Benzo Brain Fog

[[Br...]]

Hello All,

 

I started out about a year ago with waking up feeling dizzy & my heart beating rapidly &  thought I was having a heart attack. Called an ambulance. ER couldn't find anything wrong & told me I was having a panic attack. Since that time, I continued to feel dizzy & out of sorts every day, so I have been to an ENT & a balance center, Neurologist for an MRI, had a cardiac work-up, an accupuncturist, therapist, all sorts of blood tests, but still the dizzy feeling persists and no-one can find anything wrong. I feel that it's not anxiety because it is all day every day, I don't feel normal.  So I ended up at a psychiatrists office last December (2018) & I ended up with xanax .5 MG for a while, and then I have been on Klonopin .5 mg 3 times a day for about 10 months. I also have taken some .5mg xanax in the evenings to help with sleep. Also, I was put on Gabapentin, 100 MG only at night and that helps me sleep. Anyhow, now I have about 7 pills of .5 mg xanax left, and I can keep getting the klonopin from my doc, but no xanax. But I am starting to realize that I have brain fog and am feeling that my thinking & cognitive function is impaired due to the benzos & am not sure how to taper safely without massive withdrawals. I am hoping I have been taking a low enough dose & not for even a whole year, so maybe there is hope that I can get off the stuff without it being as horrible as I am scared it will be. I am screwed with tapering off the xanax, because I can't get any more and I'm just about out. I am planning to take .25 every other day for 28 days, and then also take my klonopin & gabapentin and hope the xanax withdrawal isn't too horrible. Once I am off that, I am going to start working on tapering off the klonopin. I had no idea what a mess I was getting myself into. Wondering if anyone has any advice on a tapering schedule for the klonopin? Also, I have even read that Gabapentin can have nasty withdrawals. I had no idea. Luckily I am taking a pretty low dose of that, although it affects me differently than most. My doc & the pharmacist call 100 mg Gabapentin a "baby dose", and I hear that many people take much higher doses. But for me, the 100 mg knocks me out & I am loopy the next morning for several hours. So I started cutting that down to .50 mg some nights. 100 mg is the smallest dose they make & it's a capsule with powder. My doc said just dump the powder out & divide it in half & drink it in a little water, so I do that some nights. I had no idea through all of this that I was creating an addiction for myself, on top of the original problem (which nobody still has been able to solve). Any advice would be helpful here. Thank you

[[Pa...]]

Hello Brain Fog Betty, Welcome to BenzoBuddies!

 

Your story breaks my heart, I'm so sorry for what's happened to you, you've endured a terrible year, been put on a myriad of medications and you fear your original problem is still unaddressed!  Try not to be fearful, we're here to help you through this, we can absolutely offer you tapering advice, in the form of written guidelines and information, but also with the experience our members have of this process, we're glad you're here.

 

Most here would tell you that since Xanax has such a short half life, it would be the first drug to taper, so it sounds like that decision has been made for you, since you're almost out.  Please stop by General Taper Plans and do some reading, or start a thread with your questions.  I feel you would also benefit from glancing at The Ashton Manual, it will help you understand what you're going through and also to help you identify what you're feeling.

 

Please feel free to ask questions, but please know, you're not alone, we're here for you.

 

Pamster

[[Br...]]

 

Thank you Pamster. I definitely had no idea benzos were so addictive and that I was creating this monster. My psychiatrist said he thinks I have anxiety & something called Mal De Debarquement syndrome (which is what he gave me the Klonopin for, only I never went on any cruise (which is what causes Mal De Debarquement), but it was the only thing he could come up with that matched my symptoms. I do not believe that's what's wrong with me. I had been prescribed 1 months worth of 2mg bars of xanax back in Feb. from a different doctor, but I didn't need that huge amount of xanax. so I thought I was being smart & just taking .5 mg a night, and not even every night. But now that I am almost out of them 9 months later, I am scared. I am hoping the Klonopin will help lessen the withdrawals from the xanax. Maybe I won't have bad withdrawals from that, since I haven't been taking it regularly & have missed weeks at a time with no noticeable effects. It's just now that I am almost out, all of a sudden I am scared.

I will definitely check out the tapering advice for the klonopin though and the Ashton Manual.

 

Thanks again.

[[Pa...]]

Hi again,

 

I wanted to address something in your first post that stood out to me, you said you planned to take your remaining Xanax every other day, I'm not sure that would be wise.  We like to see a gradual decrease when tapering, taking the drug every other day might cause the concentration of the drug in your system to go up and down which may cause you to feel some unpleasantness.  A suggestion would be to cut the pills into smaller doses and taper off the Xanax that way.  Give it some thought, check out the taper board to see how this can be done and figure out if this makes sense to you.

 

Another thing I wanted to mention, most benzo's manufacturers only recommend them to be taken for 2 to 4 weeks, they know how powerful this drug is.

 

Pamster

[[Br...]]

 

I wondered if that might be a better way to do it, but it's really hard to cut those .5mg squares into .25 doses, let alone half of that. They tend to turn to dust. But maybe that's what I should do. I am hoping the Klonopin & Gabapentin will help lessen the problem too.

[[Pa...]]

The longer half life of the Klonopin should help keep you fairly stable while you taper the Xanax.  As to cutting your pills, its amazing what people can do when they're desperate enough, we get quite creative.