#kpins

First bowl of cereal for 2025 made it through another year sadly 🧡

Been suffering from benzo withdrawal for almost 2 months now. I think. I stopped counting.

Starting tapering by 1/8 of a mg on March 1st. I decrease the amount every 2 weeks. I'm not at the point where I'm almost completely off of it. Only a few days left.

So far, I've experienced:

agitation

irritability

increased anxiety

flu-like symptoms for a few days after about 3 weeks of tapering

muscle tension

mild nausea

muscle jerking

restless leg syndrome

probably other things that I'm forgetting

those last 2 symptoms (#9 not included) are the most prevalent right now. The only real reason I'm writing this is because my phone is updating and I don't have anyone to talk to about this. But I NEED to talk about this, even if it's just to myself in journal form. and I'm currently being driven up the wall by the nerves in my right leg. It feels like electricity is shooting around my kneecap and down to my ankle. This is the most uncomfortable I've been since the early withdrawal symptoms.

Early on I found someone via Twitter who has gone through the same thing as me, and I've since adopted her as my "sponsor", for lack of a better term. She's been very helpful. I feel very lucky to have her help me along this journey.

This is the second time I've attempted to taper off klonopin. The first time I failed after 2 weeks. About a year and a half before that, I had experienced pretty bad withdrawal symptoms after running out of meds for 36 or so hours.

I'm tired of these symptoms. They're not nearly as bad as I was expecting, probably due to tapering so slowly. But it's still hell.

As I sit here, super uncomfortable, moving my leg every 30 seconds to feel the least bit more comfortable, I remind myself how easy it would be to just take my previous full dose and have all of this over with. Just go back to normal. Sure, I'd become a slave to this drug again, but I'd have my sanity and my comfort back.

I've been on klonopin for 7-8 years. I didn't want to get off of it. My psychiatrist insisted. I thought about getting a new one. The long-term effects scared me, but so did the withdrawals. Now I'm in limbo. I have been since March 1, 2023. I'm frustrated.