Getting sick a lot due to benzo withdrawal, will i be able to get off ( long text )?

[[To...]]

Hey guys,

Im a 23 year old male from Germany and started using Benzos every day in start of January 2023 due to a lot of anxiety and stress. At that time i used a mix of benzos, like Bromazepam, Alprazolam aka Xanax and Diazepam. When i convert everything into Diazepam i used about 10-20 mg a day. I also used Pregabalin 150mg a day. At the start of March 2023 a relationship i was in ended, that kinda was the wake up call for me to get off the benzos and pregabalin. So i tried to cold turkey but to no success. I couldnt sleep for days so a doctor put me back on 75mg Pregabalin and 5mg Diazepam. With that i could actually sleep very well again and started to engage in sport activities regulary. 

In mid April i went into a detox facility, they took me off the Pregabalin and Diazepam. I stayed there about two and a half weeks. 

After the detox, now in retroperspective i was actually doing rather good. I could sleep at night and i felt fit enough to engage in martial arts. From what i suffered was huge nervousness and being agitated, that usually was the worst the hours before going to sleep. So after two weeks out of the hospital, i again started to take benzos. This time 0.5mg clonazepam/rivotril at night. All the nervousness, being agitated was gone. 

In mid may, i met with a woman that i met in the detox facility and we very quickly got together. We both started to use prescription opioids together and my benzo habit also started to get worse. So i was using 2mg lorazepam a day and 0.5mg Clonazepam at night. She was diagnosed with borderline so you can imagine the relationship was a wild ride. 

Anyways i noticed my benzo habit was spiraling out of control so i looked up online how i could taper myself down. I switched to Diazepam at the start of August, using 25mg a day, quickly reducing it to 20mg a day. Then i took it a bit slower, at the end of September i reached 10mg Diazepam. Now the process was real agony. It took me till the End of December to reach 3.75mg Diazepam and to mid of January to reach 2.5mg Diazepam. 

In late November my ex girlfriend also broke up with me which left me in a horrible depressed state, where i didnt really know if its coming from the breakup or from the withdrawel process. Probably both. 

So now to my more recent problem, since dropping under 5mg Diazepam a day im getting sick a got damn lot. Im getting flu after flu. I had the flu 3 times in one and a half months? My doctor took a blood test and everything came back clear. So i think it has to do with the Benzo withdrawel since my body is under more stress. My fear now is that i wont be able to come off this fuckin drug because ill be sick every 3 weeks. Im already trying to take a break from life to not stress my body but seems like it isnt enough. I should add that when i was on a higher dosage of Benzos i never got sick, maybe my nose was running a bit but thats it. 

Any of you experienced the same? 

 

[[Co...]]

Hello @[To...]. Welcome to BenzoBuddies.

You have actually done well with your taper so far. And to reassure you, it is very common to experience difficult periods during withdrawal of benzodiazepines.

From the doses you mentioned, it appears that you use 5mg diazepam tablets - reducing your dose by 1.25mg (quarter of a tablet) are large reductions to make when at a low dose. It is generally OK to make such a reduction in the 10-20mg ranger (or higher), but the size of reductions should be reduced when your dose is at about 10mg or lower.

Can you obtain a prescription for 2mg diazepam tablets? Although they are quite small, with a bit of patience, you can probably divide these into quarters for a dose (reduction) of 0.5mg. The vast majority of people find these reductions tolerable.

If you should find that 0.5mg reductions are still too much for you, or you cannot obtain 2mg tablets, there are other options which will allow you to make smaller reductions to your dose: crushing the pill into a powder and using jewellers' scales to weigh the powder; or obtaining an over-the-counter suspension agent to make up your own liquid.