The trouble starts for some people with the first 1/2 or 1/4 dose. These medications seriously screw with your brain, your neuro system, and your CNS. There's almost no reliable way to take any benzo if you're in the unlucky group of hyper-sensitive patients, and since there's no test to determine of you are, it's like spinning the chamber and hoping for the best.
There are circumstances where they can be really helpful, but even then, the price on the other side is usually higher than you ever imagined going in. Drs don't warn you, and worse, they wont help you after the damage is done. You'll just get their copyrighted responses: "I've never heard of a response like that ...." or "These medications couldnt possibly be creating those problems ...." or "It's all in your head, you're a train wreck and a mess, and it's all your fault ..." or "You dont need less medication, you need more ....". Check out the stats on people who die from the agony of withdrawal, many by suicide, others by cardiac, liver, and kidney issues.
I wouldn't be so pissed off about all this if Drs would just warn patients up front (it's required by law, and called "Informed Consent"), or make any provisions for tapering their patients off of this crap. But they wont even admit that there's a problem. Just like opioids, they prefer the lucrative advantages that they get from prescribing this shite, and bugger the consequences for their patients.
Even if you take a small, very small, dose just two or three times a week, after a certain period of time, your GABAa receptors inevitably down-regulate, and when you stop the artificial support, there's no endogenous system left to help you get over the hump.
It's a national medical disgrace, and the consequences are as bad as those we've seen from the opioid mess, but Drs have managed to duck those consequences so far by just denying the existence of the problem, Unfortunately, chickens always find their roost, sooooooo ....
