Klonopin Withdrawal

Debbie's Story

I am a 49 year old single/divorced Mom of two wonderful teenage girls. My benzodiazepine story starts back in 1993. First, a brief history; I am a recovering alcoholic and have been sober for 24 years. I abused alcohol and drugs for about 10 years, which started when I was just 15 years old. From the time I turned 25 I have remained alcohol/drug free. Even so, I don’t think I ever learned how to deal with stress or deal with problems. I developed more and more symptoms over the years and was diagnosed with Major Depression and Anxiety in 1993. I finally found a competent Psychiatrist after being shuffled around and misdiagnosed by others. An earlier Psychiatrist that I saw for just one visit gave me a prescription for Xanax (alprazolam) and told me to take it and if it didn’t help we would help try something else. That was the end of that doctor.  I had heard enough negative things about Xanax and I was afraid to take most any drug, so I threw the prescription away. Even during my years of abusing drugs benzodiazepines were one class of drugs I had never really used at all.

My doctor prescribed an anti-depressant and it took 3 months for it to work to the point where I felt a lot better. I still had major annoying symptoms like insomnia, daily anxiety, etc. so my doctor would talk about a drug called Klonopin (Clonazepam) when I would complain. He described it as a mild tranquilizer and that it could help me a lot. Prior to his suggestion that I try Klonopin he did prescribe a drug called Desyrel (Trazodone) which is an anti-depressant. In smaller quantities it has a sedative side effect. It did help at times with the insomnia and I never felt like I was dependent on Trazodone. Trazodone is not a benzo so that makes sense to me now. The Trazodone did not help with my anxiety symptoms all that much and did have some bothersome side effects. By this time I was becoming partially agoraphobic, I would go to work, stay an hour and go home due to anxiety. I was heading down a path of losing my job. I also had two school age daughters I was trying to care for. Of course, I never thought my problem was anxiety. I felt as though I was dying. That is the best way I can describe my anxiety to someone, is that it convinces me that death is near and ironically it’s not the death I am afraid of but how bad I feel from the physical symptoms of anxiety. So I tried the Klonopin, a big deal for me since I didn’t think I would ever take an addictive drug again. But I was desperate for help. My doctor, by the way, did know and was respectful of my history of alcohol/drug abuse. He prescribed .5mg once a day as needed. I took only half a dosage, .25mg at first. I remember the first few times I took it. It helped so much! I would be out of my mind with anxiety, unable to function at all and I would take .25mg, be asleep about 1 hour later and when I woke up I felt so much calmer. Just having a break from anxiety like that was so helpful. (so I thought, obviously not in the long run). Now I have learned because I took the benzo I did not learn how to deal with my anxiety without the drug. I would use the Klonopin very occasionally. I saved it for my desperate times. I really don’t remember feeling like I was becoming addicted to it. I can honestly say that I did not misuse this drug. So I did not worry too much about becoming dependent.  I stress this mainly because I want people to know that you can still become addicted even if you take it responsibly. I had convinced myself that could not happen.

 I don’t know when I crossed the line to being dependent. I do remember somewhere around 2001 or 2002 I had been taking it on and off and I decided it was time to stop taking it. I slowly tapered off it. I had read that this is how you get off this kind of drug. I stayed at a very low dose for several months. When I was no longer taking the drug I remember a subtle symptom, impossible for me to put into words. But that was the first inkling I had of its great destructive power. I just accepted this symptom as the withdrawal from Klonopin and it only lasted a few weeks or so. After that I did not take any Klonopin for a couple years.

I started having a lot more trouble with one of my annoying symptoms (vertigo) in 2004 and I had been taking some Klonopin again mainly for insomnia. I had read on a website that Valium (Diazepam) (also a benzo) helped with vertigo so that was another reason to keep my good friend (Klonopin) around. Also my doctor never questioned my need for the prescription, he just re-wrote it over and over again over the years. A total of fourteen years from the first time I took it. I started to take it daily to prevent vertigo. I was so fearful (still am) of this symptom that I obsessed about when it was going to happen again. So I convinced myself that the benzo helped ward off the vertigo. Who knows, maybe it caused the vertigo in the first place. I don’t know what to think at this point. But that was the beginning of me taking it daily again.  I remember thinking; I am going get addicted to this drug and stuck with taking it forever. But things were difficult in my life so I needed to get rid of some of the unpleasant symptoms. This daily use of anywhere between .25 to 1.5mg sometimes 2mg (very occasionally)  continued until this past March 2007. For the last month or so prior to stopping Klonopin I mostly took only .25mg per day. Some days more. My doctor had told me a normal daily dosage was .5mg 3 times a day. I convinced myself that since I was on a relatively low dosage I was not addicted or dependent on this drug. I was wrong! I had always planned on tapering off it again someday. I expected to have the results be the same as my previous taper, annoying, but not too bothersome. However, due to circumstances in my life, I stopped too abruptly because I just wanted to be rid of this drug. I did not think that made much difference since I had been on a low dose. I now realize that even small dosages continued for years can be very bad for you. I was so miserable for the first week or so after stopping it. It was worse than the previous withdrawal. But things only got worse. The symptoms were becoming unbearable and interfering greatly with my life. I cannot even express how horrible it was. I figured a week or two and this would pass. Nope. About 3 weeks after stopping the Klonopin my symptoms got worse and worse. Initially I was suffering from the mental feelings of anxiety and feeling hyper.  Then the unexpected symptoms started; numbness, tingling, itching in my limbs, face, head. Muscle twitches and jerks. Severe depression and insomnia. Lightheadedness, dizziness and fatigue.  These symptoms went on for days, then weeks and months.

 I had been searching the web to figure out what was the matter with me. I thought, maybe I have multiple sclerosis or some other similar illness. I have so many of the symptoms of that disease. At first I did not even think my symptoms had much to do with withdrawal. I had some of these symptoms before I stopped the Klonopin. That helped convince me that it was not the drug. But I soon learned that you can have something called tolerance withdrawal while you are still taking the drug. This happens when you develop a tolerance to the drug and are not taking enough of it to prevent withdrawal symptoms. Then I started believing that my symptoms could actually be from withdrawal. They are now more tolerable than at first, but still there. Some days I can hardly stand or walk due to weakness in my legs or the vertigo. It’s my understanding that these symptoms will probably continue for quite some time but gradually lessen even more. The more I read by browsing benzo websites the more I become convinced that most of this is due to my body being dependent on Klonopin and now withdrawing from it. I have not taken any Klonopin since March 20, 2007. I still keep the Klonopin. I am too afraid that I will feel so bad someday and it’s the only thing that will help. One day a week or so after I stopped taking it I was at work and had horrible anxiety symptoms. I took out a Klonopin pill and debated whether I should take it. I put it in my pocket so that I could take it if I needed to. I felt so horrible. Fortunately for me I took the pill out of my pocket about an hour later and threw it away.

 Sometimes I feel so discouraged because I don’t know what I am going to do to get through these symptoms. On the other hand I also feel very free because I am not taking this drug any more.   

I wish I had known how important it was when I first started taking Klonopin that I take it only a few short weeks. Fourteen years later is when I found this out. I hope that my story can help save someone from experiencing these horrific withdrawal symptoms. I can’t seem to convey with words the magnitude of how anxiety and these withdrawal symptoms have impacted my life. I am just starting to now realize how badly it has affected my life.