Posted by Ame Sans Vie on October 16, 2003, at 10:05:11
In reply to Re: Klonopin Stevie Nicks, posted by jeffd on October 16, 2003, at 8:25:39
Taking into consideration all the benzos I used to take, I know I've taken way, way more than this. When I used to buy them off the streets, I was easily taking 120mg of Xanax daily for quite some time, quite often supplementing it with a couple thousand milligrams of Valium when I couldn't find my precious "Z-bars" any where on the street or when I was partying... or 40-50mg of Rohypnol if that was available, and being in Texas, it invariably is. On the weekends I would often have some "Texas tea" -- pulverized Vicodin HP (acetaminophen extracted) to equal out to 50-100mg hydrocodone, and Soma (2.1 grams) stirred into liquid (alcoholic usually) and taken with my benzos. ....Anyway, Xanax is considered to be half as potent as clonazepam, so that would basically come out to 60mg clonazepam per day if you want to look at it that way. I never encountered Klonopin until I was in a psychiatric setting, but I did abuse it at first, thanks in part to prescriptions each month for 16-20mg daily from four different psychiatrists, the "small" doses of Xanax, Ativan, and ProSom I was getting from my GP (4-8mg, 18mg, and 6mg, respectively), and the bottles of Halcion and Librium my aunt up north would occasionally send me. Of course I had a little pharmacy far out of city limits (well, in the sticks basically) where I would get the scripts filled, no questions asked.
There was even one point my psychiatrist tried something quite radical which ended up working very well in some ways (no anxiety, EVER!) but not so well in others (lethargy between doses). He had me on four different benzodiazepines concomitantly, and while I can't remember the doses of each specifically, I do recall that they were Xanax, Valium, Ativan, and Klonopin. I didn't take all of them every day, though I forget which one (or two) of them was the one I took only as-needed. The Klonopin I was to take at a relatively normal dose throughout most of the week, but every *other* Sunday (?) I was to take a single dose of about 30mg. I suppose he was figuring the long half life would keep my plasma levels high... if we had employed this tactic *every* Sunday (or used Tranxene or Valium instead on these days), it just might have worked. Sounds crazy, I know... I posted about this sometime late last year I believe. My psychiatrist was only willing to do this after I had undergone some pretty extensive in-patient tests to determine my sedative tolerance (though they used pentobarbital and phenobarbital to determine this if I recall correctly... I also posted a detailed post on this quite a while back).
Anyway, guess my point is I wasn't at all a "mumbling zombie" on this high of a dose, though I realize that the vast majority of people would be. In fact I was much more functional at that time in my life than I have been since. Chalk it up to a very high natural tolerance -- I still require a bare minimum of 12mg clonazepam daily to stay afloat. Not endorsing abuse/misuse of benzos of course... just wanted to offer my experience.
How is it that I'm still alive? lol
poster:Ame Sans Vie
thread:78404
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031015/msgs/269973.html