All my young life I never took so much as an aspirin. After I lost my baby in 1978, I was put on a strong dose of Valium. Ever since I have been taking benzodiazapines. I didn't realize how addicting they are until now. I was changed over to Ativan and later to Clonazepam. One doctor told me I may have to take it the rest of my life. I have high blood pressure and am past my 50s. My poor husband doesn't understand what I am going through although he tries to help me as much as possible. We have been married for 37 years. Now I have a doctor at a mental health center trying to reduce my dosage. I didn't ask her to reduce it, but she's doing it anyway. Last week I went through HELL, I slept a total of maybe 2 or 3 hours last week. I suffered horribly, shakes, sweating, fever, hallucinations, hearing things, loud noises. It was the most horrible thing I've been through in my whole life. I was hoping to possibly live a long and happy life but now I'm not so sure. I have a wonderful marriage and I'm afraid this whole thing will ruin my happy marriage. I am 60 years old now and was doing fine on the dosage she had me on and then BAM she just decided to start decreasing my dosage. I am SO FRIGHTENED. Last week while going through the withdrawals, I was afraid of having a heart attack or stroke, since I have high blood pressure. I also have PTSD. I can't go through this again as I'm afraid I will die. I am heartbroken to find out that this medicine is so addicting. Like I said before, as a teen and young adult, I never drank, smoked did any kind of drugs, now I'm addicted to something as awful as heroine. I'm crying while typing this as I never saw my life ending up this way. All I can hope is that when I talk to my doctor again she will put me back on my original dose. I never had any bad side effects while taking it and it was the only thing that was keeping my life on an even keel. I pray to God he can help me, because that's all I have now. My poor husband doesn't understand what I'm going through and in this respect I feel SO LONELY.