Ativan 1 year.
Pretty shit for 2 years after, but functional. Mostly physical pain and sensitivity. Not many brain symptoms.
About a month or 2 prior to my 2 year benzo anniversary I started hitting the gym hard.
Daily heavy lifting, daily cardio, daily sauna sessions. I wanted to get my body and mind back to feeling sharp. I felt I was steadily recovering from benzos and feeling pretty decent, but wanted to push it back to 100. It felt damn good at first.
About two weeks after the (nearly) daily exercise routine, I started getting waves of this really weird, dizzy, light-headedness. I had random bouts of dysautonomia for the 2 years since benzos, but never as constant and persistent as this felt. I also began noticing some new pains that gradually appeared with the new intense dysautonomia. Pains in locations I never had pain.
Then after a couple weeks of feeling this way, still pushing myself in the gym, I was driving home from my routine one day and shit snapped. I had the most intense feeling of dysautonomia I have ever had. It feel like my consciousness was slapped by some cosmic force. My whole brain and vision like turned on its side. I couldn't see clear or think clear. I pulled over, nearly wrecked. And called my family to take me to the ER. I thought I was having a stroke.
My nervous system continued to act crazy leading up to going to the ER. My chest and head burned. I thought something was seriously wrong; heart attack, stroke, something that was going to kill me... This fueled my panic, which made all the symptoms worse. The light pain I was feeling in my lower abdomen after my work outs became scarily intense and deep. My dysautonomia was worse than I thought was possible. I felt like I would never be the same again. I was sure I would die.
In the ER things continued and I kept panicking. On top of all of the absurd nervous system symptoms that overcame me, I likely began to have an actual panic attack too in the fear of what what happening to me. And that, again, just increased symptoms to their max. They gave me IVs of benadryl.
I woke up the next day, hardly remembered any of it. But the dysautonomia and new physical pain have remained for the past 5 months now. They're better than they were when I first woke up the morning after the incident. I contemplated dying for the first month. It's better than that now. But it is still debilitating. I also now have major fatigue, extreme chemical sensitivity, and extreme intolerance to temperatures and light. None of which I had prior to the setback.
