Freedom!!

It's been probably around a year or more since I've posted here, so there may not be anybody left here who knows me.  But I've been waiting to make this post for a very long time.  Two years. 

To give you the background for this post, I'll paste what I wrote on my blog, Sound as a Crystal, about how this all started:

My life has been considerably damaged by some really bad decisions. They all have something in common: they involve the unwitting use and exposure to everyday chemicals. There were two decisions in particular that were devastatingly bad. The first one was the decision to use Xanax to mask the symptoms of chemical sensitivity. The second was the decision to use another benzodiazepine to undo the long-term consequences of taking the Xanax. Bright, I know. I’m going to try to tell my story from the point where things began to spin out of control.

 

In the summer of 2008, I was battling the increasingly severe symptoms of asthma. At the time, I thought I had a lung infection that would just not go away. I now realize that I was experiencing the symptoms of environmental illness. I had become highly sensitized to the chemicals I was coming in contact with on a daily basis.

 

Not realizing the cause of my increasingly poor health, I bought a laundry detergent that was to change my life. Yes, I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s completely accurate. This detergent is advertised as an “eco-friendly” brand, and as I was somewhat aware of the environmental issues surrounding the products we use, I bought it. As soon as I opened the bottle I realized that I might have made a mistake. The fragrance emanating therefrom was overpowering. But I powered on and washed all my family’s clothes in the smelly stuff. Soon, our whole house was enveloped in a chemical cloud, and my lungs were beginning to fill will fluid. By the time I realized that there might be a connection between my symptoms and my detergent, it was too late. I had developed pneumonia.

 

I called my Naturopath and asked for some supplements for pneumonia. The dose of the herb and vitamin combo she recommended was quite large, but I complied thinking it was the only way to kill the infection. I’m a very small person with a very sensitive system. The dose of vitamin A and Zinc that apparently cures the average person poisoned me. I began to feel extremely thirsty all the time. I could not get enough water, ever. I began to urinate enormous amounts of liquid every twenty minutes or less. I got myself in even deeper when I decided to treat the poisoning by trying to sweat it out, speeding up the process of dehydration already begun. After about three days, I felt like I was going to die, so it was off to the hospital. There it was found that I had sweated and peed away all of my electrolytes. I was basically peeing out exactly what I had put in, pure water. I received IV fluids and was sent home.

 

That is when the real mayhem began. I believe now that I had a severe reaction to the sulfites in the IV fluid that I was given in the hospital. As a result, I began to have the first panic attacks I had ever experienced that were not related to some sort of emotional stress. I also stopped sleeping. I panicked and went back to the hospital, where they diagnosed me with anxiety and sent my home with my first benzodiazepine, Ativan. I had enough for about 5 days. I was so relieved to finally be able to sleep and to calm down that I decided to go to my doctor and get some more magic pills. She wanted to give me some Ambien, but I had heard scary things about Ambien, so strangely enough, I asked for Alprazolam (Xanax), not realizing that Ambien (a “non-benzodiazepine” or “z-drug”) and Xanax are both potentially very dangerous drugs. I was prescribed 1 milligram, much more than the paltry .25 mgs of Ativan I had been prescribed at first. One milligram; it seemed like such a small dose. I wouldn’t find out until much later that one mg of Xanax is roughly equivalent to 20 mgs of Valium, one of the original and very much maligned benzodiazepines.

 

Xanax hits you like a Mack truck. As soon as it kicked in, I felt very dizzy and could no longer walk. All I could do was get in the bed and pass out. The next morning I was very tired and weak, but happy; so happy! I couldn’t understand why I’d had any reservations at all about taking sleeping pills! Everything seemed good and calm and mellow. Nothing was wrong. The world suddenly seemed like a much safer and nicer place to be. Unfortunately, this state was not to last very long.

 

My memory here becomes a bit hazy (benzos are amnesic drugs). I believe it was between 3 and 5 days later when I had my first real panic attack, not like those wimpy ones I’d taken the pills for in the first place. This was white-hot terror. It began with a hot flash and ended with me rocking back and forth in utter horror, tears running down my face, finally deciding to take my “sleeping pill” at 5:00 PM because my “condition” had returned and I “needed it”. It follows, of course, that I would need more medication if I was going to have to use the pills for more than just going to sleep. My doctor prescribed two more milligrams to be taken "as needed".

 

As it turned out, the more pills I took, the more I needed. Eventually I was cutting them in half and spreading my daily dose of 3 milligrams throughout the day to avoid inter-dose withdrawal and the dreaded panic attacks. Three weeks after my original dose of Xanax, I realized that the pills were making me very, very ill. For the first time in my life, I felt suicidal. I was terrified. I stopped taking my pills, expecting a few nights of insomnia and then a gradual return to health. That is not what happened. What followed cannot even be imagined by a person who has never experienced it.

 

My memory of the first few weeks after I stopped taking Xanax is very hazy, like the memory of a really bad nightmare. For the first couple of nights I stayed at a friend's house because I knew things were likely to be difficult, and I did not want to subject my three boys to what I knew I had to go through. I threw up all night long. Every morsel of food that I managed to swallow came up within a few minutes of it going down. My skin felt like I had been dipped in a vat of boiling hot oil, like I was being cooked from the inside out. My heart rate was usually between 110 and 140 bpm. I had convulsions, seizures, visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions and severe depersonalization and de-realization (feeling as if I was a different person and that nothing was real). I went 2 weeks without any sleep at all and became very, very suicidal. I had to be watched 24/7. My perception of time and space was distorted. I was angry. I had no positive emotions whatsoever for many, many weeks.

 

Acute withdrawal lasted for about a month. After that, my symptoms were somewhat less severe, though still miserable. I was always in enormous amounts of pain. The pain in my chest was so bad that it felt like I’d broken some ribs. In fact, I became convinced I had done so somehow, so I insisted on getting X-rays, which showed nothing. Due to the fact that my immune system had basically collapsed, the pneumonia I had only partially treated came raging back much worse than it had been before.  I had to take antibiotics.  Killing the infection caused me to cough so hard that I dislocated my ribs repeatedly.

 

Sleep returned gradually, first 2 hours, then 4, then 6 and 7. I had to sleep propped up with many pillows because of chest and shoulder pain, and because my rapid heart rate made me more uncomfortable and anxious when I was flat on my back. Every night I had to tell myself these words “you’ve slept through worse, you can do it.” And most nights it helped.

 

One year after my Xanax cold turkey, I was feeling much better, though not completely back to myself. I was left with lingering breathing problems and severe muscular tension. My ability to handle stress was greatly diminished. But I had survived and I was functioning relatively normally. I was immensely proud of myself for enduring and healing from such a horrific experience, and I thought I was much wiser for it. If somebody had told me at that time that 4 years later I would put another benzodiazepine in my mouth, I would not have believed them.

 

Part 2

 

The little blue death pill is how I came to think of the Xanax that I had taken. Who in their right mind would twice take a death pill? Nobody in their right mind. But people in their wrong mind might.

 

2 years after my near-death experience with Xanax, in the fall of 2010, I began work as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. It was very hard work for someone like me, but I was determined. I pushed and pushed until I had well learned my route and my other duties, ignoring all the signs that the job might be too much for me. I pushed through a brutal case of bronchitis worsened by ink fumes, numerous sleepless nights, and despite my misgivings about the newspaper ink coating my hands black, pesticide drift blowing into the open windows of my delivery vehicle, and the extreme stress of working for a sociopathic postmaster.

 

By Summer, I had reached the end of my tether. Stress induced insomnia had caused me to go to work zombie-tired many times. One time in particular there were consequences. I made a mistake which is considered serious by the postal service. I failed to shake a mailbag to check for any packages that might have escaped my notice, and thus missed an important piece of mail, an express package. For this, I was to be disciplined. This was my wake-up call. It was time to quit and re-group, and fortunately for me, that was an option I had which would not cause my financial ruin.

 

I am fully convinced now that my time at the Postal Service contributed in large measure to a significant decline in my health. Although I have always been aware that I am highly sensitive to the smell of newspaper ink, I did not know until recently that it contains Bisphenal-A, or BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor. An endocrine disruptor is a chemical that can mimic our own hormones, and thus cause illness associated with hormonal imbalance.

 

By the fall of 2010, I was experiencing pronounced symptoms of hormonal imbalance, much more severe than I had ever experienced before. By winter, I was so concerned about my symptoms that I felt I must take action. Past experience had taught me that doctors often mean trouble, so I tried to treat myself, with disastrous consequences. My attempts at treating my symptoms drove me into a state of crisis, at which point I decided to once again risk putting my health into the hands of my Naturopath. Her treatments drove me still deeper into crisis. The combination of my already highly sensitized nervous system and the extra stress of almost selling our house sent me into a final tailspin from which I felt I would not be able to recover.

 

I was not sleeping again. For months I had existed on between 2 and 5 hours of sleep per night, when what I really required was nine. After the house selling debacle, I simply stopped sleeping and went into a state of extreme anguish. I hesitate to call it depression because it was way beyond that. It was agony, both mental and physical. I felt I’d been thrown right back into the jaws of the Xanax beast even though I hadn’t touched a pill in 4 years.

 

I have an idea about why this became so unbelievably severe. I once read the story of a man who had been through a very difficult benzodiazepine detox. Years later he decided to undergo intravenous vitamin C therapy, and during the therapy, the very same withdrawal symptoms he had experienced years before during his detox returned upon him. I surmise that the detoxification process that the vitamin C therapy initiated liberated drug residue stored in his tissues. This is simply a hypothesis of mine, but if true, it would certainly explain why I felt three years after taking Xanax that I had been thrown back into the deep pit of suffering I thought I had forever escaped. All of the treatments I had attempted in an effort to fix my hormonal imbalance were initiating a massive detoxification process which was simply too much for me to handle all at once.

 

I eventually came to the point where I was in so much mental and physical agony from my exhaustion that I was beginning to have those suicidal thoughts again. This time I’m sure I would not have acted upon them. But what I was feeling was so intolerable that I eventually allowed a family member to take me to the hospital where I was admitted to a locked psychiatric ward. This is very difficult for me to tell. As I sit here typing, the tears are welling up for so many reasons: Pride, shame, trauma. It is not okay in our culture to lose control. The psych ward….oh so many negative connotations. I don’t have to explain. You already know. "I’m not one of those people,” I want to say, "I’m different. I didn’t really belong in that hospital. I’m not crazy, I just had insomnia.” But I’m not going to say those things. Every person I met in that hospital was a person like me. They were people overwhelmed, bodies overwhelmed by our toxic world.

 

The only thing friendly about a psych ward are the other patients. The system itself is harsh and unbending, and you don’t get out unless you comply. I begged to be given anything other than benzodiazepines. In spite of that, on my first night I was handed a little green and white pill with a name that ended in “pam”. I knew what that meant. It was a benzo. I asked the med nurse if it was, indeed, a benzodiazepine, and she confirmed that, yes, it was. I told her that I had specifically asked the man who admitted me to relay to my doctor that I would not be taking any benzodiazepines. Was there anything else? Anything that would help me sleep without causing a brutal addiction? No? Why not? I can’t take that pill!

 

But take it I did. I was approaching sleep psychosis. I needed to sleep. I had a deadly fear of going one more night without. So down the hatch it went and I went out like a light on the nasty plastic mattress. And woke at two in the morning. Wide awake. So down to the front desk I went to ask for another pill, and down it went too. In the morning, I felt groggy and sick, but once that feeling wore off, I felt great! It was like the first time I took Xanax, everything was roses! I was in a locked psychiatric ward, but I was happy. I loved all my fellow patients, I loved the nice mental-wellness classes we had to attend. I was finally going to get better.

 

The only problem was that little green and white pill. That had to go. I was not going to fall for that again, no way! I was too smart for that. And thus began a harrowing journey through the nightmare-land of psychiatric drugging. I tried a different pill almost every day, and by the time I was released from the hospital, I felt like I had been through a meat grinder. And I was on Temazepam. Every medication given to me had made me incredibly ill, one of them dangerously so. Every one of them except for the big T.

 

Part 3

 

I knew I had to taper, that much I had learned from my experience with Xanax. I had taken Xanax for a measly 3 weeks, and quitting it cold turkey cost me over a year of illness. I perceived that it had almost cost me my life. Benzos have very few side effects when compared to other psychiatric drugs, but once one of them gets its hooks in you, you cannot just quit.

 

I was reeling from the chemical merry-go-round I had experienced in the hospital. I felt like a person with Autism. I had to protect myself from light, sound, smells and anything that might cause any kind of emotional stress. Some days I would regularly hide my head under a blanket to avoid stimulation. Even in the car.

 

I had a plan. Even in my brain-mashed state, I was capable of planning. I decided that I would allow myself to sleep on the 30 mgs of Temazepam for about a week, and then I was going to find a way to taper off of it. It did not even enter my mind that I should stay on, and my doctor agreed. Unbelievable! I had a doctor who understood how bad benzos are! There was only one problem: he did not understand how much damage a fast taper could do. He wanted me off, NOW. He gave me two months and a taper plan that would have nearly killed me. My first dosage cut on his plan caused a cascade of horrific symptoms from which it would take me months to recover.

 

Fortunately, I found a prescribing nurse at the mental health clinic I had been referred to by the hospital who did not want to see me descend into emotional chaos again and was willing to be my prescriber for a slower taper. And so began a very long process. My original plan involved a 6 to 8 month taper. It soon became abundantly clear that if I was going to taper at my body’s own pace, I would not be done in 8 months, or a year, or even 18 months. This taper has been like one of those bad dreams where you’re trying to run away from something dangerous, but you feel like you’re moving through a vat of pudding. Or having to stay very still and quiet to avoid danger when all you want to do is run like a mad woman.

 

The beginning of my taper, two years ago, was horrific. The first few unwisely large cuts had made me incredibly ill. I always felt like I had swallowed battery acid. I was on fire from my mouth all the way to my stomach. I was not sleeping again. I was in all sorts of mental and physical agony. That began to change after I wisely took some advice I received on a withdrawal support forum and spread my dose out a little. I also slowed my pace, holding my dose whenever the cuts became too difficult to handle. I gradually began to become marginally functional.  As I got lower and lower in dose, I began to feel more and more stable.

 

Since April 14, 2014 I have been free of all medication.  I am, as I've always told myself, getting better and better.  The nightmare is over.

At the beginning of this taper I was in a terrible way.  My body was as weak as it's ever been in my life.  I was in more pain than I'd believed it was possible to feel.  I started from a place of weakness.  Even so, I've ended in a place of strength. 

I am now fully functional.  I go everywhere, do nearly everything I could not do before.  I cried so many tears of joy today.  I feel so free.  I feel like I've been imprisoned and the jailer finally unlocked the door for me and let me out into the sunshine to freedom.

So I want to share with you how I coped during my taper and why I feel that I am almost healed even though my last dose was only just Sunday night. 

*I prayed a lot.

* I changed my thoughts.  I told myself that every day, in every way, I was getting better and better even on days when it felt like I was dying.  I used that affirmation like a chant to calm my mind and body when I felt panicky.  After two weeks of doing that, there was a huge shift in my mind and body.  I wasn't just saying it anymore, I truly believed it. 

*I read success stories like crazy.  I told myself all the time that I would be just like the most successful taperers I'd read about. 

*I used reflexology, acupressure, deep breathing, Jin Shin Jyutsu, stretching, and walking as ways of calming my mind and making my body more comfortable.

*I read Hope and Help for Your Nerves by Claire Weekes.  That was life changing.

*I took large amounts of Magnesium and Vitamin C.

*I gradually moved towards a Paleo type diet.  I have not eaten sugar in the entire two years I've tapered.

*I drank lots of water.

*I did whatever I had to do to get sleep: moving into my own room, white noise in the form of my air purifier fan, keeping to a relaxing bedtime routine, avoiding stress at bedtime, etc.

*I laughed a lot. 

*I journaled.  Seriously, this is a very, very big deal.  I don't think I could have handled it without that.  I focused most of my entries on gratitude.  Even if I used it to unload garbage, I always tried to bring it around to the positive by the end.

*I started a blog.  That has been very healing.

*I loved on my family a lot.  I was never so appreciative of them. 

*I pushed myself to do things that felt scary and uncomfortable like going to parties and camping.  Nobody ever knew how terribly challenging those things were for me, but I'm so glad I did not isolate myself in my little cocoon. 

Okay, so there you have it.  And as far as specific symptoms go, I had nearly all of them.  If you want to know if I had yours, I probably did.  If you're still not sure, just ask.  But I don't want to make a list.  That's behind me now. 

I hope reading this helps someone who's in the thick of it now.  WE DO HEAL!  How many times have I seen that written by others when I was struggling?  But it's true.  Believe it.

Hi sagemom,

I do remember you and thanks for stopping back and letting us know how you are doing.  What a great message for our members to read, you are truly out there living life.  Congratulations on your successes and I wish you continued good healing!

pianogirl 

I remember you, too, Sagemom. Congratulations on being free. You really took full control of this and utilized the considerable tools we have at our disposal. I would imagine it has been life changing for you and you've learned some lifelong skills. Great job on not being a victim. Good for you!

I wish you full and joyous life!

Flip

I remember you Sagemom!! Its great to see you here and Congratulations on your freedom!  Thank you for your inspirational post, it will give hope to members who read it

Wishing for you a happy healthy life

Magrita

Thank you for sharing.  It is stories like yours that give each of us hope that we can leave the drugs behind and move forward.

Blessings!

Domestic Advisor

Your story does give me tremendous hope and your mantra is one to remember... I don't understand though why the date of yesterday in the blue post part of April 14, 2014 as being off all medications. Was the tramazone (spelling) not a benzo? Whatever the case may be, you are fine and you are an inspiration and thank you for that!

I'm glad it gives you hope.  Not sure I understand the question, though, but I'll try to answer.  Yes the Temazepam is a benzo and I took my very last dose of it on Sunday night.  It is the only medication that I was on.

It's just that I can relate to all your symptoms and I didn't have those until I stopped taking ativan completely. It is totally different for all of us, I understand. Enjoy yourself and what you went through and accomplished is incredible, wanted to let you know that again.

I know it's possible that I'm going to have a revving up of w/d some time in the future, but I hope not.  I don't think so, really.  I tapered very, very slowly.  My last dose was .25 mgs which is basically nothing when it comes to Temazepam, which is the mildest benzo there is besides Librium.  I had planned on tapering down to 1/8 ml which would have taken me another week or so, but I've noticed that I sleep so much better when I don't take any.  It's crazy that such a tiny amount would make a difference to sleep, but it does.

Hi Sagemom - you know I'm still here, right? 

Your story is harrowing to say the least. What you went through on your journey to find your self is epic.

Congratulations on your victory over some pretty dark forces that have been unleashed, largely unchecked, into the modern American backdrop.

Your story is so important, and so very timely. One way or another it seems we are bent on poisoning ourselves, from inside or out - it's all really the same, isn't it?

Thank you for coming back to tell your story - it will inspire so many BB's looking for the sun.

Many, many years of health and energy to you.

Love,

M. 

Wow, it's so nice to hear from you M!  Thank you for your kind words.  How are you now?  It's been so long.

I'm still in protracted recovery from w/d, but I'm doing really well - I just realized that I no longer ever get numb chin/face/neck thing which I know we had in common to some degree.

I have been rewarded with too many blessings in this journey to even list.

I hope to write my success story someday, just like you! 

M. 

I remember you too Sagemom. Congratulations!!!!!! How wonderful and you are doing great. Thank you for sharing this.

Love Jackie :smitten:

M., I still get the muscle tightening in my face every now and then, but not often.  It mostly stays in my right jaw.  So I guess I don't consider this my success story yet.  I'm just elated to be off the poison.  Maybe in a few months I'll feel confident enough to post a success story. 

Hi Jackie, I saw some of your blog.  Looks like your off too, that's great! 

Hi Sagemom,

Wonderful story of hope for us still tapering.

I wonder if I might ask if you battled with panic and anxiety. It's my toughest symptom and just wanted to ask if it gets better. I will be done with my taper in 2 months and I am really praying for relief from this awful feeling.

Well done to you!!!

Well done sagemom.

Good job on the taper.

I wish you all the very best and rapid healing. 

Ledee, yes I did battle with panic and anxiety.  The panic attacks were the worst.  I haven't had one in a long time.  I think they mostly went away once I slowed my taper down a lot.  Claire Weekes' book, Hope and Help For Your Nerves helped a lot.  It seems to diffuse the panicky feelings if I just close my eyes and tell myself to "float" or "soften and flow".  I know for some that wouldn't work.  Sometimes the feelings are just too intense.  But for me it helps a lot.

Hi Oscar!  One of the first things I did when I came back here was to see where you were in your taper.  I'm glad to see you're doing well. 

Congratulations,  Sagemom

I too remember you!

Popcornlady

Hi Sagemom!

Congratulations!  I am thrilled to read you are Benzo Free!  Noticing you were not logging in, I have checked every now and then to see if you might have posted where I didn't see it.  I hoped you were doing okay and still tapering.  Now I am so happy you are done with the Benzos!

Love,

Lily

Hello Popcorn Lady and Lilly!  I'm so glad you found me.  And thank you Lilly, for checking on me.  I had to stay away for a while because I found it too tempting to go to the withdrawal support forums and scare myself to death.

Oh yes, I do understand that!  Still smiling today cause you're free!

Love,

Lily

have an idea about why this became so unbelievably severe. I once read the story of a man who had been through a very difficult benzodiazepine detox. Years later he decided to undergo intravenous vitamin C therapy, and during the therapy, the very same withdrawal symptoms he had experienced years before during his detox returned upon him. I surmise that the detoxification process that the vitamin C therapy initiated liberated drug residue stored in his tissues. This is simply a hypothesis of mine, but if true, it would certainly explain why I felt three years after taking Xanax that I had been thrown back into the deep pit of suffering I thought I had forever escaped. All of the treatments I had attempted in an effort to fix my hormonal imbalance were initiating a massive detoxification process which was simply too much for me to handle all at once.

sagemom,

so happy to read your story and that you are now free! i have 2 parts to my benzo story too. i didn't realise when we were corresponding over a year ago -- all of your story since i was so sick and it was all about me

i think the very thing you described also happened with me when i was 7 years benzo free the first time although it wasn't with vitamin C. i had some kind of setback or flare up and then was diagnosed with MS and straight back on klonopin and in large doses. opiates too.

i know! who would do this twice? got to be really crazy!

i absolutely cannot believe all you have been through. and like you - when i was 7 years benzo free the first time, that is when i started being so sensitive to one chemical after another and also after singing and recording in a studio that was really moldy. that sure didn't help. so i most likely had a mold injury on top of benzo injury protracted wd. it's all very complicated but seeing that you're doing so well, gave me a lot of hope tonight when i am still suffering so much!

thank you so much!

pretty