Hey guys,
A little background about myself; two years ago I got semi-addicted to phenibut. I would take 500-1,000mg about twice a week on and off. The first time I took it, it produced extreme euphoria and had a profound anxyolitic and sociable effect on me. All of the positives eventually completely wore off. I abstained for months at a time and it just simply never worked again. I never got any withdrawal symptoms other than transient anxiety the next day that went away fairly quickly.
A year later I got addicted to benzos. About 1-2mg Xanax or 5-10mg Valium a day for a few months. I quit cold turkey and got severe withdrawal symptoms. I eventually got some help and tapered off successfully. To help with sleep, I started taking Valium again in November of 2008 and have been on 5mg daily ever since.
So to re-iterate, my GABA receptors have been on quite a roller coaster ride for the past few years.
With regards to my general anxiety levels, I put some serious effort into improving myself in this area and managed to rid myself completely of social anxiety through progressive desensitization. Also, some voodoo magic effect randomly occurred where I one day just sort of matured and stopped caring about what other people thought about me. Life was starting to get really good.
Now cue to last Saturday (3 days ago). Out of the blue I decided to take 1,000mg of Phenibut again before going out with some friends just for fun. I figured since I had not taken it in over 2 years it might have a revitalized effect on me. I took it at 3PM and it started kicking in at 5PM. Nothing amazing. Just a bit of a fun disinhibition. I decided that that was not enough so I popped 15mg Valium on top of that. Things suddenly started to get real fun and I felt like I was very drunk. My cognitive abilities got fuzzy but I was still very much in control of myself.
At about 9PM the phenibut started to wear off all of a sudden. I was enjoying dinner with friends when out of the blue my heart just started pounding and I noticed I was starting to get tremors. I started to panic a little bit but I kept my cool and made it through the rest of the evening OK.
The next day it got even worse. I woke up with my chest pounding, tremors all over my body, short of breath and in a state of mild panic. To make things worse I had a date that evening!
I told myself that it will go away and decided not to cancel my date. Huge mistake. We went out to dinner and I was acting extremely bizarre. I knew it. She knew it. It was the big elephant in the room but she, being the sweet girl that she is, tried to pretend like everything was OK. I couldn't pick anything up with my chop-sticks because my hands were shaking. My voice was trembling whenever I spoke and I had trouble keeping eye contact with her. It was extremely awkward and at that moment I just wanted to make up some excuse like I didn't get any sleep and drank too much coffee or something but that probably would have made it worse. What was I gonna do? Try to explain that my GABA-B receptors were temporarily fried and I had too much pesky catecholamines and glutamate flooding my sympathetic nervous system? Of course not. All I could think at the time was "shit... this is NOT me... this is NOT me.."
Anyway, the reason I am posting this is because it is now day 3 and the symptoms keep getting worse. I feel like such an asshole and I'm really ashamed of myself for taking the phenibut. I had a gut instinct that I should never have touched the stuff again.
My question is why this would happen after one dose- and when I can expect to get better. I know this will eventually go away but I am seriously freaking the F out right now. It's like I am back to square one with all this BS anxiety and shyness nonsense.
Like others have reported, benzos are doing nothing to help the problem. I have at my disposal some Zyprexa (atypical antipsychotic) and as nasty as that drug is, I think taking it tonight will help me chill out for a bit while things get back to normal.
If anyone has some insight or words of encouragement.... nothing could help me more than that at the moment. Imminst has been here the whole time throughout my journey and I can't thank you guys enough.