29 Months

Jan. 1st was my 29 month mark. Just want to share how I am feeling and what's improving.

 

Today was the first time I felt some relief in my TMJ. 22/29 months my jaw has been taught and not willing to open beyond a certain point. At night I have to wear mouth guard from clenching down so hard. Surely if I didn't my teeth would be destroyed. I've had a few nights where I fell asleep with out it and the next day my jaw and teeth we're hurting. I can't imagine what it would be like if I consistently slept w/o the guard. Today when I woke up I was able to almost open my jaw to it's full capacity. Shortly after waking things returned to the status quo. Willfully this is a sign of things to come.

 

My back/shoulder/scapula tension is still continuously opening. It currently feels to a degree that I have ants running the the surface of my spine and CNS. Not in a bad way. If I had to make a guess at what is causing the sensation I would say the GABA receptors are starting to grow back and every so slightly I can feel them opening and simultaneously the release of tension. It almost feels good in a Vick's Vapor Rub kinda way.

 

Sleep is much better. Still not perfect but I am able to function off of what I get. I average 7 hours give or take a little on most nights. I notice that as my sleep is improving it is having a raise the tide effect.

 

Cognition is slowly improving as well. I don't notice how much better it's gotten until I look at some of things I couldn't do in the past that I am able to now. I am able to watch movies again and follow the story line for the most part. I am able to read again, but sometimes it takes a few re-reads. I've noticed that I am able to retain new information better then old. Maybe there's something that's still healing in the recall memory part of my brain. Sometimes I catch myself having racy loopy thoughts where I miss the first part of someone speaking or something similar. To offset this I walk like a turtle through my home. seriously. I am training my mind to take everything as slow as possible so that it can tell the rest of my nervous system to calm down. I know I am healing because the fact that I can have this type of internal dialogue would not have been present in the past.

 

Motivation has pretty much fully returned. This experience has been very much a push and pull between physical and mental symptoms. for the first 16 months I was in the best shape of my life. One day everything came crashing down and I've spent large amounts of the time since then bedridden. I have taken that time to teach myself new things so I can rebuild my mind confidence so that once my body catches up again my mental and physical will both be good to go. I taught my self the Rubik's cube, I am learning Japanese, I became conversational in Portugues, and I just started a new career path in Cloud Computing. The words are more impressive than the process it took to get there. A lot of days it was just a few words, symbols, and concepts at a time. My thinking process was that if I am going to be distracting and staring at stuff all day, I may as well be looking at things that can help me after wards. I currently feel like an athlete who was injured at the conception of their prime and are eager to get back to their craft.

 

Physically overall I am still lethargic energetically most days. On Dec. 31 I had a huge setback that came out of no where. I was feeling pretty good the days leading up to it, and then upon awakening it felt like I got hit by a car. Even laying down was difficult and hurt. I am starting to notice that when I make major strides in healing, there tends to be a rough patch for a few days before I level up again. Today I am feeling a lot better than I felt the past few days. I think for the most part that, bone aching, Benzo flu feeling has passed. I look forward to being able to exercise, do hot yoga, and just run freely with out being concerned in any way.

 

My throat and digestive symptoms are probably my most severe. On my worst days my stomach still fills with gas, and because my throat is still locked tight, I experience a lot of discomfort. I am still constipated pretty much 24/7. I experimented with a raw food diet for 7 days and I noticed a big improvement. Deep down I know this is something I need to commit to. As disciplined as I have been with this experience, I am struggling with doing a food diet because my daily meal has been part of the little parts of joy that I have scheduled through out my day so that I have something to look forward to and distract myself. At some point during this month I will get back to it.

 

I think it's been mentioned that at 30 months is when most Protractors start to see marked improvement. I can see that being the case for myself, but as I have learned from this experience what is meant to happen will happen when it's supposed to happen.

 

I tend to look at life through a mythological lens. I know I will be able to pick up Thor's hammer again when my character is right.

 

I didn't intend for this to be this long. Willfully it gives people the push to keep going.

 

 

 

I was a little reticent to click on your post but I’m very glad I did because you’ve seen some good improvement.  What impresses me the most is you’re looking for that improvement, I wasn’t very good at that, my mind wouldn’t let me see the good, it was too busy focusing on the bad so kudos to you for not listening to the lies the drug tells us.

I was a little reticent to click on your post but I’m very glad I did because you’ve seen some good improvement.  What impresses me the most is you’re looking for that improvement, I wasn’t very good at that, my mind wouldn’t let me see the good, it was too busy focusing on the bad so kudos to you for not listening to the lies the drug tells us.

 

Thanks for your kind words. 

I’ve thought about making a post regarding what I am about to say but I think it may be triggering so I’ll leave it to the confines of this thread.

This has been undoubtedly been the hardest thing I have ever been through in my life. That said, I’ve always known that I would get better and have done my best focus on positive reinforcements to the best of my ability. I think I am able to do that because of the reason I am about to explain. I used to do some hard drugs that left me with come downs that pretty much are on par with PAWS. Recovery for me has felt like an extended come down. In the past when my come downs were over, all I could do was look back and laugh at how crazy and intense they were. No matter how bad my come downs were, I always knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes it took 2 - 3 days. My mind set is the same here, except it’s 2 -3 years.

In a weird way, I’m glad I had the experience of hard drugs to go through this. It prepped me for how damaging chemicals prescribed or not can be for our body. I truly do feel sorry for people whose only experience is a Benzo and have nothing to reference once the chemical leaves their body.

Thank you for your journey. I'm just starting my journey into the abyss.  I am reading everything I can. I'm struggling to find stabilized dose.  I thought it was 1 mg but I'm consistently struggling so I upped it today. I still feel jittery but don't want to take more than 1.5 mg in a day. For years I just popped a pill when jittery and never gave it a second thought. My doctor never explained the adverse symptoms of the medication to me. It wasn't until I attended a wedding in October and left the pills home then the horror of my dependency became so clear. I decided then I need to quit the med and get my life back. I read everything on BB and now know how naive I was. I always thought I could walk away anytime. Since October I've been trying to find my stabilized dose so I can start a taper.  For weeks I managed at 1 mg then all heck hits and I have to up the dose.  Can't wait until the day I can join the BB s who are free of this evil medication. Any advice will help. Should I switch from Clonazapham to another benzo? Is there anything that can help with jitters and insomnia.  I remember about 10 years ago my doctor telling me to just take the medication because sleep was the most important thing! I never realized drug free sleep was what was most important.