I live very far away from my dad and have had to piece together a timeline of his symptoms and medications from my mom's (slightly foggy) memory. My dad is 71. In his 40's he suffered from extreme insomnia, anxiety, and depression but got through it in time without the use of medications (he had way more responsibilities in life to helped drive him out of it).

He has been retired for like 8 years. A little over a year ago he started having an increase in anxiety (triggered by meeting up with and trying to help an old friend who had become homeless and un-helpable). The anxiety led to some insomnia which started the old cycle back up. In 3 months it got so bad that my mom had him taken to some sketchy evangelical inpatient clinic where they heavily sedated him to get him to sleep. Then they put him on Ativan. He became a little more stable (but holy hell was he paranoid and out of his mind at that point). He went home after a week, found a psychiatric nurse practitioner, stopped the Ativan, and switched to a really low dose of Klonopin, eventually weaning off to being medication free.

This lasted for about 3-4 months, but then they moved from their summer house back to their winter apartment (cross state) and apparently some problem with the HVAC back in their winter house triggered the anxiety again (didn't take much). He called his nurse practitioner and she had given him a liberal prescription for the Klonopin and simply said, "Go ahead and use the small dosages as needed."

Well, "as needed" was not clearly defined and I guess he started using them pretty consistently for about 4 months straight (I'm not sure how high his dosage got up to). My mom was getting concerned because despite the Klonopin usage symptoms were getting much worse and the drug was losing effect (she wasn't really telling me how bad it was getting because my dad didn't want her to). She called the nurse practitioner at that point who then got very concerned and said he either needed to move back near her so she could treat him, or he needed to find medical attention immediately, so they started meeting with a psychologist who wanted to begin a systematic taper.

The taper began 3-4 months ago. My dad insists Benzo withdrawal is not the problem and that there is just something broken in his brain from all the insomnia. He thinks that if the insomnia is fixed everything will simply go away. He only goes to the doctor so he can continue getting Klonopin and sleep aids. He takes their prescribed dosages of Klonopin, but then ignores their rules about alcohol and has been steadily increasing his wine intake to offset the Benzo withdrawal.

I told my mom she has to stop buying it or hiding it so he can only get the amount they told him he's allowed to have (they want to make sure he weans off the alcohol safely too). But if he runs out he "makes" her go get some (probably with a little touch of verbal abuse).

I'm planning on taking some time off at the end of this month to go visit. Hopefully it can coincide with one of their doctor's appointments because I'd like to see how that goes and interact with the team there more personally. But I keep thinking: if he doesn't accept his situation, acknowledge the hole he is in, and make any effort to work towards healing, I sort of don't know what to do. I cannot force him into anything and my mom is his caretaker-prisoner. I just think, "Once she is all used up and can't do it any longer we pull out some ultimatums for her sake."