Benzodiazepines - Coming off them is a living hell and it goes on seemingly forever. You stop because you have run out and go for quite a while thinking everything is ok as the withdrawal syndrome can take weeks to come on. One day you wake up with crippling anxiety and then you know it has started. You are petrified as you know what is coming and that it will get much much worse before it starts to get better.

Two or three weeks in you start to substitute alcohol for your prescription drug as the doctor that was prescribing has left you high and dry, well more low and wet as you are feeling as down as you ever have and can’t stop sweating.

Alcohol acts on the gaba receptors in the same way as the drugs did, so you find yourself on a bottle or two of spirits a day and with an inability to eat. At this point you won’t have slept for 4 to 6 weeks and you pray for death to come but haven’t the courage to actively do anything about it. Holding alcohol down becomes increasingly difficult which means you start to have seizures. You now haven’t had a solid shit in a month, possibly two, you can’t be sure as reality and time is so distorted. You know you should eat but can’t hold liquid down never mind solids.

Unlike for heroin or crack addiction, doctors will refuse to treat you even though you are at risk of death from the increasingly frequent seizures. You wish so much that you had become addicted to illegal hard drugs instead so some respite would be on the horizon in the form of treatment, or you could go out, find an obvious opiate addict and buy on the street, but as things are, you can’t find the drug you need more that you hade ever needed anything. You have no idea how long this is going to last and you seriously consider that it may never end.

It does end eventually but it takes six months to a year and you are just not the same person anymore. Your confidence is shot and you are a physical wreck. You know you will never feel the same again and the long road to semi normality begins.