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Do you think a bad event can cause the beginning of benzo tolerance/problems?


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Hi Guys

 

Since I feel like I've essentially gone crazy after living years of normal life, I think a LOT about how I ended up here. I had some bad experiences that led up to my benzo issues. I went through a rough breakup of a long relationship (a coworker), and quit citalopram cold turkey at the same time after eight years. I went into extreme depression and then I only felt okay with xanax in my system. I had taken xanax just fine for five years with out being dependent on them, then after the breakup and AD cold turkey I started getting all the classic tolerance withdrawal symptoms. Do you think a traumatic event can trigger the onset of benzo issues, or do you think the timing was just coincidental. Curious to see what others thoughts and experiences are. I know tolerance can happen in weeks, months, or years depending on the person, but I truly wonder if certain events can bring it on?

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Hmmm... I’m going to speculate that additional stress (and a breakup is a biggie) will drive one to feel like one needs more benzodiazepine to cope, but not that it necessarily triggers tolerance.
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Sometimes I wonder how it would be if I hadn't cold turkeyed the Citalopram. I tried several times to get back on it and many other ADs, but my system rejected them and I got worse with each attempt. I guess I won't have to taper an AD now, but I do wonder if benzo withdrawal would be easier.
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Well my pattern is that my Dad died, then my Mom died, I was depressed and given mirtazapine for 6 weeks which made me sick and I CT.  THEN I was bedridden.  But I had started cutting my klonopin and was at about 1/4 mg... so don't know what did what.  Plus was sick and took an antibiotic.

 

So..  ;(

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Sorry to hear those experiences BarbaraAve. I think you worded it perfectly when youe said "what caused what". I tend to obsess about that. I know I definitely hit Xanax dependency, but I wonder if the breakup and AD cold turkey broke my brain in another way. Hope I'm not double broken. Of course my doctor that prescribed benzos for five years said the breakup changed my brain chemistry and that's how I got here.
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I think a lot about trauma and Benzos. For a while I had a theory that benzo withdrawal was triggered by previous PTSD, though lots of people report not having any previous symptoms (though sometimes ptsd does lurk in the background, hidden even to those who it has afflicted). But when people say they don't have it and they have no symptoms, then it's good to take them at their word (we've all had enough of not being believed). Then I wondered if the first few weeks of withdrawal are horrible enough to cause a form of PTSD. I do think there is some link between the trauma and withdrawal, if nothing else in its intensity and longevity.

 

There are people on this board who I respect GREATLY who have a very detailed understanding of the chemistry and biology and psychopharmacology at play. But I know I still don't understand WHY windows turn into waves. It's like saying you get happy because of chemicals flooding your brain, ok, but that's what happens when I get happy, it's not WHY I got happy. Or is it? I'm very dumb. There are still mysteries at work here that we don't understand. Why some people suffer and others don't. Why some people can take it for a week and suffer for months and months and some can take it for years and suffer not at all. Why I have horrific anxiety but can walk around (actually HAVE to walk around), and someone else has zero (chemical) anxiety and is bedridden.

 

The great mystery to me, the one that just doesn't make any sense, is people whose symptoms relapse YEARS later. People say that this is because the gaba system hasn't healed properly yet, but my dumb brain just doesn't understand that. It goes on for years and years doing fine and then it just explodes? Ok, fine, but WHY? Especially because the stresses are often so minimal. We say this stuff is because of Benzos and gaba, but we don't know why. And we don't know what to do about it. And how could we? It's like people are having months long flashbacks because they drank a beer, or took a long plane ride, or nothing at all?

 

What truly bothers me, what I can't possibly understand, is how very few people outside of our world care. Is there another drug that has this prolonged, intense, unpredictable, recurring, multi-symptom, horrific response, and it just not get any attention (hardly) at all in the press? I've been warned about SSRIs, statins, over the counter pain killers, generic drugs (just not any ones specifically), and every illegal drug on the planet. But not the one that has ruined my life. Never. Not once. I've seen a hundred movies about drug addiction and I avoided heroin like the plague after seeing Trainspotting. Anyone seen a movie about benzo withdrawal?

 

Can anyone point to any group that is working to help us in terms of sustained research? Not just spreading awareness, but actually research. I know it's not in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry to do anything (though you would think the suing of KING OPIOD might have given them pause). But there are also competing interests in the industry itself. Also, what about government research? Plenty of studies begin in university labs. I can think of two reason why nothing is being done outside of the considerable efforts of people WITHIN the community.

 

1) The don't believe us.

or

2) They don't care.

 

I also think that doctors have been proscribing this shit for so long that their brains cannot fathom how badly they may have injured their patients, and so they refuse to accept it as a possibility. Imagine how many people a doctor working for 50 years has injured through Benzos? Talk about trauma. What will the mind do to avoid the trauma of knowing that you hurt this many people? And that for many doctors its because they didn't bother to keep up to date with basic information. That's the kind of thing that sends non psychopaths over the edge. 

 

People in my family have cancer and it sucks, but at least no one thinks they're lying -- and the world is moving heaven and earth to treat them and find a cure or better treatments.

 

A friend of mine died of AIDS and it was horrific; now, too late for him, there are ways to get your level down to nothing or close to it (if you have the money). Another friend of mine talks about that lost generation of people who died of AIDS and the horrific trauma it dealt the survivors. People didn't want to help them because they thought they DESERVED it. Maybe that's at work here to.

 

50 years after they started giving this stuff out I had 2 MDs, three psychiatrists, and three therapists all tell me that I could stay on it indefinitely, and that the best way to quit was just to quit. These are good people. Kind people who want to help. It's irreconcilable to me.

 

The pharmaceutical companies don't control everything in the media, there are stories all the time about the risks of various drugs. Hell, they have to list the side effects during every commercial. Has anyone ever heard a commercial for a benzo? Do you need to advertise a drug you know is addictive, and why bother if it will just inform people of the risks? Whenever you read a story it's always soft played, "withdrawal" can last for months or years, but never what that actually means for people day after day. And never any talk about the deaths. I remember when ebola and zika and all that shit was going down. You can bet if we were contagious and bleeding out of our eyes they'd have a cure in a year.

 

What can MOST people take to help their symptoms from benzo withdrawal: nothing. Not a single thing.

 

There are people out there who, knowingly and on an ongoing basis, have done this to us. Who continue to do this to us. There are actual culprits. We have real honest-to-God enemies. They should be dealt with. Not forgiven and forgotten once you heal. I know when people get better they never want to think about this again, but here we are, another generation under the gun.  We are going through this because we were not properly warned by our doctors and by those in a position of authority to do so. And that is another symptom of trauma, the desire to forget. It's completely understandable. Lots of people come back from a war and don't want to talk about the bodies. Bless you all who keep fighting and informing.

 

The only people who care about us are us, and I think we have to figure out what to do about that. I don't know what that means, and right now I'm fighting for my life every day, but I suspect that our pain can at least be managed and mitigated if not outright healed if people actually knew what was going on. And if not us then the next generation. Because there will be one. It's guaranteed. Listen to hip hop of the last 5 years. BB needs to be prepared to be deluged by teenagers (and their concerned parents) trying to get off this stuff. We aren't winning the propaganda war, we are getting slaughtered.

 

My uncle can take a pill to get a four hour boner and he's 70 years old. That is a miracle. God bless him and that factory over in Ireland that turns the stuff out. Figuring out how manage the symptoms of an addictive drug with a potentially years long withdrawal that hundreds of millions of people take should be at least of some interest to someone somewhere. Right? I mean really? Right?

 

Like many people, I've endured a lot of trauma in my life. Nothing comes even close to this.

 

I'm an ignorant person, and I don't know a damn thing about science, so please forgive me if I've suggested that any of this would be easy. I doubt anything involving the brain is easy. But I do know that it will never be fixed if no one is even trying. If no one even cares. If no one will even believe the pain right in front of them.

 

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I would have to agree with Challis, the event caused enough stress on its on to make you feel awful but didn't cause the tolerance of the benzo, but the added stress could definitely make you feel the need for added benzo.  IMO, it was the perfect storm of severe stress and tolerance colliding at same time.  I am so sorry, that has to be devastating.  If we can help in any other way, please reach out.

 

Mary 💜💜

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Sorry to hear those experiences BarbaraAve. I think you worded it perfectly when youe said "what caused what". I tend to obsess about that. I know I definitely hit Xanax dependency, but I wonder if the breakup and AD cold turkey broke my brain in another way. Hope I'm not double broken. Of course my doctor that prescribed benzos for five years said the breakup changed my brain chemistry and that's how I got here.

 

Tom, yes the AD sure did something to me and pushed me off a cliff.  I feel sort of broken like you... an dhow I got here and few seem to have it this bad or exactly what I happen to have!  Maybe you are a kindred spirit... ;)

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Hmm, well in my case, Mary, at 2 mg klon when my Dad died, I said, ok, this not working will cut it down.  And I did, not obsessing over it, and 2 1/2 years later at 1 mg.  Then the AD screwed me up.  I had been cutting, not taking more benzo.  So I do not get it since I ws not tapering crazy fast or anything.

 

I think the other drugs and the cutting of the benzos did something to me and even on these boards, don't think people know what as my case very bizarre and long and nothing seems to help it.

 

And yes, quietquiet, the fact that there is nobody working on this does not make me hopeful for a 'cure.'  Hard to believe nobody, nowhere working on this??  sheesh

 

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I also have hashimoto's (hypothyroid) wonder if that plays a role?  I know there is big explanation about it but I frankly can't comprehend it, or much of anything righ tnow. 
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Thanks Challis, Mary, Barbara, and Quiet

 

Benzo injury is such a difficult thing for me to comprehend. Because of the timing it hit me I've questioned causes such as SSRI cold turkey, the breakup, offending a higher power, and a bunch of other things. I just miss my old life and get tired of feeling like THIS. I have to cling to the hope of healing. Sometimes the only progress I can see is my taper, which will be 2/3 done in a couple days. Sorry to those of you who are having a rough time as well, and thank you for your help.

 

Tom

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Thanks Challis, Mary, Barbara, and Quiet

 

Benzo injury is such a difficult thing for me to comprehend. Because of the timing it hit me I've questioned causes such as SSRI cold turkey, the breakup, offending a higher power, and a bunch of other things. I just miss my old life and get tired of feeling like THIS. I have to cling to the hope of healing. Sometimes the only progress I can see is my taper, which will be 2/3 done in a couple days. Sorry to those of you who are having a rough time as well, and thank you for your help.

 

Tom

 

Tom, it may not be on our time table, but you will heal.  We are always here, love Mary 💜

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I think a lot about trauma and Benzos. For a while I had a theory that benzo withdrawal was triggered by previous PTSD, though lots of people report not having any previous symptoms (though sometimes ptsd does lurk in the background, hidden even to those who it has afflicted). But when people say they don't have it and they have no symptoms, then it's good to take them at their word (we've all had enough of not being believed). Then I wondered if the first few weeks of withdrawal are horrible enough to cause a form of PTSD. I do think there is some link between the trauma and withdrawal, if nothing else in its intensity and longevity.

 

There are people on this board who I respect GREATLY who have a very detailed understanding of the chemistry and biology and psychopharmacology at play. But I know I still don't understand WHY windows turn into waves. It's like saying you get happy because of chemicals flooding your brain, ok, but that's what happens when I get happy, it's not WHY I got happy. Or is it? I'm very dumb. There are still mysteries at work here that we don't understand. Why some people suffer and others don't. Why some people can take it for a week and suffer for months and months and some can take it for years and suffer not at all. Why I have horrific anxiety but can walk around (actually HAVE to walk around), and someone else has zero (chemical) anxiety and is bedridden.

 

The great mystery to me, the one that just doesn't make any sense, is people whose symptoms relapse YEARS later. People say that this is because the gaba system hasn't healed properly yet, but my dumb brain just doesn't understand that. It goes on for years and years doing fine and then it just explodes? Ok, fine, but WHY? Especially because the stresses are often so minimal. We say this stuff is because of Benzos and gaba, but we don't know why. And we don't know what to do about it. And how could we? It's like people are having months long flashbacks because they drank a beer, or took a long plane ride, or nothing at all?

 

What truly bothers me, what I can't possibly understand, is how very few people outside of our world care. Is there another drug that has this prolonged, intense, unpredictable, recurring, multi-symptom, horrific response, and it just not get any attention (hardly) at all in the press? I've been warned about SSRIs, statins, over the counter pain killers, generic drugs (just not any ones specifically), and every illegal drug on the planet. But not the one that has ruined my life. Never. Not once. I've seen a hundred movies about drug addiction and I avoided heroin like the plague after seeing Trainspotting. Anyone seen a movie about benzo withdrawal?

 

Can anyone point to any group that is working to help us in terms of sustained research? Not just spreading awareness, but actually research. I know it's not in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry to do anything (though you would think the suing of KING OPIOD might have given them pause). But there are also competing interests in the industry itself. Also, what about government research? Plenty of studies begin in university labs. I can think of two reason why nothing is being done outside of the considerable efforts of people WITHIN the community.

 

1) The don't believe us.

or

2) They don't care.

 

I also think that doctors have been proscribing this shit for so long that their brains cannot fathom how badly they may have injured their patients, and so they refuse to accept it as a possibility. Imagine how many people a doctor working for 50 years has injured through Benzos? Talk about trauma. What will the mind do to avoid the trauma of knowing that you hurt this many people? And that for many doctors its because they didn't bother to keep up to date with basic information. That's the kind of thing that sends non psychopaths over the edge. 

 

People in my family have cancer and it sucks, but at least no one thinks they're lying -- and the world is moving heaven and earth to treat them and find a cure or better treatments.

 

A friend of mine died of AIDS and it was horrific; now, too late for him, there are ways to get your level down to nothing or close to it (if you have the money). Another friend of mine talks about that lost generation of people who died of AIDS and the horrific trauma it dealt the survivors. People didn't want to help them because they thought they DESERVED it. Maybe that's at work here to.

 

50 years after they started giving this stuff out I had 2 MDs, three psychiatrists, and three therapists all tell me that I could stay on it indefinitely, and that the best way to quit was just to quit. These are good people. Kind people who want to help. It's irreconcilable to me.

 

The pharmaceutical companies don't control everything in the media, there are stories all the time about the risks of various drugs. Hell, they have to list the side effects during every commercial. Has anyone ever heard a commercial for a benzo? Do you need to advertise a drug you know is addictive, and why bother if it will just inform people of the risks? Whenever you read a story it's always soft played, "withdrawal" can last for months or years, but never what that actually means for people day after day. And never any talk about the deaths. I remember when ebola and zika and all that shit was going down. You can bet if we were contagious and bleeding out of our eyes they'd have a cure in a year.

 

What can MOST people take to help their symptoms from benzo withdrawal: nothing. Not a single thing.

 

There are people out there who, knowingly and on an ongoing basis, have done this to us. Who continue to do this to us. There are actual culprits. We have real honest-to-God enemies. They should be dealt with. Not forgiven and forgotten once you heal. I know when people get better they never want to think about this again, but here we are, another generation under the gun.  We are going through this because we were not properly warned by our doctors and by those in a position of authority to do so. And that is another symptom of trauma, the desire to forget. It's completely understandable. Lots of people come back from a war and don't want to talk about the bodies. Bless you all who keep fighting and informing.

 

The only people who care about us are us, and I think we have to figure out what to do about that. I don't know what that means, and right now I'm fighting for my life every day, but I suspect that our pain can at least be managed and mitigated if not outright healed if people actually knew what was going on. And if not us then the next generation. Because there will be one. It's guaranteed. Listen to hip hop of the last 5 years. BB needs to be prepared to be deluged by teenagers (and their concerned parents) trying to get off this stuff. We aren't winning the propaganda war, we are getting slaughtered.

 

My uncle can take a pill to get a four hour boner and he's 70 years old. That is a miracle. God bless him and that factory over in Ireland that turns the stuff out. Figuring out how manage the symptoms of an addictive drug with a potentially years long withdrawal that hundreds of millions of people take should be at least of some interest to someone somewhere. Right? I mean really? Right?

 

Like many people, I've endured a lot of trauma in my life. Nothing comes even close to this.

 

I'm an ignorant person, and I don't know a damn thing about science, so please forgive me if I've suggested that any of this would be easy. I doubt anything involving the brain is easy. But I do know that it will never be fixed if no one is even trying. If no one even cares. If no one will even believe the pain right in front of them.

 

This is a great post. I know for me trauma did lead to the beginning of my benzo tolerance issues--father dying. I do have PTSD from past experiences that are coming to the forefront with new trauma.

 

And as I sit here at 5 in the morning incredibly nauseous as I have not slept at all again, and know I just have to go through another day like this, I do wonder how much I can take. I am not even actively tapering yet I am still struggling (in all fairness, I believe many of my issues right now are related to menopause).

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Yes, I feel beaten by it all.

Hi, NJ, you are not feeling better these days?  You were for a while.  How is son?

 

As I said several bad events and then this: the worst of the worst.  Just when you think pet deaths or parent deaths or finding out relative a sociopath are the worst... then there is this and nothing compares.

 

 

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Barbara,

 

I had a really rough week last week due to hormones and getting my cycle. I am 50 and all over the place with that.

 

I am mostly ok although the issues with the son continue to really impact me. We can't seem to get him well. I know it is illogical, but somehow I feel as if I am failing as a mom as I cannot get him well. We have another doctor appointment on Wednesday where I will need to ask the doctor to help us in specific ways and really figure out what his game plan is, as there appears to be none since a huge setback in August. So I do feel that this event--his illness--is really ramping up the anxiety and causing issues for me.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Wow, its like you guys are telling my story. I went through a breakup 11 yr relationship. I rel drinking. Got layed off. Was in perimenopause. Stopped drinking went to a detox. They scared me about benzos. I had no idea. I started weaning obln my own. My ad was ct. Then i have been a mess now for three years. I really thought  some kind of evil force was out to get me. I ciuod not figure out why i was such a mess. I was perfectly fine. I took the k for at least 17 years. Now I'm in massive wd. I never get it. I guess like mary said. The perfect storm. I just hope i heal after all this weirdness. I always think maybe there is something else wrong or im veing punished.
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Wow, its like you guys are telling my story. I went through a breakup 11 yr relationship. I rel drinking. Got layed off. Was in perimenopause. Stopped drinking went to a detox. They scared me about benzos. I had no idea. I started weaning obln my own. My ad was ct. Then i have been a mess now for three years. I really thought  some kind of evil force was out to get me. I ciuod not figure out why i was such a mess. I was perfectly fine. I took the k for at least 17 years. Now I'm in massive wd. I never get it. I guess like mary said. The perfect storm. I just hope i heal after all this weirdness. I always think maybe there is something else wrong or im veing punished.

 

I have been on K for 20 years, not continuously in the early years but still a long time. I know it's hard when year after year goes by and we aren't feeling our best. But I have friends who aren't going through this benzo crap who are also a mess due to hormones/other life stessors. Life can be hard sometimes. A therapist told me that certain years of your life are just crap ... and I think that is what many of us are experiencing, unfortunately for extended periods of time. But I do believe the brain can heal. It just takes time.

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Thank.you nj,

 

That makes sense. I really never dealt with anything too hard in.my.life up until the past few years. I was pretty down today trying to figure how it all happened. Then i thought maybe its because i rel drinking and was still taking benzos  causing permanent brain damage. So much happened. You made me feel better. This is just going to be the crap part of our life. I hope you are doing ok. I hope your son.is doing better. Im sorry you are going through such a hard time. I cant even.imagine having the to go.through your son being ill in this condition. I dont think you are failing as a mom. It sounds.like you.love him and are doing everything you can to help.him. Dont beat yourself up. I hope im making sense bad benzo brain today.  :o

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Wow, its like you guys are telling my story. I went through a breakup 11 yr relationship. I rel drinking. Got layed off. Was in perimenopause. Stopped drinking went to a detox. They scared me about benzos. I had no idea. I started weaning obln my own. My ad was ct. Then i have been a mess now for three years. I really thought  some kind of evil force was out to get me. I ciuod not figure out why i was such a mess. I was perfectly fine. I took the k for at least 17 years. Now I'm in massive wd. I never get it. I guess like mary said. The perfect storm. I just hope i heal after all this weirdness. I always think maybe there is something else wrong or im veing punished.

 

Dehy,  well I'm approaching 3 years.  I don't think it's an evil supernatural thing.. too many of us get this with combinations of drugs.  That AD seems to have done me in... and was on it just 6 wks.  I did take benzos decades and decades just fine, altho looking back, I realize at one point I stopped Dalmane and was in withdrawal.  I was in my 30s and had no idea that is what it was-- only in retrospect know it now.

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NJ, same as you... my Dad died (huge loss).  Then 2 years later my Mom  (the narcissist).  I loved her anyhow, being the empath daughter not the sociopathic/narc other one.

 

So yes... childhood of complex trauma...  then the losses... then the meds creating this mess and going totally into acute, to start with.

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