It's My Fault

I love Benzo Buddies, and I find this site to be very helpful. I can't find anyone who has abused their benzo as much as I did and then quit cold turkey. I abused Ambien because I was using it unknowingly to ease the pain of an antipsychotic withdrawal/paradoxical reaction. All I knew is that when I took Ambien, I felt normal..sometimes better than normal. Then, during the interdose withdrawal, I kept taking more and more to ease symptoms like wanting to pass out, severe abdominal pain, and headaches that felt like someone took a knife and hammered it in the top of my head while repeatedly hitting the back of my head with a cast iron skillet. I am embarrassed to say that I could and did finish a bottle of 30 in three days. It was never to get high, though. It was to get rid of the symptoms. I did not know I was in interdose withdrawal; I just somehow knew that taking the Ambien would ease all of my problems for at least two hours.

 

I am fearful that I will never get better because that is a lot of stuff to be stuffing into the nervous system and causing everything to slow down. Maybe it is why I have the symptom of tired, burning eyes with loss of peripheral vision that no one else seems to have.

 

I take full responsibility for my abuse. I did not take this medication as was intended.

When you say you in your signature you kindled twice, what do you mean? 

 

You know my story IcyPeppermint, I'm here and I healed from a cold turkey of Klonopin and Ambien 14 months later.  How long have you been Ambien free?

When you say you in your signature you kindled twice, what do you mean? 

 

You know my story IcyPeppermint, I'm here and I healed from a cold turkey of Klonopin and Ambien 14 months later.  How long have you been Ambien free?

 

Hey Pamster, when I realized that I was addicted to Ambien, I stopped taking it for about two weeks and then reinstated due to stomach pain (it's the only thing that would help the pain), then I quit again for about two weeks and reinstated when I drank coffee which led to two days of a panic attack. After the second time, I quit again and am now two months free exactly as of today.

Two months away from the drug is good, how are you sleeping, is your stomach giving you problems? 

 

I remember having burning eyes when I was taking Ambien but when I recovered they felt much better.  I have to hope you're going to recover too, it's important to have hope. 

Pamster, I can't nap during the day because I'll have a panic attack. After 2 in the morning, I get pretty solid sleep until about 6 in the morning and then I start to get this weird anxious knot in my stomach that keeps me up. My stomach is not as bad as where it was before, but it still gives me issues. I don't have an appetite, but am swollen, and I can't tolerate all food. I tend to get burning or pain right where my ribcage is in the middle of stomach.

I've haven't been able to nap since my late twenties, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to, I can faintly remember how blissful it was to wake up from a nap.  It sounds like you're getting some sleep, actually more than I've seen others on the forum, even though it's not as much as you want or need.  Did you have nightmares when you quit Ambien, mine were awful slasher type dreams, I was afraid to go to sleep.

 

Your others symptoms sound pretty standard, it takes so long for our brains to repair the damage these drugs do to us.  I know it doesn't help for me to say that but it should bring you comfort that many have felt what you are and have gone on to heal from this nightmare. 

 

I'm just glad you stopped taking it, no matter how you did it.  I don't know about you but that drug put me in a dark and scary place. 

 

 

Pamster, I am grateful that I am able to sleep. But, when I wake up in the morning, my eyes are burning and soooo tired, which leads me to believe that my fatigue is not related to actual sleep. I think I am getting solid sleep. I don't remember the night, I remember my dreams, and the last thing I remember from the night is waking up around 6 in the morning. I do not have nightmares, but when I first started taking Ambien, I would get really weird vivid dreams every now and then. One time I hallucinated that there was a sand spider on my wall and another time during a rainstorm, I had this really weird vivid dream about going out into the storm and stuff. Right now, I believe that I am in the life review stage which is why I am not having nightmares. Whatever past memory I am obsessed with at the moment is what I dream about during the night.

Ugh, I hated the intrusive memories, I'd get so lost in beating myself up over any and all choices and actions I'd taken during my lifetime.  This passed for me and I expect it will for you too.

 

I agree that your fatigue is probably a withdrawal symptom rather than lack of sleep.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. A lot of benzo support organizations emphasize the injury from benzos “when taken as prescribed.” This is great activism because there are a lot of people injured in this way and it puts the focus on the prescriber. BUT, not everyone takes benzos perfectly as prescribed. The thing is - the pain is just as real. Some people drink with them, some people take an extra because interdose wd is bad, etc. These people should not be dismissed as addicts or blamed for their situation. The suffering is the same.

 

All that to say not to beat yourself up about it. We all get here from different paths. Hope you feel better soon.

DBM, thank you for the support. I am going through a wave right now that won't let up. I guess my fear is that I have severely damaged by nervous system because of the amount I had taken.

I totally understand. Just know that the wave will end. Easy to say, I know. I’ve been in the darkest waves possible, but they get better. Yours will too. 

It was my fault too, at least technically speaking.

 

Sertraline was the doctor's fault. Or the "medical" system's fault, I should say.

 

Diazepam was 100% me, desperate from still feeling bad withdrawals 18 months after stopping sertraline. Before I went the diazepam route, I had to have root canal surgery. It took me a long time to drag myself to the dentist, due to the crippling depression from SSRI withdrawal. I was in agony. A few days before I went to the dentist, a work colleague gave me 30mg codeine. I didn't know how long it took codeine to hit and apparently my work colleague didn't. She gave me another before it had taken effect. When they both hit, I was floating on air. This was the first time I'd felt good in a long time, and it made a powerful impact on me. I became addicted to codeine but got out before it had a big effect on my life. I didn't miss a day of work and kept up appearances, but I knew it wasn't going in a good direction. It made me lazier, obviously, and that was already a big enough problem. Withdrawal was nasty but short-lived.

 

While in withdrawal, I looked up on forums what people did to alleviate opiate withdrawal. Popping some diazepam for anxiety/sleep kept coming up. I'd heard of it. I looked up the effects out of curiosity and it looked like just what I needed. You can find many positive testimonials for diazepam on the Internet. Hell, there's probably a few from me from the honeymoon phase. I saw it said more than once that benzodiazepines can be worse than heroin to get off. I deliberately chose not to look into that any deeper. I think I bought 50 10mg pills, not sure. I bought a test kit, to make sure it was diazepam. It doesn't make sure there's nothing else, but it was the best I could do. I didn't buy it intending to take it every day. I took 20mg the night before I was meeting up with friends to watch some live sports and have some drinks. We'd booked a hotel and we enjoyed the next day hanging out too. Old friends reuniting. I passed out from the diazepam and felt GREAT the next couple of days. Like, hanging out was as it should be, I wasn't dragging myself through the experience as I'd gotten used to. I still look back on it fondly, we had such a good laugh and a great time.

 

As soon as the fun was over and I went home, I set about justifying at first taking 5mg per day. I called it a low dose, dunno why the hell I thought that. I felt normal, not high, although in hindsight it made me a little manic. I'd seen the warnings but had myself convinced that even though I was self-administering, I was using it as if prescribed by a doctor. If there was to be a withdrawal, sobeit. I also reasoned that I was already broken, so what would it matter? Just a real muddle of rationalisations... and I totally knew it. I don't make decisions like that normally. I intentionally fed myself biased information and stayed away from exploring the downsides. It's so stupid. I bought a thousand of the suckers, not because I wanted to take loads and loads in one go but because I never wanted to think about running out. I updosed to 10mg after a couple of months, figuring I had room to manoeuvre, got trapped in tolerance withdrawal on that dose for far too long. Luckily I had the good sense not to keep going with the dose escalation. I still didn't know quite what a mess I'd got myself into until I first tried to stop cold turkey after about 5 months.

 

We're not ourselves when we're desperate like that. I wanted to leave out parts of the story because of how stupid I was. Now that I'm improving, it mostly just makes me grateful that I'm getting my mind back.

Diaz, are you improving quite a bit? If you say you are, that will give me some hope. Although I think it is great that the word about benzos is getting out there, I wish the same for ADs. From my readings, a lot of people use benzos to ease the withdrawals of ADs.

Yes, I have improved quite drastically. I had a stressful situation where my mum and brother (who is mildly autistic) got into a nasty argument after which my brother uncharacteristically left the house in the early evening without telling anyone where he was going. I was there when he went out and immediately was left with an uncomfortable feeling that multiplied when I realised that he hadn't told mum where he was going, which he normally would.

 

After that, my mum tried to call him on his mobile but couldn't get a dialling tone. Turns out that he'd gone for a 2 hour walk and for some reason, his phone wasn't picking up signal. He didn't know that his phone displaying "Emergency Calls Only" meant that he was uncontactable. It was a puzzling situation to me and my mum because it was just so uncharacteristic for him to go out at that time, not say where he is going and make himself uncontactable. He works at a local sports centre that has a bar and I was worried enough to see whether he'd gone there. He hadn't. The other most plausible explanation was that he'd gone for a walk, which is what happened. But I noticed that he had left the house in a rush just before the bus to the nearest city was due to arrive. It could have been a coincidence and it was a coincidence, but I didn't know that. My tinnitus spiked really loud, my head was spinning. I knew it was most likely that he'd gone for a walk and he'd be back it got dark. But it was like, either fine or something was very wrong, no in between.

 

I started beating myself up a bit. Should I have asked him if he was OK before he left the house? I didn't, because I didn't think it would help and figured he needed to blow off steam. Should I have asked him where he was going? I'm his little brother, not his guardian. I assumed he had his phone with him and I didn't want to say anything that might add to a charged situation. When I realised that he'd gone out just before a bus was due, I had the thought to call my uncle because he lives near a bus stop 30 mins along the journey. It would have been nothing for him to take a look and see if he was on the bus. I didn't do that because the idea of my brother running away under any circumstances seemed absurd. I started to get events straight in my head and was formulating what I would say to the police if we were to report a missing person. I think it's fairly normal for these sorts of things to run through your mind in such a situation.

 

I can't tell you how I felt when I saw him walking up the street through the window after 2 hours. I became giddy, almost had a tear in my eye and was beaming from ear to ear. He was much calmer having reflected on what happened. The anger had subsided and he was in a more apologetic mood. For about 20-30 minutes I kept chuckling to myself. Still feeling giddy and like I could burst into tears of joy at any moment (I didn't).

 

I don't know whether telling long stories that have limited relevance to the conversation is a withdrawal symptom. I seem to end up down that path quite often. The reason I told is is that if this happened 6 months ago... especially on a day like that where I was more tired than usual having got little sleep the night before (even by withdrawal standards)... I would not have been able to come down from that. It would have amped me up for a few days to come. I'd have had to recover from it. The odd emotional response was the most I noticed my withdrawals here. I kept a calm demeanour and stayed rational while he was "missing", even though I felt anything but calm. After it happened, I was able to see that it was a pretty good test of where I'm at. The sort of test you can't fake. Nothing bad happened and I now know a little bit more about what I can cope with.

 

I still have a long way to go but you should understand that I have had psychotic symptoms and big problems with irritability, rage and just general emotional dysregulation. Mostly caused by extreme surges in adrenaline. I had some pretty extreme cognitive issues too. I coped with that better than I could cope with going grocery shopping, at one point. It's an understatement to say I improved quite a bit.  I'm convinced that the proportion of people who experience such huge difficulties in benzo withdrawal and come out the other end is above 99%. It just can be a long process. I expect to be much improved again in another 6 months but suspect that I'll still have some recovering left to do. I'm alright with that. One day soon (relatively speaking), a persistent symptom of yours will suddenly clear up. If you have the right mindset, you will be able to enjoy the relief this gives rather than focusing on what might still be broken. Things can get a lot better while you're still recovering... you just have to do yourself the favour of allowing yourself to recognise it. I know that this will appear overly simplistic to people who are struggling a lot more than I am. I don't expect to convince anybody; I am trying to lay the groundwork so that you can convince yourself when the time is right 

It's not your fault.  Doctors prescribe Benzos off label (for purposes other than that for which the drug was designed) and completely ignore the 2-4 week maximum period you should be on a Benzo. 

 

Blaming yourself or your doctor won't make your WD go away, but it might make you feel better?

 

Healing and Recovery take time and more time.

 

Hang in there.  It might not feel like it, but each passing day brings you one day closer to being healed and recovered!

Diaz: Thanks for sharing...for being so honest. What a journey.

You will be fine especially at 2 months off. I hate to admit this, but I once took 87 one milligram xanax's in one setting.  Not proud of it and will never do that again. Went cold turkey had 2 seizures but I luckily lived and my brain went back to normal. Yes that is eighty seven one milligram xanax's in one setting.  I'm lucky I'm alive.  And I'm a woman, 130 lbs. I really think you'll be fine if it's been 2 months off. I did not go to the hospital with mine, just withdrew cold turkey. That's terrible that I did that and will never do that again.