My Detox Diaries, Week 1: In Rehab Waiting For Withdrawal Symptoms

I got addicted to Benzos in 2022, and my first detox attempt in L.A. last year didn't work. So I raised funds to go to Ibiza and braced myself for living through hell.

Hey and first, thanks to all you new paid subscribers who are taking full advantage of my offer/mandate to DM me any time - including those of you who have done so at 2 am and at the more horrifying for me hour of 6 am (one is fun night and one is way too early morning, but I’m here for all of them, just chattier at 2).

Last night at the astoundingly genuine Michael Grynbaum’s book launch at the old Condé Nast cafeteria (which hopefully means nothing to most of you), I reunited with all kinds of magazine world people I haven't seen in ages - from Graydon Carter, who got taller, to clean beautiful sweet Cat Marnell. A highlight was meeting in person and hugging (I was awkwardly hugging everyone - sometimes that happens) the iconic Emily Sundberg, who is way taller than me too, which is fitting because she also has about 150,000,000 times more subscribers here than I do. She is super cool and low-keyer in person than I thought she might be based on the whirlwind of productivity she always is.

And on to today’s piece: when I introduced this series, some of you were understandably concerned, as was I, about asking someone to publish an account of their rehab experiences while going through them. As KL KL correctly pointed out: “Please consider not putting pressure on someone in rehab to produce product.”

I knew the agreement Aubree and I had had from the beginning and I knew that I would never pressure her to produce anything until or unless she wanted to. So we kept in touch throughout her early rehab off and on. Then she wrote me to say that her treatment team decided she was now in a good position to talk about what she’s been going through. And she sent me this, her first weekly diary.

I'm thrilled and so proud of how far Aubree has already come that I almost want to use the words “her journey” to describe it, but I refuse based on long-held editorial standards that also don’t allow me to say Happy Place (do you have phrases like that that you can’t stand? Share them!).

Last thing: Aubree is showing you her diary entries as an ongoing series, just in case any of it is helpful to any of you. So let’s encourage her (and of course, tell me anything you think I'm doing wrong regarding this series) in the comments. And in my DMS, of course!

I love you!

Jane

By Aubree Nichols

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here on AJPT, but the team here didn't want me to publish in real time so I could focus on my treatment, and Jane agreed. I’ve been piecing together memories and my journal entries to share with you, and will have more for you soon. Thanks for being with me on this.

Over the last two years, thanks to an addiction to Benzos that I didn’t realize could happen when my doctor prescribed me Klonopin, my life had become one long, joyless flatline. No playfulness. No motivation. I lost my way.

Last entry, I wrote about how the little orange pill numbed me completely and ruined my life. Now, here is what it was like during my first week trying to detox from it.

In 2022, I took myself to Cedar Sinai ER at 4:30 am after extremely disturbed sleep. In the span of one month, I tried eight different meds, and one of them was more traumatizing to my nervous system then the next. Then I got on prozac because lack of sleep makes people depressed, and that just disconnected me from myself even more.

Day 1

I want to beat Benzos, but I didn't know it would entail eighteen hours of planes, trains and automobiles to get on the road to recovery. I am chasing a Benzo wizard named Manolo (not Blahnik) in Ibiza, Spain, that could supposedly artfully detox me off the many milligrams of Klonopin that I’ve been abusing for 3 years in the name of sleep.

“I was bracing myself for hell.”

“He’s the best with benzos,” promised my friend, Daniel, whose substance use made him somewhat of rehab connoisseur. As a Los Angeleno, I have access to the best of the best Malibu treatment centers, but the pull to a more gentle approach has me on a mission to Ibiza Calm, a substance abuse center nestled in the countryside of the tiny island of Spain, known for its beautiful beaches and epic nightlife.

After experiencing a failed detox attempt last year in a high-end LA-based rehab facility that focused more on spa treatments than getting me clean, knowing I will be in the right place is half the battle.

It’s a strange contradiction—traveling to the global capital of partying to quit the very thing that once fueled my nights.

This was taken during one of my breakdowns over the years. Here's what I wrote with it: “I’m human. I want to normalize the human experience - the one that is not always insta-worthy. ⁣⁣Let’s normalize crying. Just shed the tears you’ve been keeping in. I love you.”

The taxi winds through sun-bleached hills, lemon orchards, and crumbling stone walls until we pull up to a serene white villa that looks more like a boutique yoga retreat than a detox facility. No fluorescent lights, no cold clinical walls—just sunny skies shining down on the staff with calm eyes that had seen it all.

Manolo greets me, tan, wearing sunglasses, and far too relaxed for someone who supposedly specialized in helping people survive drug withdrawal hell. “You’re safe now,” he says with a gentle accent and an assuring nod. Safe feels like a stretch, but for the moment, I was willing to surrender.

I can’t imagine life without my pills, but I can’t go on the way I’ve been living.