DOSE:

1 mg

oral

Pharms - Clonazepam

I suffer from very bad anxiety and panic attacks. If I didn't have the panic attacks I could probably live with the anxiety. The problem is the panic attacks are so bad I can't live a normal life at all. I've tried so many things. I've had very bad experiences with some medications and gone through severe side effects. I never understood why people abuse benzodiazepenes. Maybe because I have such bad anxiety I don't feel anything except they make me feel normal. Maybe to a normal person it makes them high. All they do is calm me down and keep me from feeling like I'm going to lose it. If they have recreational potential it beats me because they aren't fun and never were fun for me. They were relief from a life of torment and anxiety all in my head.

Like I said I had tried many medications and none of them worked except klonopin. It was massive relief and for the first time in years I wasn't afraid to go out and wasn't sitting in my room scared shitless of everything. It was great. At first. But after a few months I noticed some small changes. I noticed I couldn't remember things well. People kept telling me they would tell me things and I had no memory of it at all. Slowly I became more and more apathetic I guess. I felt so free and uninhibited I just kind of let myself fall apart. I just didn't care because I was happy and relieved not to be suffering anymore, and I didn't even notice how goofy and flat out weird I was getting. I grew out my hair and a beard, I just was like a total slacker. But I wasn't smoking pot or anything. I was just free of the pain. But it also had shut off my survival mechanisms. We need a little anxiety in our lives. It keeps us alive and from doing stupid things. Klonopin is like an anxiety hammer. It decimates anxiety, inhibition, fear, and the survival mechanism. After some time it completely shuts it off. And then you will begin to do bolder and more extreme things because you don't feel any fear. While that sounds fun at first after a while, coupled with memory degrading it gets really dangerous. Almost suicidal. Because you don't care anymore at all. This is way worse than any drug I've ever taken. I smoked pot for years everyday and never got like this. This wasn't slacking off. This was being completely disengaged.

I realized after doing some very insane stuff one day that the klonopin was fucking me up. I quit cold turkey. I had started drinking before, why I don't know, I don't really drink or like alcohol, and I noticed that I was getting angry all the time. Really frickin angry at things which really made no sense to me later at all. Seriously like incredible hulk rage. I could fly off the handle at the strangest thing. I got rid of all my booze and quit the klonopins cold turkey. I had no withdrawal symptoms except for the next two weeks I could go into a fit of rage over the drop of a pin. It scared the shit out of me and I literally had to lock myself up alone in my house the whole time and would not go out for fear I might just flip out on someone and do something I would regret. It wasn't like me I have never been a violent person at all. I've never experienced anger like this and I hope I never do again. It scared me.

Unfortunately after a few weeks off the klonopin, I started having panic attacks again. At first I was actually glad to feel them and to feel fear again. We need some anxiety in our lives. It's actually healthy for us. But they got worse and worse so I had to do something. I realize there is something wrong with my gaba because SSRIs and serotonin medications do not work for my panic attacks. For now I am taking diazepam, I am pretty scared but it's much much weaker than klonopin. It only takes the bite off the anxiety and the panic attacks but doesn't completely annihilate my survival mechanism like Klonopin. Xanax is completely useless to me because it just doesn't work long enough to be effective, and I'd have to pop them all day and you know that isn't good. The next time I will look into nonbenzodiazepines and other GABA medicines to see if they will work. I've tried Kava and other stuff but the problem with kava is it's very hard to figure out how much I need, it tastes awful and it just doesn't really last long enough for real anxiety disorder. It makes my stomach ill.

I did not experience any withdrawal at all from klonopin. I had read the horror stories but it was actually very easy. I wasn't addicted because I took it for a valid reason. But this the scariest drug I've ever taken. And I've taken alot both licit and illicit. Klonopin is very very effective and it makes me sad in a way that I can't take it anymore because I am one of the screwballs that simply can't handle it because it's the only medicine that really worked. Actually it worked too good and that was the problem. Maybe a lower dose, but the diazepam are much much weaker but they at least make my anxiety manageable instead of annihilating it. We need a little anxiety and fear in our lives it's good for us. It keeps us alive. If you want to live.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 80033
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 27, 2022	Views: 1,131
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Pharms - Clonazepam (125) : Medical Use (47), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)