How to help my mom with benzodiazepine addiction (long but please read)

Hey, I’m really sorry to hear about your mom. Reading this made my heart break.

I’ve known some recovered benzo addicts. That stuff is scary, and the withdrawal is really painful. If she’s an addict, which it certainly sounds like she is, it would be dangerous for her to detox by herself (which it sounds like she wouldn’t decide to do on her own anyway). She doesn’t think she has a problem, and if you bring it up, out of your love and concern for her, you are being “mean.”

How old are you? Is there a significant other (your mother’s) in the picture? What about other relatives? Do you think she would agree to see a therapist? (Perhaps for some other problem initially?)

She needs to realize that she has a problem before she will seek treatment. You need to figure out how to get her to this point.

I am 21 years old. She is still married to my father and he is very loving and supportive of her, but I have to say when it comes to this issue… he is a little oblivious. I just don’t think he understands the seriousness of it. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to see it?

Other relatives are unhelpful and actually add to the problem. Two of my aunts and an uncle are hardcore alcoholics and only encourage her to drink when they’re around. Her initial problem is anxiety. It started around the time her sister committed suicide. Her doctor put her on lorazepam around this time. This was about 10 years ago. I have tried time and time again to get her to see a psychiatrist or a counselor but she refuses. She saw one years ago and he was not helpful so she assumes they will all be like that. She seems to have a problem with the whole mental health system. She refuses to believe that I have borderline personality disorder, even though I’ve been diagnosed now by two different doctors. She is not supportive of me getting help because she doesn’t think I need it either. It sucks… I don’t know how to get her to realize she has a problem. :(

She’s not ready to address her addiction. Until she works though that there isn’t much you can do. That sucks but it’s the truth.

Some people never ask for help until they have hit rock bottom. I hope things get better for you and your mom, but you have to remember that it is her life and her choice, and you have your life and your choice to get help.

@Tequila You could try Al-anon, it might help you or I think there’s agroup for drugs but I don’t know the name offhand.

@Tequila: Maybe you could try more directly to get your dad to open his eyes to reality. Would he read some pharmacological or lay literature you give him about benzodiazepine addiction? This isn’t a widely known drug of abuse like meth or heroin, because it’s legal.
Does he really not perceive the deterioration in your mom’s physical and mental health?

I agree with @Adirondackwannabe Al-anon might be helpful if she doesn’t think she has a problem. She is going to be hateful towards you, because you want to take away what is probably her best friends right now, her drugs. Coming off of a benzo addiction sucks, of course she is reasonably afraid of the withdrawal. How long has she been taking the Ativan?

Benzos plus alcohol can be deadly. The two together exaggerates the effects of both and can affect respiration. Overdose death that have been in the media the last couple of years often times are not suicide, but a combination of benzos, alcohol, narcotics, or similar, and the person dies because they simply stop breathing. That part of the brain that tells us to breath gets dulled, and if the person falls asleep they sometimes never wake up. But, you probably know all this if you study pharmacology. You probably also know she should not stop taking benzos cold turkey, she has to wean off or she can have a really bad psychotic episode and/or extreme physical response that can be life threatening. I am assuming if she pops three pills at nice she takes a lot more than that throughout the day.

Oh @Tequila, I feel for you. You just told my life story of the last 5 years with my own mother. Unfortunately, I haven’t solved my own family issues yet, so I don’t know how much wisdom I can offer. From my experience (which has been a lot of one step forward and two steps back), it is almost impossible to get someone struggling with addiction (especially when it’s your parent) to recognize the truth in what you’re saying. The only success I’ve seen has come from having an outside, non-family party (preferably a professional) do the talking. My best suggestion is to focus on convincing her to go to therapy and don’t really bring up the addiction. ANY way you can get her to go to therapy, do it.

That being said, mostly I have maintained my sanity through this experience through advice similar to that given by @Adirondackwannabe—accepting that I am as powerless to change the behavior of others as they are over their addiction.

I hope you and your mother make it through this. I’ll leave you with the advice that I often need to hear: We all love our families, but you’re still a wonderful, valuable, and kind person if you take care of yourself first.

The best thing you can do for your mom is go to a few NarAnon or Alanon meetings.
No one can change your moms behavior but her and your approach might even be making things worse. Go and learn from those who have been there how YOU can handle this for YOUR sake. The best thing you can do for her is to not play into her disease and take care of yourself. The folks at NarAnon or Alanon can help you figure out how to do that.

Where and how is she getting the scripts for the Ativan? Someone must have been writing the Rx’s for the past ten years,

Probably impossible as the drug companies are really the only one,s who can stop this madness, thus it is in her mind that this is her pathway to mental stability. A 45?year old is likely to be tough to influence,. Your words of concern might make her question her activities, but don’t count on it. People are their own worst enemies in my experience .

@dannyc Why do you say the drug companies can stop the madness?

I grew up with an alcoholic mother so I know where you’re coming from and I have a few practical suggestions.

Find an Alanon group and start going regularly. you can also look for any ACOA groups in your area (Adult Children of Alcoholics). I would recommend the second over the first but there aren’t as many of them. You need to educate yourself in what you’re dealing with and how it has affected you.

(Naranon focuses more on users of narcotics and hardcore drugs. Pill addicts are different) Besides the best definition I ever heard of Valium and other benzos was: “basically they’re powdered alcohol” very accurate observation.

You’re dealing with a disease which is accompanied by massive denial. And it’s easier for pill addicts to deny the problem because it’s legally prescribed. I think your best chance lies in trying to speak with your father.

He also has quite a bitnof denial going on but presumably he is sober so his brain isn’t polluted with chemicals and booze so he can still reason. Plus, there was someone else in his exact same shoes at one time, namely President Gerald Ford and it was one of their adult children who first got him to see the light.

and booze and benzos (Valium) was precisely the problem for his wife also and he just didn’t see it at first. So if a former US prez could miss the signals, then your dad is in good company and needn’t feel shame over it.

I would suggest that you get a copy of Betty Ford’s book before trying to speak to your dad about your mom’s problem. Betty goes into significant detail about how her family lovingly plowed through her denial and persuaded her to go into inpatient treatment. They also sought the guidance of a trained professional interventionist who gave them the road map for how to conduct an intervention.

But that’s not a service available ONLY to bigwigs, fortunately. it’s available to anyone with serious concerns about a loved ones addiction. But without the active participation of your dad, you’ll have a difficult or impossible task.

Just ask him to please read the book with an open mind. That’s about all you can ask for and if he agrees to, I think it would be very unlikely he would finish it and fail to see the truth right in front of his eye. But let him do his own thinking and if he’s a reasonable person, he will get the point but he may need some time to come to his own conclusions. After he knows what to look for, he will doubtless want to observe her more closely and make up his own mind.

You can pick-up the book for cheap on Amazon. it’s an older book but the basic dynamics of addiction hasn’t changed much and your moms story is a direct parallel to Betty Ford, minus the president part.

I wish you the best. it’s not an easy situation. Feel free to pm me if you want.

Sorry, I forgot include the link. it’s her first book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038523502X/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0Z4BPBTC0PPJGRRM2D7A&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

It’s too dangerous to stop at once but if you open up and express your love and fear maybe dad could hold her pills.

Replace all or most of her tablets with placebos. It should psychologically work, act as concerned as before and she’ll believe she’s taking normal pills.

@Luiveton

You’re kidding, right? But I have a hunch you aren’t.

Any type of benzo is an extremely tricky medication to withdraw from and really needs medical management.

It’s actually LESS dangerous to withdraw from Heroin. One can go cold turkey from Heroin or even crack (no guarantee on long term success) without placing oneself in danger.

There are documented cases of people being thrown into acute psychosis from abrupt benzo withdrawal. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research.

In addition to being downright dangerous, I guarantee you that SHE WILL DEFINITELY notice. So then she’ll just use more booze to get the same effect. It’s not only just the pills. She is cross-addicted. That’s why they call benzos “powdered alcohol”.

Addiction is a complex issue of both physical and mental dependence. Addiction to prescription meds is not just a liking for taking pills so one pill is as good as any other, (the placebo effect) She is using the pills and the booze to blot out reality. With addiction like this, there is no such thing as a placebo effect.

Altho your advice is well meaning, please check your facts before suggesting potentially dangerous “solutions” which will only serve to make the entire situation worse.

In addition, lying to addicts to try to “cure” them is about the worst thing one can do. Addicts live in a world of lies and denial to themselves and others in order to maintain their supply.

The only hope they have for sobriety is learning to live a life of radical self honesty. That is the cornerstone of EVERY successful treatment program whether it’s twelve-step or something else.

If their family and others who claim to love them are lying and deceiving them (that’s basically what substituting placebos is) then everything is totally bass-ackwards

There’s an old saying “if the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch”

The sober people in the family need to act like it and lying and deception is the total opposite of sobriety.

Addiction is called a family disease because it affects every single person in that family. The only way to fight it is with continuing and ongoing truth and integrity for everybody.

THAT is what will keep an addict living in sobriety and avoid relapse. It’s impossible to deceive an addict into sobriety. They have to be an active and knowing participant in the process.

@Buttonstc Rapid benzo withdrawal can also cause seizures I understand because they affect your synapses according to my husband’s neurologist. My husband has epilepsy and takes Xanax to sleep (sleep disorder), and doc said he can never be without them for fear of another seizure which could cause death.

You are correct. They are nothing to mess around with if someone doesn’t have the initials MD after their name.

In am really sorry to hear that. I think your mum need some help from some groups, only you can’t stop her crazy actions.

First of all, it’s perfectly normal for you to be concerned, you’re a loved one. When it comes to an addiction in the family, loved ones can sometimes suffer more than the person that’s addicted. She is likely suffering from a mental disorder such as depression, bipolar, anxiety, borderline personality, past traumatic events, etc. She used the benzos to self medicate the condition. This isn’t always the case, however. If she were to get in trouble with the law, you could have the court order her to enroll into a drug treatment program. Other than that, you could talk to her and ask her to enroll in a drug treatment program on her own. When she enrolls, she will undergo a detox from benzos and then will begin various therapies that will teach her to control her thought processes, fight cravings for benzos, control stresses, etc. Here are a few of the best drug treatment programs out there. They will accept most insurances and help your mom arrive at treatment if she needs help making travel arrangements. Best of luck to you both!

http://www.twinlakesrecoverycenter.com
http://www.mountainlaurelrecoverycenter.com
http://www.ranchatdovetree.com