Originally Posted by MemphisBlues

I think what makes quitting a benzo so damned hard is that it that they appear to be unlike other drugs in how our body detoxes from them.

For many, the severe symptoms don't occur as the drug is being eliminated from the system, like alcohol or cocaine or heroin. The symptoms occur when the drug is finally totally eliminated from the system.

For many, that appears to be about 10 days to two weeks after last ingestion.

That is why many insist on a very slow, regimented tapering system. You can find a good tapering regimen at the benzodiazepine support site from the United Kingdom. It follows the advice of a professor and doctor who is considered one of the leading benzodiazepine experts int he world, Heather Ashton.

I didn't have the luxury for following the tapering suggestions, and basically went cold turkey. I quit booze and benzos at the same time.

The first few days weren't that rough, and my alcohol detox wasn't that big of a deal. But about two weeks out from my last benzo I was a psychotic wreck, complete with seizures.

I was on a mountain of Klonopin, like 20 milligrams a day.

While you were on a relatively small dose of Xanax, you still tapered over one week or so, and that is not really a taper at all. I don't recall all of the recommendations at the benzo support site, but I believe you would have been tapering over several months, not weeks.

I think the majority of people who ask a doctor to help, especially if it is the prescribing doctor, are told what you were told: taper over a week and you will be fine.

It's recommended by many to print out the tapering regimen at the U.K. benzo site and ask your doctor to read it.

Most doctors don't have the time to read it and are probably insulted that there patient is trying to educated them about benzos, so if I were you I would ensure I had a supply of Xanax to last a few weeks and search for a doctor who buys into the extreme difficulties long-term benzo use can cause. While you were on a low dose, you were still on Xanax for a year, and that is long-term in anybody's book.

This is a recovery site, and I know the advice to ensure you have a stash of your drug doesn't seem right. Tapering alcohol is normally pretty rancid advice. I couldn't have done it. Frankly, tapering Klonopin wasn't in the cards for me either. I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Detoxing from booze, smack, crank, crack, pot, meth is the hardest thing any addict will ever have to do. But in three to five days to a week the physical withdrawal is over when the drug is totally eliminated from our bodies and we are just left with the demons that led us to be addicted in the first place. That's hard.

But the physical withdrawal from a benzo, those first few days to a week as the drug leaves our body, isn't all that bad. It's when the drug is totally eliminated from our tissue that the hell begins. Our brain is left with no physical mechanism to process the neurotransmitter that benzos block, and the brain literally has to relearn how to absorb that neurotransmitter. So by two seeks out, we're toast.

This advice is counter-intuitive in the addiction field, most rehabs don't get it and most doctors are clueless. Still.