Chest Pain and Rage

Hi everyone:

 

I started to have really high bp and chest pain recently.  I am in the lower realms of a long taper of klonopin.  I was pretty well last week before my last cut.  I have benzo rage really bad and my girlfriend is really scared.  I have been punching walls and have been threatening her.  I hope she doesn't commit me.  I can't believe that these so called doctors are permitted to do this to people.  They have to know of the dangers of benzodiazepines and other psychiatric drugs.  I am in torment and don't know what to do about it.  I recently started smoking again and that has to stop too because I have COPD.  Any support would be most welcome.

 

Kendall

I know how very hard the rage is to control, but it is really important that you find a way before the benzos ruin your relationships and life even more than they have already done. I have most definitely been there, and hate myself for how I have acted. Worst part is that I can't take it back. Eventually I had to control the rage in two ways: 1) I had to learn to try and stop myself when I started to boil over and 2) I used a highly sedative antipsychotic drug to keep me calm when things were getting crazy.  It is hard to do, but it is important to not wreck everything you have in life right now with this horrible benzo w/d symptom. I resorted to mindful meditation as well, and taught myself to just clam up and walk away when I felt a bout of rage coming on. Kind of timed myself out. The AP drug also helped a lot in that I felt sedated enough to not go there, but ultimately I had to learn to control this on my own.

I had extreme rage with the benzo that is for me much better now but I still have flares. I have found that it is directly connected to hypersensitivity. Noises, smells, or stressors, like for example, if someone does something that causes me increased trouble or stress, like they make a mess and don't clean it up, that sort of thing are the "triggers" for me.

 

COPD can cause neurocognitive dysfunction which can stack on the neurocognitive problems in benzoland.  I don't know if adjusting oxygenation would ameliorate some symptoms. I feel the rage is directly related to neurotransmitters because of the hypersenstivity/reactivity.

 

Don't know if that makes sense.

 

Anyway I think my husband walks on eggshells around me and I detest feeling I'm the cause of that.