Not sure if addicted but definitely abuse

I get 2 mg a day of ativan prescribed to me per night. My doctor is sending it in weekly so I get a week's supply at a time. Lately I've been cutting the pills in half, saving 1 mg per night to continue the treatment and keep myself from having withdrawal seizures, but the extra 7 or 8 mg I will take all at once and enjoy just feeling nothing for a while.

I'm not doing huge amounts, and it's less than once a week, but I think it would definitely be labeled as benzo abuse. I guess I should stop?

My understanding is that 8mg of ativan(lorazepam) can cause an overdose. As with any med, take exactly as prescribed. They can also decide to test you, and with this use, the test won't match the script.

Sent from my LGMS323 using Tapatalk

Benzo, like ativan, are very addictive and difficult to stop. If it were me, I'd fess up to my doc and see about treatment. Good luck.

moogs

You can try correcting this on your own if you don't feel ready to fess up yet. Only cut a few of them in half to save for your recreational dose and slowly reduce the recreational dose until it's not even worth it anymore, then just take it as prescribed.

How about taking them as prescribed instead of something to get high on. If you can't successfully do that, then you might need to seek treatment or change meds.

Yes, what you're doing definitely falls under the heading of "abuse." You have my sympathy because I know how it is to want to have something to look forward to in terms of feeling better, or just not feeling as bad. So you have yourself a little "Ativan Party" once a week and it is something that you look forward to. You'll get no judgmental response or condemnation from me. But you're realistic enough to wonder if there won't be a downside to this that will one day make you sorry you started this.

I'm guessing that you found that taking the 2 mg at night doesn't really give you a big bunch of relief . . . maybe just makes it a little easier to fall asleep. So that's why you don't mind depriving yourself of half the nightly dose to save it up for a bigger use that actually lets you feel some escape.

Ativan is one of the more potent benzos, so that's why it is prescribed in small amounts to take at a time. When you save up those half pills and take 7 or 8 mg of Ativan all at once, that's a pretty hefty dose of benzo to take in one sitting. For years I took Librium. I used a conversion chart to put what you take in terms I could relate to. 8 mg of Ativan is supposed to be equivalent to 200 mg of Librium. I sure would have been afraid to take that much back when I was taking it regularly. Be very careful that you don't go mixing any alcohol with that. I've read over and over that benzos, on their own, are not all that lethal, but become extremely dangerous when mixed with alcohol.

You probably should stop. I think the biggest reason why it is bad to do what you are doing is that it lessens your incentive to discover a more constructive way to feel better. The interval of relief from worry and stress that comes with taken the big dose at once only lasts so long. Then you are back where you started, if not worse off. That must get disappointing week after week. If you spent that time finding something interesting and rewarding to do, you might come up with a pursuit that would enrich your life way better than having a chance to feel nothing once a week for a few hours.

I don't know if I would be to quick to go confessing this misuse to your doctor. Technically, that's supposed to be the stand up thing to do, but you want to be aware of implications of doing that. For one thing, you immediately put your doctor on the defensive and needing to protect himself/herself from ever being accused of enabling you to be a substance abuser, who winds up harming or even killing himself. There's a good chance your doctor would flat out refuse to order Ativan for you anymore. Also, your doctor might be reluctant to order any controlled substance for you anymore. Knowlege of this history of abuse on your part might get transmitted to future physicians involved in your treatment, who might all be forever wary of prescribing you any controlled substance.

If that happened you might have a harder time getting narcotic pain killers when you might really need them. You might have a hard time getting a benzo again when it might be beneficial to you, in some future set of circumstances that you can't foresee now. Personally, I like to keep all those options open to myself, and so I am reluctant to confess any substance misuse to any doctor. (And I have done my own little experiments with taking things other than as prescribed.)

I think the danger of Ativan discontinuation resulting in seizures is a bit exaggerated in the minds of a lot of users. I think doctors tend to throw that out there to motivate patients to not abuse the drug. I worked in jails for a few years where there's always lots of inmates going through withdrawal after they get incarcerated. I never saw where Ativan was that big of a cause for concern. The benzo that jail house doctors worry the most about is Xanax. The substance that is most likely to cause seizures in those who withdraw from it is alcohol. Another nasty thing to withdraw from is the use of barbiturates, but they aren't as available as they used to be. That's not to say that you might not be an unlucky person with a low seizure threshold who can start seizing from Ativan withdrawal.

I don't know if I've given you much of a reason to change your behavior. Risu's suggestion above is not unreasonable, as a way to backtrack off of this pattern that you've developed.

The longer you do what you're doing, the harder it will be to stop. There's also the issue of "rebound anxiety," which means that the very problem you are taking the Ativan to correct will get worse. I've experienced rebound anxiety, and I don't recommend it to anyone. It can make you so desperate that you come close to being suicidal, just to escape it. That's one of the reasons I don't use benzos anymore.

Good luck with your efforts to manage this. If it weren't for prescribing mind altering drugs, psychiatrists wouldn't have jobs. So don't depend on them to never get you more involved in drugs than is good for you. It seems like everyone and their dog gets prescribed Ativan these days . . . that or Klonopin. I've taken both, and I didn't see where I derived any real significant benefit from either one. But thinking that you need one of them will keep you going back to the pdoc, and he or she's got to make a living.

I think Rose's suggestions and advice are really good. It's nice to say "just take at as prescribed or check yourself into rehab" but it's more complicated than that. You're not THAT deep into it yet, but you could easily slip and turn to street drugs to supplement and that's not a path you want to go down. I think rehab would largely be a waste of time for you, as the problem is that you're not on the right medications/therapy to begin with. That's probably why you're so miserable. That and depressions can just last a long long time, as I'm sure you know. Best of luck to you in whatever you choose to do. I hope you get some relief soon (and not through suicide!!!)

Thank you. I've cut down to 1 mg a day, and I'm sticking to it. I went off it completely for a couple of days, but the withdrawal symptoms were too much - terrible anxiety, heart palpitations, nausea, headaches. So I went back on 1 mg a day and the withdrawal symptoms went away.

My doctor is ok with me going off of it once things are in a good place. Maybe over the summer.

Good for you, boy. You stepped back for going along a bad road.

You better stick with the prescribed doses.

Great job!

It is always better to take the prescribed dose. As you know, Ativan is extremely addictive and things might, just might get out of hand. Although, now you are not doing it in large amounts, eventually there will arise a situation where you won’t be able to stop. I say this because I have seen people do so. Recently my neighbor, suffered from overdose of Ativan but thankfully he is alright after undergoing counselling for addiction at Sunshine Coast Health Center in Vancouver. Thankfully he was able to escape unscathed but not everyone is lucky. Even though you wouldn't feel the difference now, it will start growing on you. You can try correcting this on your own like you have done already but make sure you stick to it. All the very best to you.