[...], this is one of the most astounding things I have ever read in my life. To a very limited extent it is for me—as you know, from our “Klonopin Klub” days—a “been-there-done-that” kind of thing, but I could never have put it into words the way you’ve done. I read part of your story aloud to my husband, who sometimes tells me I am a writer, but I saw the expression on his face, and said, “She outwrote me, didn’t she?” He nodded. You really did, and you can be sure I’m glad—especially if your account can bring home to others at least some part of the truth behind this experience in all its horrifying permutations (but also potential for victories—let me not omit that part). I simply could never articulate it as you’ve done—and, believe me, I’ve tried.
I frankly don’t see much of a qualitative difference between coming through an ordeal like yours and surviving a near-lethal storm while scaling Everest. Your account invokes the mountaineering metaphor, which I sometimes use as well—recognizing, of course, the essential difference: that climbing a mountain is generally a volitional act, undertaken in anticipation of, at the very least, the glorious vistas that will repay the effort and pain involved in a challenging climb.
The summer after my father died, in 2021, my husband and I—having both reached our early sixties—climbed Mt. Washington on what would have been my dad’s hundredth birthday. Washington was perhaps his favorite place on earth, and, once you’re up there gazing at the splendor laid out below and all around you, it’s easy to see why. But my own run-in with clonazepam in 2012, mercifully brief though it was, forever changed my perception of just about everything, such that I can never do anything like that again without being vividly aware of how utterly impossible it would be if a benzodiazepine still had its savage hooks in me. All the way back down from the summit, my knees were screaming in agony—but so what? That was nothing to lying in bed, during my hell-summer of 2012, shaking uncontrollably, convulsed with terror, my joints in so much clonazepam-induced pain that the mere touch of the bedclothes was too much for them.
Throughout that period of benzo-horror, my father called me up every single night to see how I was. It must have been terrible for him to feel that he was powerless to do anything beyond this to help me. I don’t know whether I ever succeeded in conveying to him how much those phone calls meant, that they were a kind of support beyond price, the absolute best thing those who loved me could do: just to say, “Here I am, and I’m not going anywhere.” He, my husband, my sister, they were my tangible lifeline. Most of my friends didn’t get it; some actually thought I had gone certifiably crazy, were unable to fathom how a medically prescribed drug could have so transformed me. Some backed away, and I could see their fear, their confusion; I could actually forgive it, since since even I sometimes thought I had truly lost my mind. But my father, my husband, my sister—they didn’t back away. Nor did my intangible lifeline, the one that was Benzobuddies.
Like you, [...], I was admonished by a prescribing physician to “Pay no attention to the Internet.” Really? Seriously, Dr. Disinformation? The doctors never once had any part in this whole episode that wasn’t at best useless, and at worst destructive. In retrospect it feels almost like a conspiracy, although I know it’s more complicated than that. But Benzobuddies was for me part of a multi-pronged rescue operation, for which I was, and remain, inexpressibly grateful.
Anyhow, [...], you rock. And may you rock on and on. By the way, I know your daughter has a challenge to contend with, but I believe her having you as an model for resilience and perseverance will surely help her to confront it successfully.
Congratulations! And warm wishes to you and yours for 2023 and beyond -
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