benzodiazepine taper

not an optimist.

[benzo-taper-blog]

0mg

I’ve been at 0mg clonazepam for almost a week.  My blood pressure feels very high. Nostrils feel wired open like halves of a steel trap. Feel like I am suffocating. When did I become this anxious little mouse? I gave some of these sensations names: the bunny quivers in my chest and the bat locks up my throat. Talking to them is a bit helpful. But I would like to see them leave. It’s been over 60 days since this started.  15 May — and today is 23 July. You can make an m-dash with ALT+Shift+hyphen.  But don’t misuse it like I do.

[ewasie]

[benzo-taper-blog]

14 June 2016 (today) .5mg clonazepam Smoking Photos I will regret posting when Google/employers connect the dots.

[benzo-taper-blog]

Yesterday: walls bouncing off of me

14 June 2016 I went down .25mg clonazepam  (33% of current dose) yesterday after a week at .75mg.  Too fast I think, but I was frustrated, blistering with irritation over the four previous days spent nauseous, exhausted, bedridden, self-hating. Last night I was productive.  Project deadline.  But it spiraled. Pressure in my heart and muscles (internal pushing outward, to brace against the deadline’s concrete wall), social, munchies, handstands, cigarettes, insomnia in spite of 200mg trazodone 100mg gabapentin. It was better than the helpless, pathetic lassitude of the rebound withdrawal from the last, what would you call it, down-step, but at 2:30am I took the missing .25. Today I feel the same.  Deadlines upon deadlines and when I feel productive I feel I have to seize it.  But there is always a cost to pushing too hard. I am trying again today for .25mg clonazepam 2x/day. And I hate calling these drugs by their brand names, the cutesy memorable marketing words that stand for so much of what is wrong with the promulgation of prescriptions of these pills.

[withdraw-into-positivity]

Benzo Withdrawal Lies

Benzo Lie # 1. There is no hope.   This one is nasty. Do not believe this lie. It can take you down fast. It is not true, even though it feels very true. For me, this hopelessness was a result of benzo created chemical imbalances coloring my thinking into a perceived end of time. I could not imagine time extending for more than 3 months into the future. There was no way I could think of any possible outcome at all – not even a negative one, and all of my imagined outcomes of less than 3 months were negative. If you cannot imagine a positive future for yourself, know you are under the trance of lie # 1.  Benzo Lie # 2. My Life is ruined.   Do not believe this lie. You are in a temporary state of withdrawal. It is an awful state, but it is temporary and you will move out of it and have a life that you can mold into what you had before or one that is better than before. When you can think clearly, you are able to fashion a life that is better than what happened to you when you were tranquilized and your life fell apart as a result of being drugged. When you are out of withdrawals and free from the effects of their symptoms, you will be in a better position to solve problems instead of having them take you down.  Benzo Lie # 3. These benzo effects will last forever.  I see this lie as being conditional.  The lie part is that if you are making decisions that will move yourself toward health and away from benzos, it will not last forever. There WILL be an end to the benzo-related troubles. As you get further away from benzos and their effects, the less the benzos will act on you.  If you make benzo related decisions that move yourself away from natural health and into benzo use, you may end up in a never ending loop of having side effects being confused as diseases, and having benzo symptoms being medicated with more benzos, and in turn, more and more drug and symptom interactions and more and more suffering.  Benzo Lie # 4. I will never be happy again  This lie broke my heart. I let this lie rob me of my dreams. I am living proof that you can totally believe this lie and live to prove it wrong. I never thought I could ever be happy ever again. I’m not only happy now, but happier than I was before I started on benzos. I feel like I have just vanquished a dragon, and there is a great deal of satisfaction in that. Now, I am happy. I am happy just because I exist and because life is available to me. There is such joy in coming back from the edge and being able to function again.

[benzo-taper-blog]

I still believe the lies.  (Except #3, but 3-6 months seems like it might as well be forever, which I guess is the same thing.) I thought about it last night and realized I would get my left arm amputated if it meant I could be mentally stable – not just during/after benzo withdrawal, but in exchange for an existential sea change. For benzo withdrawal I’d give up a couple of left-hand fingers.  Six-week coma would be fine, too.

[benzo-taper-blog]

Take much slower and deeper breaths, making sure that you get air deep down into the lungs instead of just at the top of the chest. "As you do this you will find that your arms and hands relax so that the whites of your knuckles no longer show as you grip the supermarket trolley. "Do not move on until you feel the tension flowing out of your hands. With each deep breath you should feel your tension flowing away and, as it does, your symptoms will lessen or disappear.

Peter Tyrer, How to Stop Taking Tranquillisers, Sheldon Press, London 1986, p.63.

[benzo-taper-blog]

Nate told me to start a blog

backstory: 2004-present: depression.  incessant, inexorable, existential, chronic, but mostly have my shit together. february 2015-present: anxiety. may 2015: lorazepam. september 2015: clonazepam. then more clonazepam. may 2016-present: self-initiated, medically supervised taper and i hate everything and all i do is cry and sleep and smoke except when i’m faking it for the people who are fed up with my doing the former.