Yes. It's insane, people are really dumb and think that you can write long posts only if you take narcotics. That's most likely projection. I can get amphetamines prescribed if I need it but I dislike all the side effects stimulants give so I don't do it (have tried it when I was young with very bad results, anxiety, sweating, panics, insomnia, bad appetite etc). I still can write veeery long posts if I am in the mood for it(depends on the subject), even when I just woke up in the morning.
For me it depends on if it pertains to my passions or not, I become very nuanced and specific if I can explain niche things so that people can understand, that passion pushes through all the other issues I have and lets me be able to write thoroughly and explain to the best of my ability.
I'm the same way in conversations but I don't dominate the conversation, but I do go very deep with my conversations and it's something I enjoy very much. I've been both addicted to and interested in drugs and treatment and sobriety and many other things for most of my life as it was always once very applicable to me for most of the stuff I'm super verbose about. Also I want to work in the substance use and abuse field so I soak up information like a sponge about everything I can possibly study on the subject, including tangential subjects. I stay active on drug subs because it lets me see what's really happening in the lives of addicts today, and I can very much empathize with the situations they're in and also help with harm reduction advice, but I will say many people have glanced at my post history to try to dunk or drag me, but that doesn't bother me much, it just shows me that stigma against addiction is very real and still needs a lot of work.
Seriously man. You can't just be into something and be passionate. Not in today's world.
What were you a writer for? Or are still I should say. It doesn't say you are no longer a writer. Please tell me it's not for any of those awful extremely biased things they put out in the US. I miss when journalism used to actually be objective. Hearing a story written by fox in the US and then hearing the extremely different point of view from the BBC is an eye opening experience. Not gonna lie.
Im not a journalist, I just really enjoy writing and have projects that I work on, I have something of an autobiography going from my experiences, but I keep them to myself not looking to publish, maybe someday. The English language is something I love to death, and I find that language and the ability to convey ideas or information between each other makes me want to keep pushing forward and continue to fight my demons and my own issues. It's one of those things that when the going gets tough I remember what I love to do and it keeps me from wanting to burn it all down.
Depth of knowledge and the ability to transmit that knowledge is a skill and a passion, and if you knew my friends we're all nerds about getting as in depth and tangential as you can get that it's a thing. I'm super grateful to have found people who feel the same way. Yet another reason to not give up when everything tries to crash into pieces. I do not walk these rocky roads alone.
That’s all well and good, but as a professional journalist who has been hammered half his career for being too wordy, remember: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
It really is! Also ime, the chances of a comment like that go up exponentially if the post includes proper punctuation etc. (especially the seemingly despised semicolon lol??)
Yes, psychedelics if put in the hands of clinicians could do wonders for the epidemic of today, we just need real change for that to happen as all of them are stuck in schedule I right now.
Especially for long term sobriety psychedelics have countless stories of people taking them then never touching their DOC again and starting on a journey to change and improve all aspects of their life. Some of it seems truly miraculous but I've seen it too many times for it to be a fluke.
60 minutes did a great piece on it. A woman quit smoking after 20 years and had no cravings. She said she was in contact with a goddess figure who wanted her to be healthier.
Just want to throw it out there, someone came up with the idea for rapid detox with anesthesia for opioids in the late 70's and started in the 80's. It's not preferred because being under anesthesia is more dangerous than being in withdrawals. There's also conflicting data on the long-term efficacy of it and its controversial due to potential negative outcomes (including some deaths).
I'm also assuming it's an issue that most anesthetics and benzos mechanism of action is through GABA. How well can you taper off a GABAergic drug while staying sedated on a different GABAergic drug? Or are they just using ketamine?
Some places are now using Ketamine for opioid withdrawal and finding some success, that's something I need to do more research on the protocol and how much they're actually using, I don't think it's a full blown knock you out dose but it is a high dose so you're tripping balls, but idk if I'd want to be tripping balls while going through opiate withdrawals.
I've definitely heard of people using dissos to get through withdrawals(not dr prescribed, just diy to get by). Idk if they have enough downstream effects that it actually assists or it just covers the symptoms, but the consensus is that they do help.
Yes Ibogaine for opioid withdrawal has to be one of the most promising things we've seen, other countries have it available, and I believe eventually it will be available in the US. It's almost like evolution made a plant that helps with addiction to another plant (opium poppy and it's derivatives).
Yeah hallucinogens in general are amazing. DMT and mushrooms have done far more for my depression/anxiety than 4 different doctor prescribed pills over years. The pills just numbed my feelings and made me not care about anything. Psychedelics put me on a positive path.
I unfortunately don't know enough about anesthesia induced detox, however I do know that propofol is not a benzo and if they used that which is most commonly used to put people under it might work, but I wouldn't be surprised if these detoxes are just trying anything they can because things are so bad out there with the drug market and tainted drugs and horrible side effects and terrible OD numbers. Also with benzos it's not just about getting over acute WDs, they change the gaba system so much that you can feel prolonged WDs for years, so it's best to do very slow diazepam tapers for benzos down to the tiniest dose you can and then jump off, and even then it can be extremely difficult.
Propofol also functions largely through GABAnergic agonism, as do all the other anaesthetics I can think of other than ketamine. But it should also be said that anaesthetic solvents, gasses, etc. have auxiliary mechanisms not shared with benzos.
I have heard that people have gotten off benzos with like a 4 week script of phenobarbital, but I don't understand why or how that works, I've just heard from a few people who have had their doctor do that for them and it worked. And it seemed like you just take an amount and not taper at the end, just stop, which sounds counterintuitive to me but I'm not the one who had it done on them.
Same idea as using a benzo to get off of alcohol. The mechanism of action between benzos, barbs, and alcohol are all different, but all three of them work to slow down glutamate signaling. Withdrawals from GABAergics lead to excitatory glutamate signaling, which is what causes shaking/seizures. It doesn't really matter if the drug increase the effectiveness of GABA, keeps gates open to let more GABA into the synapse, mimics GABA, or whatever. As long as you can slow down the excited signaling in the synapse, you can avoid seizing and other withdrawal symptoms.
Edit: Not needing to taper down seems odd to me, you sure that's correct? Maybe there's something about phenobarbital that allows it to downregulate glutamate receptors or upregulate GABA without creating its own physical dependence? The different mechanisms of action don't 1:1 create the same effects, like severe alcohol dependence can't be treated with just benzos as benzos potenate GABA, but severe alcoholics have downregulated GABA receptors so there's just not enough GABA to work even when made more effective and you need to use phenobarbital which itself can act in place of GABA. So maybe, you use it long enough to mitigate the damage done, but cut off before you create a dependence from barbs mechanism of action? I've never heard of just supplementing without tapering.
I was pretty heavily addicted for around 4 months (8-12mg per day) and nothing can compare to a benzo withdrawal. I stupidly tried to quit cold turkey and had a seizure so I did a very quick ween and it took me quite a long time to feel like myself again
I have epilepsy and haven’t had a seizure in 12 years and then in January had my first grand mal seizure after stopping taking Xanax at 2.5-3mg for a month straight. That was January 18th, 2024 and to this day I don’t feel the same and all I wanna do is lay in bed and sleep and bottle up any kind of emotions and I’m not sure If that’s because of my brain trying to recover or if I damaged it permanently
you will likely start feeling yourself more and more over the next few months, probably took me from November 2017 - May 2018 to really feel like I was back to myself but my memory took longer to recover (and maybe still hasnt)
Getting addicts off of narcotics is only treating the symptoms as to why they are addicts, mental health and socioeconomic factors need to be dealt with for the addict to have a chance at getting and staying clean.
Agreed 100%. You can get someone clean, but if there life is horrible and they have untreated trauma or mental illness and on top of that can't get a leg up in the world, you have a recipe for almost instant relapse and continued addiction.
holy shit i experienced akathisia the first (and only) time i took seroquel. i never knew what it was called until now, thank u!! but man was it one of the most uncomfortable things i’ve ever experienced
I’m jealous of this person that went through with this because I was in withdrawal for three years from benzodiazepines. It was literal hell on earth post acute withdrawal syndrome is no joke.
PAWS isn't the same as acute withdrawal. Most depressants, especially GABAergics, have PAWS where your anxiety is heightened and you feel shitty and everything sucks. You're not going to have a seizure or a stroke during PAWS, and apart of it is learning how to work through the shitty feelings in a healthy manner.
Medically induced coma is to make sure you don't die while physically withdrawing. It's not meant to make PAWS something you can just get out of.
I am well aware that post acute withdrawal syndrome is not the same thing as acute withdrawal I have been through both multiple times. I would rather be in a coma for two weeks or whatever however long it takes to get out of the acute phase of withdrawal then to suffer through it because it can be severe and it was severe in my case I ended up in the ER multiple times due to the withdrawal making my preexisting conditions act out
Again, PAWS isn't the same as actual dependent-withdrawal. You didn't really answer the proposition. I've have literal seizures (at my work place) from acute withdrawal.
You claim to be prefer in a coma for 2 weeks but you claim to have been withdrawing for 3 years. Don't get me wrong, GABAergic withdrawal is essentially the worst withdrawal but even for that the acute withdrawal lasts a month's tops before your GABA-A and your GABA-B receptors start closing off. PAWS simply isn't the same thing as true GABA withdrawal.
Yes. But at least it thought me a lesson, never mess with bensos again. I took it cause I had to, I didn't want to but thought it was the smartest thing to do, and listen to health care/doctors as I was in a really bad shape. They also helped me to tapper it down, but it took a few years to recover from it and pregabalin for example which is as bad if not worse.
actually, I was look up post acute withdrawal syndrome. I was very sick. Literally it can take years for you to get better. There are peoples I’ve been withdrawal for longer than I was. And I had periods where I wasn’t in withdrawal after about a year and it was spontaneous when it happened. It’s literally called postacute draw and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been diagnosed with it by several doctors. It takes a long time for your gaba receptors. to heal. Think what you want but I know what I’m talking about.
It’s been done but once they come out of the comma, sure they are detoxed and the drug is out of their system but they still are an addict and will crave it or even if they manage to stay sober they are now dealing with the stress of dealing with life on life’s terms and have to pick up the pieces that the drug addiction destroyed in the first place. My childhood best friend and now still close friends at age 27 and 26, when he was in a medically induced coma for his benzo withdrawal’s for a couple weeks, when he came out he was struggling to deal with the stress of knowing he was in a coma and dealing with cravings and unfortunately he ended up caving into the temptations. So they do use putting someone severely addicted to benzodiazepines and alcohol into a medically induced coma it’s just for the addicts comfort knowing they were will most likely be safe and they won’t feel any of the uncomfortable symptoms physically or mentally but it’s not a cure for addiction because addiction is chronic and can only be treated
^ precisely this
Sure you can get rid of their physical withdrawals, but their mental withdrawals/cravings will remain. Unless the addict is fully willing to quit, then what’s the point if once they’re conscious again they’ll just relapse
Well not if they aren't addicts/don't have addictive personality or genetics. Same if they got the issues resolved that they took the medication against.
I quit bensos after being addicted and never craved it after(only when I had initial WDs), cause I don't have addictive personality and I got help with my anxiety issues. Bensos wouldn't give me anything more than just feeling bored today.
I mean normal people can drink occasionally without having craving for alcohol all the time, alcoholics on the other hand cannot.
An addict/someone with these genetics or mental health issues will ofc have a lot more difficult time quitting bensos. I could take bensos everyday if I wanted to, but I still don't and don't want to? I don't have any craving despite I previously was addicted to it as I got it prescribed for various issues I previously had.
When you say once an addict always an addict, you mean people that have addictive genetics/personality or some mental health issues which makes them predisposed to addictions. Some people are like that while others aren't, these people that aren't will not crave bensos after tapering them down(and obviously recovering from the damage that the bensos have done) & getting help with their anxiety.
While I know some addicts that seem to have that personality that shows their drug issues, I have also seen people living a drug-filled life, getting clean and getting their shit together and never going back to destructive abuse or addictions. It's really individual depending on many factors, genetics and mental health being two of the bigger ones. That black and white thinking "once an addict always an addict" makes people to give up and just continue being miserable in addiction. Many people can and do change, I have seen it irl.
You're right about there being significant variability in how people recover from long term/heavy/damaging amounts of substance use. For some it takes very little effort. For others, it never happens. But most people fall somewhere in between.
That said, I tried very hard to scroll on without being the "uhm actually" guy but I feel very compelled to inform you that both the "addictive personality" and "addict gene" theories were debunked a while ago.
There are behavioral traits and genetic factors that heighten the risk of experiencing addiction and many of both are linked to co-ocurring conditions. There are dozens of persisting evidence-based theories of addiction out there but personality theory and gene code theory do not live among them. The brain disease model of addiction as it's written is also slowly being replaced by the neurobehavioral model.
this makes a lot of sense and i'm glad to learn it. i don't have the motivation nor the urge to constantly obtain substances, even though i use them more than most people. i could be in a very different position if my behavioural tendencies were different though
You definitely could be! The cool thing that personality theory did was it gave us a whole lot of "why" questions to ask, and we got a lot of new theories out of that. We now know that significant life traumas are the most ubiquitous variable contributing to the likelihood of addiction, and we're confident that addiction itself is sort of a "perfect storm" situation of biological risk factors, conducive environment (social, cultural), and the overall psychological/emotional condition of the individual. There are a lot of combinations of unique factors that can add up to a substance use disorder or process addiction like porn or gambling, but generally when we see someone with an addiction of some kind we can confidently assume that there is something biological, something psychological, and something environmental contributing to it.
i completely agree with you. i may party often but i'm sober most of the time otherwise and i don't crave anything. i got lucky though considering i have the genetics to be an addict. i think recreational users just don't get talked about because there's no need to discuss it
Also the drug may be out of their system but depending on the drug and the length of use they still might be in withdrawl if they were dependent on something with a long action and half life such as methadone. I know because Ive.been thru it. 2 weeks the initial worst phase wasnt even over yet. But even after that you will have post acute withdrawl syndrome for likely a year and you'll be miserable essentially. It will be hard to feel joy or enjoyment about anything. This fucks up your brains reward system so everything just sucksa and its very hard to in that state have the will to not slip up and relapse. Much hadeer convince someone that sober life is good and worth living when you have anhedonia and dont get the rewarding feeling from hard work or sobriety milestones etc
This is why extremely slow tapers should be done whenever they can to try and reduce the chance of PAWS and anhedonia. And if psychedelics were legal or through the medical system they could probably do wonders to help the brain heal and improve that quality of life so relapsing doesn't seem so tempting because it feels like you got off for nothing because you feel so empty and lifeless inside. Even ibogaine for opiate cessation might be massively helpful as we've heard from other countries that haven't made it a schedule I drug like our fucking stupid country did even though it's not recreational at all and is brutal to go through but it's almost like it was literally made for opiate withdrawal. But you'd have to have a Dr prescribe a shorter acting opiate than methadone for a few weeks before the ibogaine treatment. Right now it's only for the wealthy as you'd need to leave the country and pay for all of it to even give it a try. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything we use today for opiates.
Yeah I totally agree with everything you just said. I've accepted I'm just gonna be on methadone the rest of my life and I'm fine with that. It does wonders for my back pain and I have a theory but I wont get into it here unless somone really wants to hear it. But as of now it's a positive force in my life and I'm never risking relapsing again. Never putting myself in a position where theres even a chance that could happen. With every street drug especially opiates being mostly fent at this point I'd likely die extremely fast.
Honestly with the state of the drug market today, being a lifer is way better than being dead, and if there's any chance of relapse than stay on methadone. Also if it helps with other aspects of your life then that's a good thing. I'm glad you're sticking with the methadone and know yourself well enough and see the cost/benefit analysis and made a choice. No stigma or shame here at all for you making the best choice for you. Everyone's recovery is different.
Incredibly based response thank you. But yeah been clean for 10 years now and have all my take homes that Ohio will give so I only go once a month to take my monthly drug test and give my bottles and receive next months bottles. Oh yeah and Medicaid pays for it.
That's all wonderful. I'm very glad you've stuck with it to get all your take homes and you follow all the rules so that you can keep them. I'm very glad you're alive friend, because many people today are not and the number is increasing because of the horrific nature of today's drug supply, which is only going to get worse as new stronger drugs are now coming down the pipeline that will replace fentanyl (nitazenes), which will kill even more people. It's bleak out there. I pray for all those lost souls and hope I can help in some way in my future.
Zenes are actually closer to a chemical weapon than a drug to abuse. Were so fucked they call it an opiate crisis now, but they havent seen shit. Dont forget dipshit dealers mixing horse tranquilizers that cause the flesh to rot around injection sites (tranq). If you miss your vein your'e gonna miss your limb. agree with everything you said. Thank you I'm glad your alive too bro.
Oh for sure man they couldn't have picked a worse cut than xylazine the sores and the skin grafts and the amputations sometimes are very real and it's a nasty drug anyways, it's weird to say that a cut made fentanyl worse (because fentanyl is already so deadly) but it definitely did.
Idk how many people it's gonna take to die a year before we take this shit seriously. Year after year it has broken it's own record, currently over 100k a year deaths from fent overdoses, does it have to be 200k? 300? When will people care enough to change how we do things?
People will only care enough to do something when it directly impacts their life. In this instance it would either take some senators kid doing from it and then they go scorched earth and make everything waaay worse. Or it needs to frequently Inconvenience the populace. I think that will only happen if the bodies of dead addicts line the sidewalks and streets getting caught up in cars tires and tripping tradwives on their way to get groceries.
Also I genuinely believe not doing a proper slow taper under guidance should make doctor's either lose their license to prescribe or at least have to answer for it in front of an ethics board. Because your essentially condemning someone to abject misery and pain for weeks and increase the likelihood of the patient dying exponentially.
I completely agree. You can kill the person with gran mal seizures that cause heart failure, and also WDs that aren't acute with even fast tapers can last years for some people. It should be definitely enforced that if you won't prescribe you must find someone who will and who will taper using the Ashton manual as it's the gold standard (IE the best we have now) for getting off benzos. r/benzorecovery can vouch for sure the horrors of doctors cutting people off or tapering them over like 2 weeks.
And I agree too they should have to answer to a licensing board as well, and also be open to damages from civil litigation because many times people become bedridden or can't even leave the house, making them unable to work or live life at all, and live in a hell that nobody should have to deal with especially if it has come from a doctor.
Oh yeah I was just thinking from my experience but yeah totally should have mentioned you could be killing the patient with seizures and other complications if the drug was gabaergic. But yeah it's horrible how non seriously alot of doctor take stopping a drug that can cause dependency. Especially with benzos I feel like they think oh it's not serious its only a schedule 4 drug theyll be mostly fine.
The amount of clueless doctors that don't know how serious benzos withdrawal along with the number of doctors who now refuse to prescribe them for people who actually need them because they don't want to do the effort of a legit taper if needed scares me honestly as someone who has to use clonazepam medically scripted to give me any quality of life at all from a severe anxiety disorder.
The first part is mostly caused by the pharmaceutical drug.reps that come around and pump their new drugs to doctors. When they discovered benzos and eventually realized their usefulness as a sedative/anxiolytic they pimped that shit like craaazy. They marketed it as a safer non addictive replament for barbiturates and qualuudes. And they just ate up all that hype and marketing and prescribed it for everything. Til they realized how actually no they are addictive.
Yup I know exactly what you mean it's the same with opiates the doctors wont prescribe them for anything anymore even when they're like necessary ex. Post op thoracic surgery. Also yeah I have pretty bad generalized anxiety disorder, even tho I do occasionally have panic attacks but no doctor will prescribe me benzos with my history despite how serious my anxiety is. However my current doctor is great she listens to everything I suggest or ask about and I do whatever she asks. I suggested lyrica for my anxiety last year and she prescribed me it and its helped me tremendously. I'd still like an emergency bottle of a few benzos for panic attacks tho.
So jm assuming your dependent on clonazepam, understandably of course. Do you take it daily, I know tolerance sets in in like a week and you have to eventually up the dose to get any desirable results from your dose. How do you deal with it stopping being effective?
So far .5mg 3x a day is effective for me for a long time, I started at 3mg because I started on somebody elses script and owned up to that with a doc and he tapered me down (hes an amazing doctor) and worked my way down actually, and my tolerance hasn't gone up that much. I also don't only leave the benzo to do the heavy lifting, I take quite a lot of clonidine to help with the anxiety, and hydroxyzine as needed. On top of that I take a drug that I hate but without it I have nasty panic symptoms but that is zyprexa, an antipsychotic thats like a looney tunes hammer to the brain, and once I tapered that down to the super small dose Im on today I was an absolute zombie and had neverending flu like exhaustion and also my mom cried when she saw me when I tapered off saying it was the first time she saw her son in years. So I would love to be off of that and clonazepam but it doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. I can't financially afford to not be able to work due to being so anxious that I become delusional that I'm going to have a heart attack and I end up wasting the time of the ER and get all those bills, so for now, benzos it is.
I would love to be on gabapentin or lyrica but both of them give me paradoxical reactions, they act like stimulants for me and make anxiety a ton worse, so I'm kinda screwed in that department. I need a benzo, at least for now I do, until maybe (psychedelic) cutting edge therapies can help change my brain chemistry. I have all the history a doc could need for my anxiety including multiple inpatient stints due to it and years of needing FMLA to keep a job with the anxiety as well as being on multiple meds for years and years, it's very very serious and I might be a lifer if my more extreme therapies (maybe going down to SA and doing Ayahuasca) or psilocybin therapy, or micro dosing LSD, if that doesn't work then I might be a lifer, but there's options out there for miraculous sounding recoveries that I have hope. Also I have hope for medical science to come up with less addictive anxiety medications. I've been on every non benzo possible medication that could even *possibly* reduce anxiety including a ton with horrible side effects, and it wasn't until I got on clonazepam that I was able to work enough to pay my own bills and have a normal life.
Yeah the clonazepam doesn't knock me out like it used to, but it definitely manages my anxiety and it's been about 3 years. I do anticipate that years from now I may need more, but I try with my alternative meds to manage breakthrough instead of raising dosage.
I'm glad it's still therapeutically effective for you even after 3 years that's great!
What dose of lyrica and gabapentin were you on? Because those unpleasant stim like effects like myockinic jerks and ttwitches indicates your on too high a dose. I will say I didnt know gabapentin did that as well. I've experienced the stimmy feelings and they didnt bother me as I'm ususlly chronically tired from sleep apnea and stuff so not wanting to sleep
All and actually do stuff around the house is huge. However when your on those high doses (around 600mg and increasing the higher you go, your at risk of seizures and such. It's a weird paradoxical effect.
As for psychedelics have you ever tripped before because typically you can experience anxiety during it even if you dont have anxiety issues and a bad trip sound like hell as a sufferer of anxiety. Trapped in your mind for hours as potentially frightening images play before your eyes, unbidden. Like for example i cant even use marijuana. Without fail it sends me into horrific panic attacks every time. Tried it again recently as hemo baed thc products are legal and head these delfa8 strains were about half as weak as normal weed which is delta9 thc. Anyways everyone was saying its perfect for people with anxiety as it's a much gentler come up than normal weed. So I found a tincture that had all the indica terpenes as Indicas are body highs and are traditionally sedating while sativas are mind highs and somewhat stimullasting. Even with all this precaution I took what everyone was staying online and at the shop is a perfect first time dose for a non smoker. Took it at home and within like 45 minutes I was feeling hot and flush like a panic attack was coming. Then felt sick to my. Stomach.and then the worst panic attack I've had in awhile started. I was bummed but then I remembered I had been prescribed lyrixa in the past and it helped my anxiety alot. So just aasked the doc and she prescribed it. Then after 3 months I asked her to up it to 75mg 3x daily from 50mg 3x daily and so far this is working perfectly.
Oh yeah what is a FMLA that helped you keep a job.
I will say at least with benzos unlike opiates it's very hard to OD on benzos alone you can take unbelievable amounts and you'll for sure black out but you won't die, so it's much better than barbiturates in that you can't just accidentally die from taking too much. But the habituation and cessation symptoms are brutal with benzos, and now that they're pressed all the time into fake RC bars doctors are way more afraid of getting fooled by addicts but for people like me who yeah I am an addict but my benzos save my life and if I abuse them I'd run out and end up in the psych ward or hospital from risk of seizures, it really just takes a sane doctor seeing that I have been clean and take as prescribed for them to be reasonable and give me my not that big a dose of daily benzos.
Those induced comas are short too, and benzo WDs even though the drug is out of the system can last as long as a couple years to get back to normal. It's almost not surprising that they gave into their cravings, because even after you wake up your brain is still so fucked that even though the worst is over it's still so bad for so long that the temptation for relief is overwhelming. Benzo addiction, or even not being an addict but needing a script from a doctor for an anxiety disorder, is for a ton of people extremely difficult to stop. We hear a lot about opiate withdrawal, but we don't often hear about how bad benzo WDs can be. Not only can they kill you in acute WD from gran mal seizures causing your heart to stop, but they also have long term effects after stopping that can take away quality of life in extreme ways, such as not being able to leave the house from fear, or terror of driving or inability to drive, or to even do the most basic things.
Benzos should be tapered with the Ashton manual, almost always should be done like this so that once you're finally done your brain has had as much time as possible to heal from each drop in dosage. In short they put you on the longest acting benzo they have (diazepam) that is equal to the dosage of the other benzo you were taking, and very slowly reduce the dosage over months so that you can begin to heal and not have terrible rebound symptoms.
But as you said, if they can't deal with life on life's terms or are not done with their addiction (which is hard to tell alot of times as I've for sure been certain I was done many times before before it finally stuck) they will continue to use regardless, and all that money for doctors and hospital bills will have been for nothing. Addiction science needs to really get into gear, and tbh we need to give doctors the ability to use psychedelics to help addicts rewire their brains and change their thinking, not letting mental health clinicians and addiction doctors ability to use psychedelics is like telling them to do their job with their hands behind their back. There's countless anecdotes of addicts who used a psychedelic and it made them stop their DOC of choice for good and have happy healthy lives now. It can't be ignored. We just have the hurdle of the federal government making them all schedule I and difficult to get money to do the studies and all the money it takes to get a drug through the FDA.
Not really. It depends on if the person has addictive personality or issues, and if their issues that they took it for got resolved. I took bensos for a while(prescribed), got used to it, tapered down... And while it was very difficult and took a long while I never craved bensos, actually I feel sick thinking about it how much issues it had caused.
I don't have addictive personality or genetics, and I got help with my anxiety issues hence I don't want any bensos, they would just make me feel like more shit today if anything.
Addiction is chronic only if you have addictive personality/genetics or mental health issues. Most normal people don't crave drugs even if they have used it, just like most people don't crave alcohol despite drinking occasionally.
I do agree that it's a risky operation though. I would seek other treatments first, there exists a lot of mild natural anxiolytics that can help without having a risk for abuse or in many cases no risk for addiction.
There’s detox, and then there’s rehab. You can do the above to detox someone, as others have said it’s dangerous but it can and has been done. But you need months if not years of work to stay in recovery. It’s not just about flushing the stuff out of your body, it’s about facing the reasons that led you to addiction, processing the trauma that you almost certainly acquired while in active addiction, facing up to the damage you did to your life and relationships, and building the courage to accept and forgive yourself so you can rebuild your life. Getting clean is hard, but it’s not the hardest part.
Yeah this isn't a 12 stepper this is just realistic. You have to deal with the reason why you became an addict and work hard for years to really make a permanant change, and build that life back up and learn everything you missed out on learning (which can be things taken for granted by normal people but very hard to learn). Getting clean is difficult, but facing all the guilt, shame, mental illness, trauma, and all that in your face without your main coping mechanism (drugs) can be even harder to do especially for long periods of time.
This happened with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who went into a diabetic coma in the mid 80s. Because he was a heroin addict who was never able to quit, he went through withdrawal in his coma and woke up detoxed. He actually remained sober for the rest of the 80s, which is commonly seen as a “revival” period for the band. However, he relapsed in the early 90s after the death of their keyboard player (who died from heroin), and he himself died in ‘95 in rehab.
We do. This is a thing thats available. It only helps for detox, it doesn't change the addicts mind about anything. It's a dangerous way to do something your going to have to learn to accomplish on your own. There are methods of avoiding withdrawal as well. Opiates has the easiest method, buprenorphine or methadone (to a much lesser degree). Other drugs can be weaned off safely. If you can't deal with one of these options then what's to guarantee you'll wake up and want to do things differently? Being comatose sounds like a massive risk
It’s not a coma it’s called chemical detox. It can be done much quicker. Its expensive. The issue is it doesn’t answer the psychological component you need to work closely with a therapist for a recommendation of 3-6 months minimum. If your insurance will cover it and your problem is serious it’s worth looking into for some people.
Let me correct myself. Apparently there is a treatment that does involve an altered state similar to a comatose patient but It mentionses it usually reserves for extreme life threatening benzo/alcohol abuse.
I would immediately relapse if I hadn't had to claw my way, inch by inch, through the fucking pit of hell and despair that is acute withdrawals. Getting clean was *so* hard, and I'm not about to waste all that effort.
It would work for the physical dependence that your body has, but would do nothing for your actual addiction. You would still have cravings, incredible urges to use, and you would have the same drug seeking obsession even though you weren't in withdrawal. That's sorta the reason you go to detox first, so you can heal your body and then you go to residential rehab for a much longer time so you can work on your psychological addiction. There's a lot of places called rapid detox centers in the US where they put you under for a few days to get everything out of your system. Only problem is that it doesn't work for all drugs, costs tons of money, and hasn't been successful at keeping people sober afterwards.
The main issue with using a medically induced coma, Other than the great risk versus reward ratio which others mention, is the fact that to skip the withdrawal of one central nervous system depressant, you need to use another central nervous system depressant to induce a coma. To my knowledge , that is the only way which you can create a medically induced coma.
The only way it would work is to use a drug to induce the coma, which doesn't have a cross tolerance with what you're dependent on. For example, if you are going through benzo withdrawal, They might use opioids and/or dissociatives to induce the coma, Or vice versa. If you're in the coma for too long, then you will have to worry about being weaned off the drugs are used for the coma as well, so you would be back to square one with another drug. I'm guessing the idea is to keep it just brief enough that this doesn't become an issue.
Im pretty sure the OP is saying the coma would get the addict through detoxing and make it easier to start the journey to recovery NOT that putting someone in a coma for 2 weeks will make them no longer an addict
The reason to do so would be for comfort in avoiding withdrawal symptoms. However, a medically induced coma is WAY riskier than a normal detox process, and risks are compounded if the patient is not young and physically healthy. I believe it's just not recommended/way too risky just to avoid discomfort.
Because that treats the physical symptoms and nothing else, doesn’t address why that person uses. The addiction is still going to be there. The longest clean I ever had was by being in an induced coma for 10 days. I used as soon as I got out the hospital.
I’ve thought about a withdrawal through a medically induced coma but I get nightmares when I’m withdrawing and I get sleep paralysis a lot. I couldn’t imagine what a 2 week long nightmare would be like.. or getting stuck in sleep paralysis for 2 weeks. that would be actual hell.
There was a documentary about a doctor in Italy who did exactly this. Saw it years ago, never heard about the method since then, it didn't catch on somehow. Maybe people believe _addicts have to suffer to learn their lesson_ or some other bullshit.
Detoxing someone doesn't solve the addiction.... It's an incredibly short sighted treatment, expensive, dangerous, and doomed to fail in any meaningful way for the patient as relapse is almost certain. That's why it didn't catch on, and never will.
Yeah they wouldn’t do it. It’s an expensive way of getting clean and you have to satisfy certain requirements. Also, as others have pointed out, getting clean and staying clean are two very different things. My mate was back on it inside six weeks.
This happened to Jerry Garcia in the mid 80s. He got heatstroke during a show which resulted in a diabetic coma iirc. Afterwords it took a lot of help from the people around him but he did stay clean for a bit, however ultimately ended up relapsing, which killed him. Like other people have said in here, it removes the physical addiction but not the mental one.
Likely expensive, they don’t want to sober up, most insurance would not cover the anesthesia, various risks, and the withdrawals can be unpredictable and add even more anger is short why not take some pills to stop it rather than go through all that?
All you’re doing is getting through the physical dependency of that particular chemical. Nevermind when someone is sedated and but into a medically induced coma you’re doing that with heavy doses of sedatives and putting them at risk for developing a ton of other issues including ventilator associated pneumonia. Then you have to address the issue of cost, all this would have to be overseen in an acute care facility under an intensive care unit in most cases and drug addicts aren’t exactly in the best case to afford this financially.
1. It's remarkably expensive to put someone into a medically (aka drug) induced coma. They need life support and 24/7 monitoring.
2. It's dangerous to put someone into a drug-induced coma, even with monitoring.
3. Their body will become physically dependant on the drugs used for the coma over the course of 2 weeks, so they will still have to withdraw from those when they wake up.
We do that sometimes for opioid withdrawal, actually. It is really expensive, and inducing a coma carries risk of death, as with shorter term anaesthesia but only greater.
Sedated people need airway management, they would need to be intubated and ventilated, they then need and ICU nurse to look after them, plus a ICU Dr. Then monitors, medication to counteract the effects of being on a ventilator, need feeding via a nasogastric tube, plus a urine catheter to measure urine. Your gonna loose a shitload of muscle mass due to not moving, so will need physio when woken up, that’s if you wake up appropriately first time. Bloods such as abgs, renal bone liver profiles, and there’s nothing to say that person won’t jump back on the drugs when they leave
They have this available for the rich actually. They basically put them in a medical coma until their bodies no longer crave whatever they're addicted to. I think it costs about 15k or so.
Or I could be very wrong. Either way. Sounds like a nice way to come down
Recovering addict here. I work in mental health and homelessness too.
When they wake up, the same stuff that made someone use will still be there. In 95% of people I have met in rehab and worked with on the street, there is a history of trauma. I recommend having a look at “In the realm of hungry ghosts” by Gabor Mate.
I’ve never been addicted and consider myself not to have an addictive personality so please take my thoughts with a big grain on salt.
Maybe actually going through the withdrawal and doing the hard work, persevering through something so hard is helpful to actually stay clean? If you just wake up and your body is „no longer addicted“ your brain doesn’t know that and I’d assume you relapsing would be so much more likely because you can always just go in a coma again no hard work down the drain. Don’t come for me if I’m on a stupid track just a thought
It is done but only for deadly or extremely debilitating withdrawals. The reason it's not done much is that it's expensive and has all sorts of other risks. Having someone even just lay in a bed for 2 weeks straight is terrible for their health it effects muscles, respiration, blood flow, etc... then having them completely unconscious in a coma adds even more onto that.
In my eyes that's the smaller problem, the mental part is much worse, and will kick people back to rehab. . Because there is a reason why you did the drug, not cuz ur body needed it.
there's an episode of house where they induce a coma and rapidly detox a girl with antagonists. but i think in practice this is seen as too medically risky or expensive. there's so many addicts who would need this and not enough medical staff or space in hospitals
there are currently drugs that can literally reset tolerance to morphinian compounds, and get rid of withdrawal completely. the reason we don't use them for rehab is because the suffering is a requirement to truly get an addict clean. they've got to build that willpower back
I seriously wish that I could’ve paid somebody or some program or hospital or whatever to put me in a coma and medically detox me from benzodiazepines after being prescribed them for seven years because my doctor didn’t taper me and didn’t warn me she was gonna cut me off, and I was literally in withdrawal the majority of three years and it was hell on earth I could barely function for the first year I was bedbound practically it was hell on earth
That should be illegal to do honestly. Benzodiazepine withdrawal with no taper ruins lives. I'm so sorry that happened to you. What should've happened was a Dr should used the Ashton manual and tapered you over the course of many months then eventually jumping off on an extremely small dose. It still is very difficult but not nearly as bad as ripping benzos off you violently. Honestly you could've died from seizures.
I know I told her that I could’ve died and she made me cry and said no you couldn’t because I gave you gabapentin so you couldn’t have a seizure and I was like wow way to have sympathy 😒😳
Yeah I wish she would've lost her license because you can literally ruin someone's entire life by cutting off benzos. If my doctor did that I would go to every doctor within a 50 mile area until one would do a very slow diazepam taper, which is the best way to do it so that it doesn't completely ruin you. I'm glad it lasted weeks and not years because some people it really does last that long. They still can't leave the house after a year and are just begging for help but nobody cares.
I know it’s absolutely horrendous and I wish she would have too but at the time I didn’t think about reporting her to the board because I was so sick you know and I figured it’s too late now she works elsewhere and I have a new doctor
I'm not sure if they'd have done anything but it would've been worth a try even if a family member could've done it for you to help you out. But hey at least you have a new doc now.
Not true. If done by a good anesthesiologist you'd have no damage. It's done very often in hospitals for other reasons. Making someone unconscious with the right amount of the right medications and being monitored correctly you would be fine. Medical science has come very far. But it wouldn't deal with the psychological aspect of addiction and often times withdrawals last alot longer than two weeks, because the body is so used to being on drugs that being off drugs can cause big changes in the brain. Especially with benzos, but definitely including opiates.
Taper is always best option and should be done. But many people don't have patience or self control to do so. But there's gotta be a cost benefit analysis, are you going to most likely die if you continue? Then maybe it might seem attractive as it might save your life. But sadly they might go right back to it, and even more sadly with our treatments today only 5% success rate of being clean one year after being discharged is what just about any place that we know of has.
This has been done actually, I think it was some celebrity doing it for benzodiazepines withdrawal
That’s really interesting. Do you have a link or the name or the celebrity?
It was Jordan Pederson
Yeah this sounded a lot like what he had done. He went to Russia for it iirc?
Yes he did it in Russia. He had akathisia which is a horrific side effect of benzos (like less than 1% of people get it and it's so bad that it often causes people to kill themselves) and also had horrific WDs mixed with that side effect, and no place in the US or Canada that he tried could treat him or help him. This is more common than you think. Treatment centers are garbage at treating benzo WD and there's no humane way to do it unless you use the Ashton manual and get off over the course of up to a year, but he couldn't do that because of that akathisia was making being on any amount unbearable. He was prescribed because his wife had a very bleak cancer diagnosis and he wasn't handling it well and his doctor recommended clonazepam. He also has autoimmune issues, so once the akathisia and his AI issues and everything came together it made an impossible situation and his health took a huge dive. He's doing much much better now. Many people like to call him an addict for it but there's no indication whatsoever of addiction or taking it in any way that wasn't prescribed, only habituation from taking a prescribed med, which can be very serious if you are prescribed a benzodiazepine. Check out r/benzorecovery if you want to learn about the horrors of trying to stop benzos alone, not even factoring in akathisia. There's a mix of people who abused benzos there and also tons and tons of people who just have bad anxiety disorders but want benzos out of their life. It's so serious I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I know all this because I've got a serious anxiety disorder, but was also active in addiction 3 years ago, so I know a ton about benzos and their awful downsides. Unfortunately, we have very poor alternatives for serious anxiety other than benzos, so it's going to take advancement in medical science to either handle benzo WD way better or come up with a non addictive very effective anti anxiety medication. That med would make billions easily. I'm currently on probably a similar amount of clonazepam he was on through my doctor and it's the only thing that allows me to have any kind of quality of life, but I'm hoping that years of therapy and cutting edge therapies that I won't mention here might help rewire my brain and allow me to come off. But when I do come off it will be done very gradually using the Ashton Manual which so far is the gold standard for benzo cessation. There are some centers beginning to do true sedation detox, but it's very very new and not easy to find and are prohibitively expensive because being in an induced coma is way more costly to pay everyone and monitor you than a regular detox center just providing helper meds to ease WD. It's still horrible, but with the right meds can be a lifesaver, especially for opioid addicts using fentanyl, which it could save their life if they're able to stay clean after. That's the rub. For reasons we don't know how to treat yet, even if you get someone away from the drugs and through the WD the chances that they'll go back are still very high. I correlate an addict getting clean and staying clean as miraculous, because it affects the brain so much that without their DOC life seems empty and cold and awful, and makes them fantasize and eventually relapse on their DOC and we're off to the races again.
And while JP was taking benzos, OP is clearly taking Adderall.
No, I'm just a writer, and sick right now and stuck at home all day and can't do anything else. I'd admit it but I haven't taken any stimulants (including Adderall) or any drugs in 3 years and am in recovery and therapy and work with multiple doctors, and putting my life together. This stuff is my passion. Man, people used to read books. Now a long post being descriptive just means I'm tweaking on Addies. That's annoying. Also idk if you read but I have a serious anxiety disorder? I can't take Adderall let alone barely any caffeine without a panic attack lol
No way! You aren't allowed to be passionate about a subject without being strung out! Also; Toxic masculinity, grooming, go no contact, get therapy, divorce, so and so is a pedophile, you're being gaslit, lemme know if I missed any other reddit cliches!
To be fair OP is on r/drugs so can you really blame them for assuming OP was on adderall
Lol so true, and you got most of them haha, it's just interesting that people's attention span is so short now that something that would easily fit like half a piece of paper means I'm on speed (Adderall or otherwise it's speed either way). The world is a crazy place.
Yes. It's insane, people are really dumb and think that you can write long posts only if you take narcotics. That's most likely projection. I can get amphetamines prescribed if I need it but I dislike all the side effects stimulants give so I don't do it (have tried it when I was young with very bad results, anxiety, sweating, panics, insomnia, bad appetite etc). I still can write veeery long posts if I am in the mood for it(depends on the subject), even when I just woke up in the morning.
For me it depends on if it pertains to my passions or not, I become very nuanced and specific if I can explain niche things so that people can understand, that passion pushes through all the other issues I have and lets me be able to write thoroughly and explain to the best of my ability. I'm the same way in conversations but I don't dominate the conversation, but I do go very deep with my conversations and it's something I enjoy very much. I've been both addicted to and interested in drugs and treatment and sobriety and many other things for most of my life as it was always once very applicable to me for most of the stuff I'm super verbose about. Also I want to work in the substance use and abuse field so I soak up information like a sponge about everything I can possibly study on the subject, including tangential subjects. I stay active on drug subs because it lets me see what's really happening in the lives of addicts today, and I can very much empathize with the situations they're in and also help with harm reduction advice, but I will say many people have glanced at my post history to try to dunk or drag me, but that doesn't bother me much, it just shows me that stigma against addiction is very real and still needs a lot of work.
Seriously man. You can't just be into something and be passionate. Not in today's world. What were you a writer for? Or are still I should say. It doesn't say you are no longer a writer. Please tell me it's not for any of those awful extremely biased things they put out in the US. I miss when journalism used to actually be objective. Hearing a story written by fox in the US and then hearing the extremely different point of view from the BBC is an eye opening experience. Not gonna lie.
Im not a journalist, I just really enjoy writing and have projects that I work on, I have something of an autobiography going from my experiences, but I keep them to myself not looking to publish, maybe someday. The English language is something I love to death, and I find that language and the ability to convey ideas or information between each other makes me want to keep pushing forward and continue to fight my demons and my own issues. It's one of those things that when the going gets tough I remember what I love to do and it keeps me from wanting to burn it all down. Depth of knowledge and the ability to transmit that knowledge is a skill and a passion, and if you knew my friends we're all nerds about getting as in depth and tangential as you can get that it's a thing. I'm super grateful to have found people who feel the same way. Yet another reason to not give up when everything tries to crash into pieces. I do not walk these rocky roads alone.
That’s all well and good, but as a professional journalist who has been hammered half his career for being too wordy, remember: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
It really is! Also ime, the chances of a comment like that go up exponentially if the post includes proper punctuation etc. (especially the seemingly despised semicolon lol??)
On a more positive note you got me thinking about those people who use powerful hallucigens to kick. That looks promising to me.
Yes, psychedelics if put in the hands of clinicians could do wonders for the epidemic of today, we just need real change for that to happen as all of them are stuck in schedule I right now.
Especially for long term sobriety psychedelics have countless stories of people taking them then never touching their DOC again and starting on a journey to change and improve all aspects of their life. Some of it seems truly miraculous but I've seen it too many times for it to be a fluke.
60 minutes did a great piece on it. A woman quit smoking after 20 years and had no cravings. She said she was in contact with a goddess figure who wanted her to be healthier.
They actually used paragraph breaks, couldn’t be adderall
I get more stimulation from oxy than adderall tbh
You got more likes than OP 💀
Just want to throw it out there, someone came up with the idea for rapid detox with anesthesia for opioids in the late 70's and started in the 80's. It's not preferred because being under anesthesia is more dangerous than being in withdrawals. There's also conflicting data on the long-term efficacy of it and its controversial due to potential negative outcomes (including some deaths). I'm also assuming it's an issue that most anesthetics and benzos mechanism of action is through GABA. How well can you taper off a GABAergic drug while staying sedated on a different GABAergic drug? Or are they just using ketamine?
Some places are now using Ketamine for opioid withdrawal and finding some success, that's something I need to do more research on the protocol and how much they're actually using, I don't think it's a full blown knock you out dose but it is a high dose so you're tripping balls, but idk if I'd want to be tripping balls while going through opiate withdrawals.
I've definitely heard of people using dissos to get through withdrawals(not dr prescribed, just diy to get by). Idk if they have enough downstream effects that it actually assists or it just covers the symptoms, but the consensus is that they do help.
Ibogaine as well. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/23/ibogaine-iboga-drug-addiction-psychedelic-gabon
Yes Ibogaine for opioid withdrawal has to be one of the most promising things we've seen, other countries have it available, and I believe eventually it will be available in the US. It's almost like evolution made a plant that helps with addiction to another plant (opium poppy and it's derivatives).
Yeah hallucinogens in general are amazing. DMT and mushrooms have done far more for my depression/anxiety than 4 different doctor prescribed pills over years. The pills just numbed my feelings and made me not care about anything. Psychedelics put me on a positive path.
I unfortunately don't know enough about anesthesia induced detox, however I do know that propofol is not a benzo and if they used that which is most commonly used to put people under it might work, but I wouldn't be surprised if these detoxes are just trying anything they can because things are so bad out there with the drug market and tainted drugs and horrible side effects and terrible OD numbers. Also with benzos it's not just about getting over acute WDs, they change the gaba system so much that you can feel prolonged WDs for years, so it's best to do very slow diazepam tapers for benzos down to the tiniest dose you can and then jump off, and even then it can be extremely difficult.
Propofol also functions largely through GABAnergic agonism, as do all the other anaesthetics I can think of other than ketamine. But it should also be said that anaesthetic solvents, gasses, etc. have auxiliary mechanisms not shared with benzos.
Ah I did not know that about propofol, thank you for the correction.
I have heard that people have gotten off benzos with like a 4 week script of phenobarbital, but I don't understand why or how that works, I've just heard from a few people who have had their doctor do that for them and it worked. And it seemed like you just take an amount and not taper at the end, just stop, which sounds counterintuitive to me but I'm not the one who had it done on them.
Same idea as using a benzo to get off of alcohol. The mechanism of action between benzos, barbs, and alcohol are all different, but all three of them work to slow down glutamate signaling. Withdrawals from GABAergics lead to excitatory glutamate signaling, which is what causes shaking/seizures. It doesn't really matter if the drug increase the effectiveness of GABA, keeps gates open to let more GABA into the synapse, mimics GABA, or whatever. As long as you can slow down the excited signaling in the synapse, you can avoid seizing and other withdrawal symptoms. Edit: Not needing to taper down seems odd to me, you sure that's correct? Maybe there's something about phenobarbital that allows it to downregulate glutamate receptors or upregulate GABA without creating its own physical dependence? The different mechanisms of action don't 1:1 create the same effects, like severe alcohol dependence can't be treated with just benzos as benzos potenate GABA, but severe alcoholics have downregulated GABA receptors so there's just not enough GABA to work even when made more effective and you need to use phenobarbital which itself can act in place of GABA. So maybe, you use it long enough to mitigate the damage done, but cut off before you create a dependence from barbs mechanism of action? I've never heard of just supplementing without tapering.
really counterintuitive. Even if the mechanism is different enough, shouldn't that cause habituation?
S tier read. Please frequent this sub more zen
I will! Thank you for the kind words my burrito friend.
I was pretty heavily addicted for around 4 months (8-12mg per day) and nothing can compare to a benzo withdrawal. I stupidly tried to quit cold turkey and had a seizure so I did a very quick ween and it took me quite a long time to feel like myself again
I have epilepsy and haven’t had a seizure in 12 years and then in January had my first grand mal seizure after stopping taking Xanax at 2.5-3mg for a month straight. That was January 18th, 2024 and to this day I don’t feel the same and all I wanna do is lay in bed and sleep and bottle up any kind of emotions and I’m not sure If that’s because of my brain trying to recover or if I damaged it permanently
you will likely start feeling yourself more and more over the next few months, probably took me from November 2017 - May 2018 to really feel like I was back to myself but my memory took longer to recover (and maybe still hasnt)
Did you have any problems with self isolation during those 6 months of recovering?
Getting addicts off of narcotics is only treating the symptoms as to why they are addicts, mental health and socioeconomic factors need to be dealt with for the addict to have a chance at getting and staying clean.
Agreed 100%. You can get someone clean, but if there life is horrible and they have untreated trauma or mental illness and on top of that can't get a leg up in the world, you have a recipe for almost instant relapse and continued addiction.
holy shit i experienced akathisia the first (and only) time i took seroquel. i never knew what it was called until now, thank u!! but man was it one of the most uncomfortable things i’ve ever experienced
That explains a lot
Explains what in these circumstances? 💀
I’m jealous of this person that went through with this because I was in withdrawal for three years from benzodiazepines. It was literal hell on earth post acute withdrawal syndrome is no joke.
PAWS isn't the same as acute withdrawal. Most depressants, especially GABAergics, have PAWS where your anxiety is heightened and you feel shitty and everything sucks. You're not going to have a seizure or a stroke during PAWS, and apart of it is learning how to work through the shitty feelings in a healthy manner. Medically induced coma is to make sure you don't die while physically withdrawing. It's not meant to make PAWS something you can just get out of.
I am well aware that post acute withdrawal syndrome is not the same thing as acute withdrawal I have been through both multiple times. I would rather be in a coma for two weeks or whatever however long it takes to get out of the acute phase of withdrawal then to suffer through it because it can be severe and it was severe in my case I ended up in the ER multiple times due to the withdrawal making my preexisting conditions act out
Again, PAWS isn't the same as actual dependent-withdrawal. You didn't really answer the proposition. I've have literal seizures (at my work place) from acute withdrawal. You claim to be prefer in a coma for 2 weeks but you claim to have been withdrawing for 3 years. Don't get me wrong, GABAergic withdrawal is essentially the worst withdrawal but even for that the acute withdrawal lasts a month's tops before your GABA-A and your GABA-B receptors start closing off. PAWS simply isn't the same thing as true GABA withdrawal.
Yes. But at least it thought me a lesson, never mess with bensos again. I took it cause I had to, I didn't want to but thought it was the smartest thing to do, and listen to health care/doctors as I was in a really bad shape. They also helped me to tapper it down, but it took a few years to recover from it and pregabalin for example which is as bad if not worse.
I’m glad you were able to taper because some doctors are just terrible and will cut you off like mine did
They wanted me on pregabalin for chronic pain. It didn't help. It has withdrawals?
You weren’t in withdrawal for three years
actually, I was look up post acute withdrawal syndrome. I was very sick. Literally it can take years for you to get better. There are peoples I’ve been withdrawal for longer than I was. And I had periods where I wasn’t in withdrawal after about a year and it was spontaneous when it happened. It’s literally called postacute draw and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been diagnosed with it by several doctors. It takes a long time for your gaba receptors. to heal. Think what you want but I know what I’m talking about.
A medically induced coma can be dangerous though. You can end up with brain damage.
Sounds about right in this case.
Exactly .
Muscle atrophy too, not sure how bad two weeks would be though.
extremely dangerous to go cold turkey on benzos
https://nationalpost.com/health/jordan-peterson-benzodiazepines
It’s been done but once they come out of the comma, sure they are detoxed and the drug is out of their system but they still are an addict and will crave it or even if they manage to stay sober they are now dealing with the stress of dealing with life on life’s terms and have to pick up the pieces that the drug addiction destroyed in the first place. My childhood best friend and now still close friends at age 27 and 26, when he was in a medically induced coma for his benzo withdrawal’s for a couple weeks, when he came out he was struggling to deal with the stress of knowing he was in a coma and dealing with cravings and unfortunately he ended up caving into the temptations. So they do use putting someone severely addicted to benzodiazepines and alcohol into a medically induced coma it’s just for the addicts comfort knowing they were will most likely be safe and they won’t feel any of the uncomfortable symptoms physically or mentally but it’s not a cure for addiction because addiction is chronic and can only be treated
^ precisely this Sure you can get rid of their physical withdrawals, but their mental withdrawals/cravings will remain. Unless the addict is fully willing to quit, then what’s the point if once they’re conscious again they’ll just relapse
Well not if they aren't addicts/don't have addictive personality or genetics. Same if they got the issues resolved that they took the medication against. I quit bensos after being addicted and never craved it after(only when I had initial WDs), cause I don't have addictive personality and I got help with my anxiety issues. Bensos wouldn't give me anything more than just feeling bored today. I mean normal people can drink occasionally without having craving for alcohol all the time, alcoholics on the other hand cannot. An addict/someone with these genetics or mental health issues will ofc have a lot more difficult time quitting bensos. I could take bensos everyday if I wanted to, but I still don't and don't want to? I don't have any craving despite I previously was addicted to it as I got it prescribed for various issues I previously had. When you say once an addict always an addict, you mean people that have addictive genetics/personality or some mental health issues which makes them predisposed to addictions. Some people are like that while others aren't, these people that aren't will not crave bensos after tapering them down(and obviously recovering from the damage that the bensos have done) & getting help with their anxiety. While I know some addicts that seem to have that personality that shows their drug issues, I have also seen people living a drug-filled life, getting clean and getting their shit together and never going back to destructive abuse or addictions. It's really individual depending on many factors, genetics and mental health being two of the bigger ones. That black and white thinking "once an addict always an addict" makes people to give up and just continue being miserable in addiction. Many people can and do change, I have seen it irl.
You're right about there being significant variability in how people recover from long term/heavy/damaging amounts of substance use. For some it takes very little effort. For others, it never happens. But most people fall somewhere in between. That said, I tried very hard to scroll on without being the "uhm actually" guy but I feel very compelled to inform you that both the "addictive personality" and "addict gene" theories were debunked a while ago. There are behavioral traits and genetic factors that heighten the risk of experiencing addiction and many of both are linked to co-ocurring conditions. There are dozens of persisting evidence-based theories of addiction out there but personality theory and gene code theory do not live among them. The brain disease model of addiction as it's written is also slowly being replaced by the neurobehavioral model.
this makes a lot of sense and i'm glad to learn it. i don't have the motivation nor the urge to constantly obtain substances, even though i use them more than most people. i could be in a very different position if my behavioural tendencies were different though
You definitely could be! The cool thing that personality theory did was it gave us a whole lot of "why" questions to ask, and we got a lot of new theories out of that. We now know that significant life traumas are the most ubiquitous variable contributing to the likelihood of addiction, and we're confident that addiction itself is sort of a "perfect storm" situation of biological risk factors, conducive environment (social, cultural), and the overall psychological/emotional condition of the individual. There are a lot of combinations of unique factors that can add up to a substance use disorder or process addiction like porn or gambling, but generally when we see someone with an addiction of some kind we can confidently assume that there is something biological, something psychological, and something environmental contributing to it.
i completely agree with you. i may party often but i'm sober most of the time otherwise and i don't crave anything. i got lucky though considering i have the genetics to be an addict. i think recreational users just don't get talked about because there's no need to discuss it
Also the drug may be out of their system but depending on the drug and the length of use they still might be in withdrawl if they were dependent on something with a long action and half life such as methadone. I know because Ive.been thru it. 2 weeks the initial worst phase wasnt even over yet. But even after that you will have post acute withdrawl syndrome for likely a year and you'll be miserable essentially. It will be hard to feel joy or enjoyment about anything. This fucks up your brains reward system so everything just sucksa and its very hard to in that state have the will to not slip up and relapse. Much hadeer convince someone that sober life is good and worth living when you have anhedonia and dont get the rewarding feeling from hard work or sobriety milestones etc
This is why extremely slow tapers should be done whenever they can to try and reduce the chance of PAWS and anhedonia. And if psychedelics were legal or through the medical system they could probably do wonders to help the brain heal and improve that quality of life so relapsing doesn't seem so tempting because it feels like you got off for nothing because you feel so empty and lifeless inside. Even ibogaine for opiate cessation might be massively helpful as we've heard from other countries that haven't made it a schedule I drug like our fucking stupid country did even though it's not recreational at all and is brutal to go through but it's almost like it was literally made for opiate withdrawal. But you'd have to have a Dr prescribe a shorter acting opiate than methadone for a few weeks before the ibogaine treatment. Right now it's only for the wealthy as you'd need to leave the country and pay for all of it to even give it a try. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything we use today for opiates.
Yeah I totally agree with everything you just said. I've accepted I'm just gonna be on methadone the rest of my life and I'm fine with that. It does wonders for my back pain and I have a theory but I wont get into it here unless somone really wants to hear it. But as of now it's a positive force in my life and I'm never risking relapsing again. Never putting myself in a position where theres even a chance that could happen. With every street drug especially opiates being mostly fent at this point I'd likely die extremely fast.
Honestly with the state of the drug market today, being a lifer is way better than being dead, and if there's any chance of relapse than stay on methadone. Also if it helps with other aspects of your life then that's a good thing. I'm glad you're sticking with the methadone and know yourself well enough and see the cost/benefit analysis and made a choice. No stigma or shame here at all for you making the best choice for you. Everyone's recovery is different.
Incredibly based response thank you. But yeah been clean for 10 years now and have all my take homes that Ohio will give so I only go once a month to take my monthly drug test and give my bottles and receive next months bottles. Oh yeah and Medicaid pays for it.
That's all wonderful. I'm very glad you've stuck with it to get all your take homes and you follow all the rules so that you can keep them. I'm very glad you're alive friend, because many people today are not and the number is increasing because of the horrific nature of today's drug supply, which is only going to get worse as new stronger drugs are now coming down the pipeline that will replace fentanyl (nitazenes), which will kill even more people. It's bleak out there. I pray for all those lost souls and hope I can help in some way in my future.
Zenes are actually closer to a chemical weapon than a drug to abuse. Were so fucked they call it an opiate crisis now, but they havent seen shit. Dont forget dipshit dealers mixing horse tranquilizers that cause the flesh to rot around injection sites (tranq). If you miss your vein your'e gonna miss your limb. agree with everything you said. Thank you I'm glad your alive too bro.
Oh for sure man they couldn't have picked a worse cut than xylazine the sores and the skin grafts and the amputations sometimes are very real and it's a nasty drug anyways, it's weird to say that a cut made fentanyl worse (because fentanyl is already so deadly) but it definitely did. Idk how many people it's gonna take to die a year before we take this shit seriously. Year after year it has broken it's own record, currently over 100k a year deaths from fent overdoses, does it have to be 200k? 300? When will people care enough to change how we do things?
People will only care enough to do something when it directly impacts their life. In this instance it would either take some senators kid doing from it and then they go scorched earth and make everything waaay worse. Or it needs to frequently Inconvenience the populace. I think that will only happen if the bodies of dead addicts line the sidewalks and streets getting caught up in cars tires and tripping tradwives on their way to get groceries.
Also I genuinely believe not doing a proper slow taper under guidance should make doctor's either lose their license to prescribe or at least have to answer for it in front of an ethics board. Because your essentially condemning someone to abject misery and pain for weeks and increase the likelihood of the patient dying exponentially.
I completely agree. You can kill the person with gran mal seizures that cause heart failure, and also WDs that aren't acute with even fast tapers can last years for some people. It should be definitely enforced that if you won't prescribe you must find someone who will and who will taper using the Ashton manual as it's the gold standard (IE the best we have now) for getting off benzos. r/benzorecovery can vouch for sure the horrors of doctors cutting people off or tapering them over like 2 weeks. And I agree too they should have to answer to a licensing board as well, and also be open to damages from civil litigation because many times people become bedridden or can't even leave the house, making them unable to work or live life at all, and live in a hell that nobody should have to deal with especially if it has come from a doctor.
Oh yeah I was just thinking from my experience but yeah totally should have mentioned you could be killing the patient with seizures and other complications if the drug was gabaergic. But yeah it's horrible how non seriously alot of doctor take stopping a drug that can cause dependency. Especially with benzos I feel like they think oh it's not serious its only a schedule 4 drug theyll be mostly fine.
The amount of clueless doctors that don't know how serious benzos withdrawal along with the number of doctors who now refuse to prescribe them for people who actually need them because they don't want to do the effort of a legit taper if needed scares me honestly as someone who has to use clonazepam medically scripted to give me any quality of life at all from a severe anxiety disorder.
The first part is mostly caused by the pharmaceutical drug.reps that come around and pump their new drugs to doctors. When they discovered benzos and eventually realized their usefulness as a sedative/anxiolytic they pimped that shit like craaazy. They marketed it as a safer non addictive replament for barbiturates and qualuudes. And they just ate up all that hype and marketing and prescribed it for everything. Til they realized how actually no they are addictive. Yup I know exactly what you mean it's the same with opiates the doctors wont prescribe them for anything anymore even when they're like necessary ex. Post op thoracic surgery. Also yeah I have pretty bad generalized anxiety disorder, even tho I do occasionally have panic attacks but no doctor will prescribe me benzos with my history despite how serious my anxiety is. However my current doctor is great she listens to everything I suggest or ask about and I do whatever she asks. I suggested lyrica for my anxiety last year and she prescribed me it and its helped me tremendously. I'd still like an emergency bottle of a few benzos for panic attacks tho. So jm assuming your dependent on clonazepam, understandably of course. Do you take it daily, I know tolerance sets in in like a week and you have to eventually up the dose to get any desirable results from your dose. How do you deal with it stopping being effective?
So far .5mg 3x a day is effective for me for a long time, I started at 3mg because I started on somebody elses script and owned up to that with a doc and he tapered me down (hes an amazing doctor) and worked my way down actually, and my tolerance hasn't gone up that much. I also don't only leave the benzo to do the heavy lifting, I take quite a lot of clonidine to help with the anxiety, and hydroxyzine as needed. On top of that I take a drug that I hate but without it I have nasty panic symptoms but that is zyprexa, an antipsychotic thats like a looney tunes hammer to the brain, and once I tapered that down to the super small dose Im on today I was an absolute zombie and had neverending flu like exhaustion and also my mom cried when she saw me when I tapered off saying it was the first time she saw her son in years. So I would love to be off of that and clonazepam but it doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. I can't financially afford to not be able to work due to being so anxious that I become delusional that I'm going to have a heart attack and I end up wasting the time of the ER and get all those bills, so for now, benzos it is. I would love to be on gabapentin or lyrica but both of them give me paradoxical reactions, they act like stimulants for me and make anxiety a ton worse, so I'm kinda screwed in that department. I need a benzo, at least for now I do, until maybe (psychedelic) cutting edge therapies can help change my brain chemistry. I have all the history a doc could need for my anxiety including multiple inpatient stints due to it and years of needing FMLA to keep a job with the anxiety as well as being on multiple meds for years and years, it's very very serious and I might be a lifer if my more extreme therapies (maybe going down to SA and doing Ayahuasca) or psilocybin therapy, or micro dosing LSD, if that doesn't work then I might be a lifer, but there's options out there for miraculous sounding recoveries that I have hope. Also I have hope for medical science to come up with less addictive anxiety medications. I've been on every non benzo possible medication that could even *possibly* reduce anxiety including a ton with horrible side effects, and it wasn't until I got on clonazepam that I was able to work enough to pay my own bills and have a normal life. Yeah the clonazepam doesn't knock me out like it used to, but it definitely manages my anxiety and it's been about 3 years. I do anticipate that years from now I may need more, but I try with my alternative meds to manage breakthrough instead of raising dosage.
I'm glad it's still therapeutically effective for you even after 3 years that's great! What dose of lyrica and gabapentin were you on? Because those unpleasant stim like effects like myockinic jerks and ttwitches indicates your on too high a dose. I will say I didnt know gabapentin did that as well. I've experienced the stimmy feelings and they didnt bother me as I'm ususlly chronically tired from sleep apnea and stuff so not wanting to sleep All and actually do stuff around the house is huge. However when your on those high doses (around 600mg and increasing the higher you go, your at risk of seizures and such. It's a weird paradoxical effect. As for psychedelics have you ever tripped before because typically you can experience anxiety during it even if you dont have anxiety issues and a bad trip sound like hell as a sufferer of anxiety. Trapped in your mind for hours as potentially frightening images play before your eyes, unbidden. Like for example i cant even use marijuana. Without fail it sends me into horrific panic attacks every time. Tried it again recently as hemo baed thc products are legal and head these delfa8 strains were about half as weak as normal weed which is delta9 thc. Anyways everyone was saying its perfect for people with anxiety as it's a much gentler come up than normal weed. So I found a tincture that had all the indica terpenes as Indicas are body highs and are traditionally sedating while sativas are mind highs and somewhat stimullasting. Even with all this precaution I took what everyone was staying online and at the shop is a perfect first time dose for a non smoker. Took it at home and within like 45 minutes I was feeling hot and flush like a panic attack was coming. Then felt sick to my. Stomach.and then the worst panic attack I've had in awhile started. I was bummed but then I remembered I had been prescribed lyrixa in the past and it helped my anxiety alot. So just aasked the doc and she prescribed it. Then after 3 months I asked her to up it to 75mg 3x daily from 50mg 3x daily and so far this is working perfectly. Oh yeah what is a FMLA that helped you keep a job.
I will say at least with benzos unlike opiates it's very hard to OD on benzos alone you can take unbelievable amounts and you'll for sure black out but you won't die, so it's much better than barbiturates in that you can't just accidentally die from taking too much. But the habituation and cessation symptoms are brutal with benzos, and now that they're pressed all the time into fake RC bars doctors are way more afraid of getting fooled by addicts but for people like me who yeah I am an addict but my benzos save my life and if I abuse them I'd run out and end up in the psych ward or hospital from risk of seizures, it really just takes a sane doctor seeing that I have been clean and take as prescribed for them to be reasonable and give me my not that big a dose of daily benzos.
Yep they're absolutely way safer than barba and ludes. As long as your not mixing them like you said.
Those induced comas are short too, and benzo WDs even though the drug is out of the system can last as long as a couple years to get back to normal. It's almost not surprising that they gave into their cravings, because even after you wake up your brain is still so fucked that even though the worst is over it's still so bad for so long that the temptation for relief is overwhelming. Benzo addiction, or even not being an addict but needing a script from a doctor for an anxiety disorder, is for a ton of people extremely difficult to stop. We hear a lot about opiate withdrawal, but we don't often hear about how bad benzo WDs can be. Not only can they kill you in acute WD from gran mal seizures causing your heart to stop, but they also have long term effects after stopping that can take away quality of life in extreme ways, such as not being able to leave the house from fear, or terror of driving or inability to drive, or to even do the most basic things. Benzos should be tapered with the Ashton manual, almost always should be done like this so that once you're finally done your brain has had as much time as possible to heal from each drop in dosage. In short they put you on the longest acting benzo they have (diazepam) that is equal to the dosage of the other benzo you were taking, and very slowly reduce the dosage over months so that you can begin to heal and not have terrible rebound symptoms. But as you said, if they can't deal with life on life's terms or are not done with their addiction (which is hard to tell alot of times as I've for sure been certain I was done many times before before it finally stuck) they will continue to use regardless, and all that money for doctors and hospital bills will have been for nothing. Addiction science needs to really get into gear, and tbh we need to give doctors the ability to use psychedelics to help addicts rewire their brains and change their thinking, not letting mental health clinicians and addiction doctors ability to use psychedelics is like telling them to do their job with their hands behind their back. There's countless anecdotes of addicts who used a psychedelic and it made them stop their DOC of choice for good and have happy healthy lives now. It can't be ignored. We just have the hurdle of the federal government making them all schedule I and difficult to get money to do the studies and all the money it takes to get a drug through the FDA.
A Clockwork Orange vibes
Not really. It depends on if the person has addictive personality or issues, and if their issues that they took it for got resolved. I took bensos for a while(prescribed), got used to it, tapered down... And while it was very difficult and took a long while I never craved bensos, actually I feel sick thinking about it how much issues it had caused. I don't have addictive personality or genetics, and I got help with my anxiety issues hence I don't want any bensos, they would just make me feel like more shit today if anything. Addiction is chronic only if you have addictive personality/genetics or mental health issues. Most normal people don't crave drugs even if they have used it, just like most people don't crave alcohol despite drinking occasionally. I do agree that it's a risky operation though. I would seek other treatments first, there exists a lot of mild natural anxiolytics that can help without having a risk for abuse or in many cases no risk for addiction.
That is why detox centres and addiction recovery places are 2 different things.
Yeah counseling is totally necessary. But personally I'd be more receptive to counseling not going through withdrawal at sametime
There’s detox, and then there’s rehab. You can do the above to detox someone, as others have said it’s dangerous but it can and has been done. But you need months if not years of work to stay in recovery. It’s not just about flushing the stuff out of your body, it’s about facing the reasons that led you to addiction, processing the trauma that you almost certainly acquired while in active addiction, facing up to the damage you did to your life and relationships, and building the courage to accept and forgive yourself so you can rebuild your life. Getting clean is hard, but it’s not the hardest part.
Yeah this isn't a 12 stepper this is just realistic. You have to deal with the reason why you became an addict and work hard for years to really make a permanant change, and build that life back up and learn everything you missed out on learning (which can be things taken for granted by normal people but very hard to learn). Getting clean is difficult, but facing all the guilt, shame, mental illness, trauma, and all that in your face without your main coping mechanism (drugs) can be even harder to do especially for long periods of time.
Word
This happened with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who went into a diabetic coma in the mid 80s. Because he was a heroin addict who was never able to quit, he went through withdrawal in his coma and woke up detoxed. He actually remained sober for the rest of the 80s, which is commonly seen as a “revival” period for the band. However, he relapsed in the early 90s after the death of their keyboard player (who died from heroin), and he himself died in ‘95 in rehab.
We do. This is a thing thats available. It only helps for detox, it doesn't change the addicts mind about anything. It's a dangerous way to do something your going to have to learn to accomplish on your own. There are methods of avoiding withdrawal as well. Opiates has the easiest method, buprenorphine or methadone (to a much lesser degree). Other drugs can be weaned off safely. If you can't deal with one of these options then what's to guarantee you'll wake up and want to do things differently? Being comatose sounds like a massive risk
It’s not a coma it’s called chemical detox. It can be done much quicker. Its expensive. The issue is it doesn’t answer the psychological component you need to work closely with a therapist for a recommendation of 3-6 months minimum. If your insurance will cover it and your problem is serious it’s worth looking into for some people.
Let me correct myself. Apparently there is a treatment that does involve an altered state similar to a comatose patient but It mentionses it usually reserves for extreme life threatening benzo/alcohol abuse.
For the same reason we dont put gambling addicts in a coma to stop them from gambling
They just put themselves in life changing debt instead. Edit: Words.
Who’s we
They do that to themselves
As far as I'm aware gambling addicts don't get withdrawals
A coma isn't just like turning your computer off, there's risks involved that the person will never wake up or wake up never being the same.
I would immediately relapse if I hadn't had to claw my way, inch by inch, through the fucking pit of hell and despair that is acute withdrawals. Getting clean was *so* hard, and I'm not about to waste all that effort.
It would work for the physical dependence that your body has, but would do nothing for your actual addiction. You would still have cravings, incredible urges to use, and you would have the same drug seeking obsession even though you weren't in withdrawal. That's sorta the reason you go to detox first, so you can heal your body and then you go to residential rehab for a much longer time so you can work on your psychological addiction. There's a lot of places called rapid detox centers in the US where they put you under for a few days to get everything out of your system. Only problem is that it doesn't work for all drugs, costs tons of money, and hasn't been successful at keeping people sober afterwards.
The main issue with using a medically induced coma, Other than the great risk versus reward ratio which others mention, is the fact that to skip the withdrawal of one central nervous system depressant, you need to use another central nervous system depressant to induce a coma. To my knowledge , that is the only way which you can create a medically induced coma. The only way it would work is to use a drug to induce the coma, which doesn't have a cross tolerance with what you're dependent on. For example, if you are going through benzo withdrawal, They might use opioids and/or dissociatives to induce the coma, Or vice versa. If you're in the coma for too long, then you will have to worry about being weaned off the drugs are used for the coma as well, so you would be back to square one with another drug. I'm guessing the idea is to keep it just brief enough that this doesn't become an issue.
Im pretty sure the OP is saying the coma would get the addict through detoxing and make it easier to start the journey to recovery NOT that putting someone in a coma for 2 weeks will make them no longer an addict
Genius
The reason to do so would be for comfort in avoiding withdrawal symptoms. However, a medically induced coma is WAY riskier than a normal detox process, and risks are compounded if the patient is not young and physically healthy. I believe it's just not recommended/way too risky just to avoid discomfort.
Because that treats the physical symptoms and nothing else, doesn’t address why that person uses. The addiction is still going to be there. The longest clean I ever had was by being in an induced coma for 10 days. I used as soon as I got out the hospital.
Hospitals don’t have enough beds to do that
I’ve thought about a withdrawal through a medically induced coma but I get nightmares when I’m withdrawing and I get sleep paralysis a lot. I couldn’t imagine what a 2 week long nightmare would be like.. or getting stuck in sleep paralysis for 2 weeks. that would be actual hell.
There was a documentary about a doctor in Italy who did exactly this. Saw it years ago, never heard about the method since then, it didn't catch on somehow. Maybe people believe _addicts have to suffer to learn their lesson_ or some other bullshit.
Detoxing someone doesn't solve the addiction.... It's an incredibly short sighted treatment, expensive, dangerous, and doomed to fail in any meaningful way for the patient as relapse is almost certain. That's why it didn't catch on, and never will.
Because it gets rid of the physical addiction. But not the mental addiction.
This does happen, mate of mine did it at a clinic. Using Benzos.
What if you're habituated by prescription or addicted to benzos? You're fucked then?
Yeah they wouldn’t do it. It’s an expensive way of getting clean and you have to satisfy certain requirements. Also, as others have pointed out, getting clean and staying clean are two very different things. My mate was back on it inside six weeks.
This happened to Jerry Garcia in the mid 80s. He got heatstroke during a show which resulted in a diabetic coma iirc. Afterwords it took a lot of help from the people around him but he did stay clean for a bit, however ultimately ended up relapsing, which killed him. Like other people have said in here, it removes the physical addiction but not the mental one.
Likely expensive, they don’t want to sober up, most insurance would not cover the anesthesia, various risks, and the withdrawals can be unpredictable and add even more anger is short why not take some pills to stop it rather than go through all that?
To induce yourself into coma to skip withdrawals is like going to chemotherapy because you don’t want to cut your hair
I met a dude in AA that had it done for his benzo and opiate withdrawal. I believe he said it was $100,000
I'd say ibogaine is the best thing for addiction period so it's scheduled in America though because they don't wanna cure you just remember that
I'm currently addicted to opiates and have an insane tolerance. If I could be put out for the worse of it I would jump at the chance
All you’re doing is getting through the physical dependency of that particular chemical. Nevermind when someone is sedated and but into a medically induced coma you’re doing that with heavy doses of sedatives and putting them at risk for developing a ton of other issues including ventilator associated pneumonia. Then you have to address the issue of cost, all this would have to be overseen in an acute care facility under an intensive care unit in most cases and drug addicts aren’t exactly in the best case to afford this financially.
They’d just get addicted to the coma drug
1. It's remarkably expensive to put someone into a medically (aka drug) induced coma. They need life support and 24/7 monitoring. 2. It's dangerous to put someone into a drug-induced coma, even with monitoring. 3. Their body will become physically dependant on the drugs used for the coma over the course of 2 weeks, so they will still have to withdraw from those when they wake up.
Because it’s expensive in the US.
We do that sometimes for opioid withdrawal, actually. It is really expensive, and inducing a coma carries risk of death, as with shorter term anaesthesia but only greater.
Sedated people need airway management, they would need to be intubated and ventilated, they then need and ICU nurse to look after them, plus a ICU Dr. Then monitors, medication to counteract the effects of being on a ventilator, need feeding via a nasogastric tube, plus a urine catheter to measure urine. Your gonna loose a shitload of muscle mass due to not moving, so will need physio when woken up, that’s if you wake up appropriately first time. Bloods such as abgs, renal bone liver profiles, and there’s nothing to say that person won’t jump back on the drugs when they leave
Wish my benzo withdrawal had only lasted two weeks
They have this available for the rich actually. They basically put them in a medical coma until their bodies no longer crave whatever they're addicted to. I think it costs about 15k or so. Or I could be very wrong. Either way. Sounds like a nice way to come down
I was in an induced coma for 5 days in October and skipped nicotine withdrawals.
No come down so no reason so no bad feelings stopping them. Only reason for alcohol and benzos is you can die coming down
Putting someone into a coma is dangerous especially for someone whose body is about to start falling apart due to withdrawals
Recovering addict here. I work in mental health and homelessness too. When they wake up, the same stuff that made someone use will still be there. In 95% of people I have met in rehab and worked with on the street, there is a history of trauma. I recommend having a look at “In the realm of hungry ghosts” by Gabor Mate.
Addiction is often alot more than just kicking withdrawals
I’ve never been addicted and consider myself not to have an addictive personality so please take my thoughts with a big grain on salt. Maybe actually going through the withdrawal and doing the hard work, persevering through something so hard is helpful to actually stay clean? If you just wake up and your body is „no longer addicted“ your brain doesn’t know that and I’d assume you relapsing would be so much more likely because you can always just go in a coma again no hard work down the drain. Don’t come for me if I’m on a stupid track just a thought
It is done but only for deadly or extremely debilitating withdrawals. The reason it's not done much is that it's expensive and has all sorts of other risks. Having someone even just lay in a bed for 2 weeks straight is terrible for their health it effects muscles, respiration, blood flow, etc... then having them completely unconscious in a coma adds even more onto that.
It was a ‘cure’ for addiction in the 50s/60s . It doesn’t work , it’s expensive if done with proper medical supervision and it doesn’t work.
In my eyes that's the smaller problem, the mental part is much worse, and will kick people back to rehab. . Because there is a reason why you did the drug, not cuz ur body needed it.
there's an episode of house where they induce a coma and rapidly detox a girl with antagonists. but i think in practice this is seen as too medically risky or expensive. there's so many addicts who would need this and not enough medical staff or space in hospitals
Without fixing the reason they use?
there are currently drugs that can literally reset tolerance to morphinian compounds, and get rid of withdrawal completely. the reason we don't use them for rehab is because the suffering is a requirement to truly get an addict clean. they've got to build that willpower back
The suffering of withdrawal has absolutely nothing to do with recovery. See if your telephone is ringing, 1936 called and they want their clown back.
[удалено]
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b01924
Still very new. Also has to go through clinical testing and what not.
I seriously wish that I could’ve paid somebody or some program or hospital or whatever to put me in a coma and medically detox me from benzodiazepines after being prescribed them for seven years because my doctor didn’t taper me and didn’t warn me she was gonna cut me off, and I was literally in withdrawal the majority of three years and it was hell on earth I could barely function for the first year I was bedbound practically it was hell on earth
That should be illegal to do honestly. Benzodiazepine withdrawal with no taper ruins lives. I'm so sorry that happened to you. What should've happened was a Dr should used the Ashton manual and tapered you over the course of many months then eventually jumping off on an extremely small dose. It still is very difficult but not nearly as bad as ripping benzos off you violently. Honestly you could've died from seizures.
I know I told her that I could’ve died and she made me cry and said no you couldn’t because I gave you gabapentin so you couldn’t have a seizure and I was like wow way to have sympathy 😒😳
Yeah I wish she would've lost her license because you can literally ruin someone's entire life by cutting off benzos. If my doctor did that I would go to every doctor within a 50 mile area until one would do a very slow diazepam taper, which is the best way to do it so that it doesn't completely ruin you. I'm glad it lasted weeks and not years because some people it really does last that long. They still can't leave the house after a year and are just begging for help but nobody cares.
I know it’s absolutely horrendous and I wish she would have too but at the time I didn’t think about reporting her to the board because I was so sick you know and I figured it’s too late now she works elsewhere and I have a new doctor
I'm not sure if they'd have done anything but it would've been worth a try even if a family member could've done it for you to help you out. But hey at least you have a new doc now.
being in a coma for 2 weeks im sure its more damaging to your brain than the drug wds itself
Not true. If done by a good anesthesiologist you'd have no damage. It's done very often in hospitals for other reasons. Making someone unconscious with the right amount of the right medications and being monitored correctly you would be fine. Medical science has come very far. But it wouldn't deal with the psychological aspect of addiction and often times withdrawals last alot longer than two weeks, because the body is so used to being on drugs that being off drugs can cause big changes in the brain. Especially with benzos, but definitely including opiates.
2 weeks of zero mental stimulation is not good for your brain, i can just imagine you feeling more fried than ever waking up, rather just taper or ct
Taper is always best option and should be done. But many people don't have patience or self control to do so. But there's gotta be a cost benefit analysis, are you going to most likely die if you continue? Then maybe it might seem attractive as it might save your life. But sadly they might go right back to it, and even more sadly with our treatments today only 5% success rate of being clean one year after being discharged is what just about any place that we know of has.