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You Will Be YOU Again! And This Will All Be In The Past. I Promise You.


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This success story is not for me; this is for YOU!  Right off the bat, I need to say, I am normal and happy again and I NEVER thought I would be, and you will be normal too.  I took my last bit of benzo (after a long taper) on October 18, 2016 (13 months ago), but started feeling “pretty good” on a consistent basis after about 6 months after that, starting with plenty of good moments (windows/waves) shortly after my last bit.

 

I haven't been on this site for awhile and the only reason I've been here a handful of times in the past 6 months was to answer an occasional message from someone that graciously helped me through.  Again, I thought I would be hanging on to this site for the rest of my life as I used it as truly a lifeline during the worst times in my life; benzo withdrawal, but I don’t even think about it now.  It’s seriously amazing.  I would read success stories over and over, all day, everyday.  I would disappear at work, into the bathroom stalls and just read and read, because that was the only thing I could do to help try to reassure me that this would end.  It did end, and life is great again!  Seriously great again, and I’m even tempted to say, maybe even better than what I was before this mess.  I used to read about people “being better than before” in success stories and think it was complete BS, but I will give concrete examples of how this is true for me.  So again, I’m writing this for you.  I had no draw whatsoever to come back here, other than to pay it forward and to give you true HOPE; because that was the only thing that I could rely on, was simple hope.  Hope that I would be myself again – and it happened.

 

I want to cover 1) how I got into this mess, 2) a little bit about myself, 3) what I did to get through and recommendations and 4) where I am now.

 

 

1) How I Got Into This Mess

Well, I considered myself a short term user (6 weeks), but as I’ve reflected, I’m not sure if that’s true or not.  It all started in 2005 – I was in my senior year of college.  I partied a lot; I was in a fraternity and that was simply part of the culture.  I had quite the night drinking at another school, and on the hungover drive home the next day, I experienced a full-on panic attack.  I didn’t know what it was, but I basically had to take side roads back home because I was so shaken up.  Long story short, I pretty much instantly developed a phobia to driving on expressways/highways.  It started to really affect my life, so a few months later after graduating, I sought a doctors help and got a prescription to klonopin to strictly use on an as needed basis.  And for 10 years (2005 – 2015), I did exactly that; I never took it on a “regular basis”.  I took .25mg whenever I had a bad hangover, had to drive on the highways, or before presentations at work, that was it.  Though again, reflecting back at the last 2 years, I realize I was probably taking it 1-2 times a week, and I think that was enough to start getting me into trouble.  Basically, the drug enabled me to drive longer distances on highways, enable me to drink a lot on weekends and not suffer the anxiety during the hangover, and “enhanced” my job performance by helping me fight the jitters before big presentations.  And truthfully, I thought nothing of taking such an innocent pill the doctor prescribed (at a lesser dosage and lesser frequency that was on the bottle!)  In January of 2016, I began experiencing what I can best describe as “vibrations” through my body.  My sleep quality also dramatically fell, and I was waking up multiple times a night. I didn’t know what was going on and went and saw many doctors, chiros, etc.  During this time, I very subconsciously was taking .25 one to two times a day to help combat these weird sensations.  Little did I know, that I was feeding the sickness with the very thing that was making me sick.  I started feeling depression for the first time in my life; I’ll never forget it.  I looked out the window one morning before work, and everything was just off and I had zero drive to even start my day.  I took that klonopin everyday for 6 weeks before I realized what was going on after doing some research online trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  The moment the light bulb in my head went off, and I very quickly started to get that helpless feeling that unfortunately I had to live with for almost the entire year in 2016. 

 

2) A Little Bit About Myself

The only reason I want to provide a little more color about who I am, is because I want people reading this to know that this awful drug catches people all walks of life. I had a great upbringing - no abuse, no alcoholism, married parents, etc.  I was a top student in high school, went to a top university, have a career which affords me a comfortable lifestyle, and when this happened, was happily married (still am!) for 4 years with an 18month old, beautiful, perfect son (he’s still perfect!... and I have a 2nd now!).  I had a very strong social life before this mess, so it killed me that the only thing I wanted to do was sit on a website all day reading other people’s benzo journeys, for a whole year.  Point is, I felt like I had a lot to loose, and I almost did.  I fought every waking day to keep what I had; and it was truly a fight.  A fight to save my life; and I won, and you can too.  You have to be strong, but it’s so so so worth it.

 

3) What I Did To Get Through & Recommendations

If you’re reading this, you already know what it feels like.  The best I way I could describe it, is that I fell over the edge of a cliff – the normal me at the top for my entire life, and then falling so quickly into a dark place that I had never seen before, with the top being so far away, that you can’t even see it anymore.  I don’t plan to go into every symptom (I listed those out in my jump post http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=167494.msg2235437#msg2235437), but needless to say, it was awful, but anxiety and depression where significant.  It’s actually crazy to go back and read that post from when I jumped - as said, its sad what all of us have gone through or are going through, but again, I promise there are positives that came from all this (which I will get to).  And if you can imagine, the biggest one is the fact that I know it’s all over and life is a cakewalk after this.  Anyway, here are some things that I did to get through, some I recommend, but some are just what I did and am not necessarily recommending:

 

Keeping the Goal Front and Center – I woke up everyday knowing it would suck and it did.  But I had two goals always front and center.  One was to keep my family.  I read so many stories of partners not sticking around and it’s understandable why.  I could not loose the most important thing to me, which was my wife and son.  With the depression and truly constant suffering you go through, there comes a point where fighting for yourself it hard to do; but fighting for someone else made it more critically important to beat this thing.  So similarly, I also kept my job through the whole ordeal.  I made keeping my job a priority as well, and it was so so hard to be suffering while keeping it up, but I just did it.  In the end, I was fighting to keep my life as I knew it, intact, so that if/when I healed it would all be there waiting for me.  Turned out to be a simply and successful strategy, but words cannot capture the difficulty in doing this, but you must!

 

Keeping Quiet – Within a few minutes of finding out what happened to me, I told my wife, but quite simply its impossible to understand this unless you’ve been through it.  She was understanding at first, but wanted me to get help; though I knew no one could “help” make this go away.  Anyway, frusteration set in pretty quickly and I realized that whenever I was complaining about how hard life had become, I did not get the sympathy I was looking for, and actually it was the opposite.  So I made the decision that this was my fight and not my wife’s; and I stayed quiet about how I felt for the most part.  I debated about telling my boss at work, but I never did and clearly now that I’m healed, I’m grateful I didn’t.  I did tell a few friends and told my parents.  My mom was super supportive, but my dad didn’t really want to talk about it.  Again, totally understandable.  All in all, I think it depends on who the person is you tell.  I question if I would be supportive to a friend or family member if I had not gone through this, I would like to think so, but hard to know.

 

Finding Someone to Talk To – Within days of coming to the realization of what was going on, my wife connected me to her cousin who did counseling and found someone that was at least familiar with addiction and benzos.  This was helpful to to feel like I had someone to talk to face to face.  I went every week for about a year.  Again, that person could not even come close to understanding what I was feeling and it did get frustrating with them trying to help with no real results.  Nonetheless, if you have the means, I would recommend finding an addiction counselor to talk to, just to vent a bit.

 

Long Taper – this was a personal choice to do an extremely slow and long taper, even for coming from a somewhat “low” dose.  I spent a good deal of time learning to titrate.  I used whole milk in a small tubes, and extracted a precise amount, lowering my dose everyday or so.  I’m not sure what would have happened if I did it faster, but I was so worried about getting worse and losing my job, that it sort of had to be like this.  Again, I can’t advise on what to do here, but I felt that the slow taper was right for me in trying to maintain my life.

 

Seeing the Right Chiro – a few months after I jumped, I felt pretty good, but found a chiro that was somewhat familiar with addicition and benzos (not to a large extent, but enough).  I wanted to do whatever I could for that final push to the end of this.  Bottom line is that she knew how the body works.  She suggested that I needed to get my liver operating better and that it had been bogged down by the benzo.  She had me doing apple cider vingegar, lemon, and maple syrup in the morning for a gentle cleanse.  And probiotics, which can play a vital role in mental health.

 

Read Succcess Stories – I found this helpful for getting through my days.  You will get better, but when in withdrawal, you have so much doubt.  It’s important to try to convince yourself of the truth, and the truth is that you will get better and you will heal and you will be normal again!

 

Workout – do what you can to work out.  I know it’s impossible to work out during some of the stages of withdrawal, but I truly believe it helps your brain recover.

 

Windows/Waves – I had a period of a few months of the windows and waves.  It’s incredible how you can flip from one to the other.  I remember crying in happiness the first little window I got (for a few minutes) as a reminder of what normal felt like.  Well over time, I eventually got to a place where I’d have 10 days of pretty good window and 10 days of bad wave.  But JUST like they say, the windows get longer, and the waves get less intense.  Just know the waves will end someday (see vitamins section below… my waves really ended when I started taking B3)

 

Drink Water – this is not something I did, but realized later that the body is really gong through a major detox (along with reparing the damaged brain…. Which it will do!).  Please drink a ton of water everyday, it will help in the long run

 

Don’t fear PTSD – this was one of my last symptoms to go away. I associated places (my backyard, my house, my neighborhood) withdrawal, but as you start to feel consistently good, you will replace those bad memories with good/normal ones again and those feelings you thought would never leave (even after you feel better) will go away for good and you can’t even come close to trying to purposely reproduce those feelings, they are gone.

 

Vitamins – I am going to make a bold statement – I think vitamins to can speed up recovery.  I was adamant about not “derailing” my recovery by taking vitamins or anything for that matter.  But I realized in hindsight how that mindset (which I picked up through reading others opinions on this site) is completely misguided.  The body is trying to repair itself, why not provide it with the tools necessary to do so – good nutrition and vitamins.  My view is that regular nutition you get from food is not enough when the body and brain are doing so much to try to fix itself, so you need vitamins.  So these are vitamins, not herbs.

 

I’m not saying this is the holy grail, but there is a lot of research on B3 (either Niacin or Niacinamide) to help alcohol recovery (just do some Google searches).  I started taking both a few months after my jump, and truly think it spend up my recovery and I wish I had been taking it during my taper as well.  Niacin gives a flush, so it’s hard to take more than 250mg at a time, but I was taking about 1500mg of Niacinamide a day. 

 

I would also suggest looking into some of the work from Andrew Saul on vitamins (http://www.doctoryourself.com), and particularly vitamin C.  Anyway, I really think Niacinamide can be key in helping people recover.  I didn’t take it until after my jump, but I have to say, I would strongly recommend looking into it.

 

I also started looking into the research from Dr. William Walsh (https://www.walshinstitute.org).  Won’t get into details, but basically he attributes any depression or anxiety to nutrient imbalances, and has statistically come of with this using massive blood sample datasets from thousands of patients.

 

KNOW you will get through it – again, easy to say after the fact, but please please please KNOW you will get through it and get yourself back.  You will, as much as you don’t believe it, you will!

 

4)  Where I am today

We took a vacation to Carmel, California about 6 months after my jump, and I knew I was on the path to myself again.  The simple act of enjoying myself on that trip was like being a million miles from where I was in 2016 (in withdrawal) and I knew everything was going to be good again. 

 

Today I have more compassion for people, after having suffered for more than a year.  The withdrawl ordeal really put a damper on the relationship with my wife, but we are closer than ever now in many ways. I feel like I confronted the death of the person I was, and going through an experience like that makes you stronger and simply happier afterwards.  A truly tangible benefit is that I live a much healthier lifestyle.  Also I no longer have fear of driving on highways like I did before all this mess started, and am not reliant on a pill to help with that.  In fact, I drive on highways and give large presenations at work without even thinking about it from a nervousness/anxiety standpoint.  On drinking - I can drink a beer or two and be fine, and that was my goal.  I was super worried I would not feel comfortable drinking again; I just wanted to fit in again with holding a beer, and I can do that again. I’m not yet really used to the drunk/buzzed feeling and I don’t drink the way I used to, but I don’t have the desire to.  Either way, don’t worry about this bc you will be able to partake again.

 

I am such a happy person now and cherish the little moments in life so much.  It’s awesome having real life drama and issues again, because they’re simply normal.  And I must say, they all pale in comparison to dealing with benzo withdrawal, so you become somewhat of a badass with dealing with life.  I have my friends back – I pretty much cut off my social life during withdrawal, because when you’re afraid to sometimes leave the house, its hard to hang out.  Just the simple act of hanging with friends again, is like heaven.  I listen to and enjoy music again; I’m super into music and I hated it while in withdrawal.  In benzo withdrawal, you can’t really feel anything other than fear, anxiety, depression, and just flat out weird, so it’s actually awesome to feel anger, confidence, and love again. 

 

In the middle of the withdrawal, my wife and I got pregnant in June 2016 with our 2nd son, he was born in February 2017, which is right around when I started getting really good windows.  Now he’s 9 months old and actually has a father that can be his father.  My (now) 3 year old, I owe so much to - he was my sunshine through all of this.  I can’t express in words how good it feels to be fully present as a father and husband again, because for a year, the person I am simply wasn’t there.

 

I do want to thank this site for being there, I would have been lost without the success stories and can’t imagine what is was like going through this type of thing before the internet was around, because NO ONE seems to know what this is like (even professionals).  But that’s a whole separate topic.

 

Please do not give up! There are so many times that I thought about giving up (whatever that means?), but it’s all worth it in the end.  You will get through this.  Hold on tight to how great life can be and how great it WILL BE, even though it may be awful (understatement) right now for you. Fight as hard as you can and harder and you will get there. 

 

All my love and all the best,

Root1839

 

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Wow, great success story! My story is almost exactly the same as yours, except I'm still in my taper. I hope to be doing as good as you someday soon! Thanks for stopping by to inspire us~
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Congrats on your success and all the best to you. It's beyond description what this medication does to a person. I cannot wait to have my success like you did. Happy living!
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Thank you so so much for writing this. You don't know how much this helped me today. I am slowly recovering from this horrible process and am learning a lot about my own strength and stamina. I too, was shocked by the severity of what happened to me from a "small" dose. You give me a goal to look towards. Best wishes and enjoy your healthy life!!
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Awesome story. Thank you. I too did not take my benzo daily as prescribed and so I thought it won't hurt me but here I am waiting to be well, reading these stories and hope to write my own some day. Thank you for stopping by and giving me and others much needed hope.
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What an amazing story!! many of the things you write about really resonated with me, in particular the importance of keeping a routine in working and in exercise.. also finding someone to talk to while limiting how much time you spend venting, esp to loved ones.. also how refreshing it is to experience NORMAL stress compared to horrible withdrawal stress :)

 

i wish you lots of luck in your future but it sounds like you don't need it!

 

XOXO

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Thanks for sharing This site is really helpful Anyone who met success taking guidance from benzo buddies community has a duty to post his success journey. Hope you have a great future
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Congratulations...I agree...my recovery was similar to your experience.  Short-term user (11 weeks) and then paid for it the next 8 months. Posted my success story about 1 month ago.  Totally agree with vitamins, supplements, water, exercise and eating "clean."  Doing great now and enjoying life again just like you.

 

For those reading this wonderfully written success story, all of it is TRUE!  You will recover, you will be your "old" self again.  You will enjoy life again.  It just takes X amount of time, with the X being different for everyone (unfortunately).

 

Have hope, keep reading these stories and one day you will write your own too!

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I just printed this story!! Sounds exactly how I want my SS to be written. I am fighting for my family. 4 year old son and 1 year old daughter. Man, they keep me going.
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  • 2 weeks later...
:'(  :'( :'(  i have tears from reading your story going through taper right now with major depression currently and your story is like a window to me THANK YOU! For being so specific it helps alot your such an inspiration and you give me HOPE ! :smitten: no one understands me like YOU (BENZOBUDDIES) love u all  :smitten:
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  • 4 weeks later...
Thank you so very much for your intelligently written success story. It helped me today and I will be reading it again in the future… Thank you for taking the time to write as much as you did, thank you for sharing. Wishing you joy in raising your two babies. XO
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Thank you for Success Story!  Sending many blessings of love and joy for you and your family.  You have given me hope for one more day.  :-*
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  • 5 weeks later...

I just had to say thank you so much! I’m only reading on BB but man I needed to hear your story. It’s been 3 years and 4 months since I stopped talking benzos and I just keep waiting for the end of my nightmare to end.

Thanks again for a wonderful positive story, Ivy

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  • 1 month later...

This story is everything to me. Very, very similar to my own experience.

 

Instead of driving it was flying for work. Anywhere from 2-4 .5 mg of klonopin per a flight. Doc told me not to worry and to take as needed when I started feeling anxious.

 

I’m 6 months out and suffering but hoping to get to where you are.

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Root1839

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your happy ending with us!  It was great that you painted a full picture of your experience to make it somehow more real :)

I am so happy for you and your new lease on life!  Congrats for sticking through and staying strong and keeping an eye on what’s important, I need to do that. I am just starting withdrawal now...

Thank you for giving us all a ray of hope, much needed.

Best wishes,

LR

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  • 2 weeks later...
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