I really come off as an anti-Klonopin Nazi, and I'm sorry. It's only because of my horrid experience with them, and I do, irrationally, blame them for destroying my life.
And now that I'm "retired, (read: on disability) I don't struggle with the day-to-day stress that most folks experience. I was in a high-pressure, take-no-prisoners, make-others-sweat profession, and I relished it. Fed off of it. And gobbled Klonopin to become fearless in what I did.
Benzos are a very paradoxical class of drugs. Take them for anxiety, get off of them, experience full-blown panic attacks. Take them for difficulty getting to sleep, get off of them, and slip into days of wide-eyed insomnia. Take them for panic disorder, get off of them, slip into insanity. Funny, I never had a diagnoses of any "psychotic" disorder, but getting off of them, I went certifiably insane.
Miss a dose, and experience anxiety as never before, panic like a feral cat in a bag dangling over a raging river.
I was put on every medication there is for anxiety, gobs of Neurontin, Buspar, beta blockers, slews of them. Add Effexor, Prozac, Mirtazapine, Imipramine, heck, I forget the list of medications added to the stew over two decades. They didn't work. Klonopin did. Shoot, Xanax didn't really work because of its short half life.
Klonopin was the drug. It enabled me to function. It also created amnesia, and add alcohol, well, the most shameful, regrettable things I ever did were on Klonopin and beer.
Klonopin provided the one emotion I was constitutionally able to deal with, and that was complete, total, apathy.
And I would take them again. If they work for you and you can get by on low doses, I would never advise anyone to give them up. However, I fear anyone who has been on them long term could face dire consequences getting off of them. At least, that's why there are a half dozen support sites like this one specifically for the "accidental addicts" who find they are trapped in a never-ending cycle of tapering, suffering, reinstating, tapering, becoming total basket cases. My heart goes out to them.
No one should read of my tale of woe with Klonopin and apply it to themselves. I can find no other human prescribed 20 milligrams of Klonopin. And I went cold turkey off of them, even with medical supervision, and, well, slipped into a rabbit hole I would wish on no one.
It just amazes me that 18 days after my last Klonopin I went stark-raving mad. Certifiable. Strapped to a bed. Seizures, fevers, psychotic states...I still have the scars on my wrists and ankles from the restraints that tied me to a bed for three days.
So please, read of my story and know it is skewed big time.
Funny though, I've read of others who were on six milligrams a day and went through the same thing, complete with delayed onset of horrid withdrawals. It ain't like alcohol detox where it's over in five days. The hell hasn't even started by then. And I've read of people being on one or two milligrams who went through the same thing.
Maybe it's curious that the only anecdotes I can find of people who defend benzos are those still on them, and only those who are off of them believe they are the devil's concoction. I find only people who rely on them see no problem with them, and only people who are off of them regret the hell ride they created.
I guess the solution is not to get off of them.
Again, I would never had made it through life without them for as long as I did. It's jut a shame that the price of getting off of them is realization what hell they created for an alcoholic drug addict like me.