Need help with Benzo

[danc1005]

One option for anxiety is kava. It is the first thing I ever used for anxiety and it was a bit of a revelation at the time, that an herb could have such an effect on my sense of well being. 

The upside is that it is not expensive and is easily available. The downside is that, in order for it to be effective, it takes a bit of preparation, so it's not easy to take on the fly when you are out and about.

To prepare it, you need to mix the powder thoroughly in cold water. Some people put it in a blender for 5 minutes or so. The traditional method is to put it in a cheesecloth, immerse in water, and then squeeze it and work the water in and out of it for several minutes. Hot water destroys it, do you can't just make a tea.

It does not taste too good (better that kratom though), but recently where I live they have opened up some kava "bars" where they make fancy drinks with fruit juice and coconut milk etc, and some of those are quite tasty, though caloric. I just used to extract it in the smallest amount of water possible, then knock it back as fast as possible.

I haven't used it in a while, so I don't know who the good vendors are these days, but it should not be too hard to find info on the net about it.

Heavenly Products is a...well, heavenly vendor who specializes in natural entheogens and other psychoactives, including kava. I'm not sure that he's accepting new customers at the moment but the guy is a lovable eccentric old hippie who also sells his jewelry/crafts on the website and will throw in random ayahuasca vines or yopo beans as decorations/gifts in his packages, so I'm sure if you wrote him an honest email interested in joining up I doubt he'd deny you. In any case, there are plenty of other kava vendors out there but I just really like this guy (mimosa hostilis root bark, powdered mescaline-containing San Pedro/Peruvian Torch cactus and Kratom are also among some of his more interesting products). He stocks many herbs which if you research them may assist similarly to kava with anxiety. Likely not as powerfully as a benzo, but not as dangerously either (although it may be a bit rough on your liver).


As for myself, etizolam was my first benzo and has also been my go-to (I used to be heavily involved with the RC scene). For how easy and cheap it was to get, it was an incredibly effective anxiolytic, euphoriant, sedative, and social lubricant (with which I self-medicated my anxiety before I realized/admitted I had anxiety) -- much more enjoyable and less emotionally dull than alprazolam and about on par with diazepam for me. For a while I was self-medicating my anxiety with that and...less legal herbal remedies, but throughout (having heard of the dangers of benzo addiction and always attempting to be a responsible drug user) never let myself get addicted. I keep it around for emergencies now, again because of the relative ease and cost of obtaining it. But my anxiety is well-controlled and I can easily go one, two, three days or a week without it without any WDs even after taking it for some days in a row (and even take 300mg Bupropion daily while increases seizure risk). Basically, I think the addictiveness of benzodiazepines/thienodiazepines depends a lot more on the person than the drug itself. I personally don't understand how one could become addicted to alprazolam because I don't find the effects enjoyable at all, only useful at times for stopping the effects of other drugs or going to sleep. I could see being addicted to diazepam or etizolam or other similarly euphoric benzos, and I'll admit I had some periods where I caught my dosage steadily increasing. But it was never difficult to take a break or to reduce my dosage, even when my anxiety was at it worst and not properly medicated.

I will agree though that the powders that come from shadier origins these days (rather than the Rx Etilaam/Etizest/etc. tablets that were more available a few years ago) are highly variable and much weaker per weight, making therapeutic usage even through volumetric dosing quite difficult.