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So scared


[Ac...]

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I am so scared that this is going to go on forever, scared of experiencing others long roads of suffering that I read about here, scared of getting additional symptoms as I go since tinnitus wasn't previously affecting me but just started up tonight, scared that there's no medication to take any of this away.  It's almost morning and I've only slept an hour, this is just horrendously uncomfortable and scary, and I don't know what to do.
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[c6...]

You haven't reinstated any meds, right?  Still a c/t?

 

If so, try your best to not allow fear into this experience.  It won't help.  You're three weeks into a c/t which is a pretty rough time for most people.  Your symptoms are very normal for this stage.  I know it's unpleasant. 

 

The best thing to do in my opinion is to try to stay busy as much as you can doing mellow (non-challenging) activities.  It makes the time pass more quickly.  Time is what gets people through benzo withdrawal.

 

Sleep is probably going to be lousy for a while.  Just accept it and do the best you can with what you get.  I used to get sad or mad about lousy sleep.  That only made my sleep worse.  The more I could accept being calm in bed at 3 am, the better the odds that I might fall back to sleep for another hour at 5 am.

 

The shakes will eventually resolve, but it may take a while.

 

Try to be calm about this.  It will get better.  It just takes longer than it should.

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Dont be scared, look at the mirror when it gets bad, you will see anything you feel is only happening inside your head.

I am on 5-6th week now after chronic abuse and use of benzos for almost 10 years, a good month back i was forced to finally ct as i couldnt get any more ordered online, with barely 16 tabs almost month and a half in i still got 5 left. I wont lie and say everything is good now far from it, i dont get sleep, my muscles twitch when im in the shops i walk almost like robot and shaking, but dozen symptoms have come and gone in last couple weeks, until my 4th week i thought i wont see any improvement but then one day 28 days later hey i got a window, i started to feel my legs, face body again, hell i even drove today to the shops and i love driving now again, where couple weeks back i felt like im tripping hard while driving few miles down the road. im not fully clean and far from it, as i take a bit of whatever i know will numb me down, but if someone asked me will i survive not taking any benzos 2 months back i would said impossible yet almost 1,5 month later ive taken less then 3 days worth, in last two weeks i taken 1 pill, now thats pretty amazing considering 10 years non stop. And while i realize i screw myself up when i need to take one as if it wasnt some social outing to shops etc, id would of easily skipped it.

 

and while first 3 weeks ive seen little improvement, today i can say a lot of happened, i have my appetite back, smells are great none of the metalic crap anymore or sweats, i feel my body not being numb anymore, i realized i have to move and act more slowly but as long as i dont get overly anxious or excited i can operate.

 

Of course on top of that i have slow attention span, constant spinning head and wondering thoughts, being tired, ringing in my ears,watery eyes, no proper sleep, but aside weak muscles and shakey hands and twitching body i dont actually mind any of the negative symptoms as i can deal with those.

 

I find it very useful to remember anything i feel now indicates that my body and brain are actually recovering, because all the pain we feel now it means body is trying to click into place, breathing slowly and deep also helps to calm yourself down.

 

ive been here for the last 2-4 years every time ive attempted CT, but every other year i never lasted past 1 week. Its easy to get caught in poor me flow and thinking it will never end, but once you realize that you dont have any other option most of the stuff that comes and goes every minute only few symptoms are out of control, and other feelings that are in the head they dont affect you, as waking up in the mornings with racing heart and panic, you suddenly remember that its not a new feeling but rather, how you felt before most days when you didnt even knew about benzos. Of course im lucky that i dont work now, and theres still lockdowns due to covid, which allows me time to heal now, since i know my anxiety never got fixed but i got wiser with years, but one thing i refuse now to accept that i will suffer for ever, sure maybe a month or two more, but whatever i feel later will be like ive felt before i took any benzos.

 

way i see it WDs suck, but i simply wont cave in because i feel bad, as if im honest i could probably get benzos, but i refuse to now because while its easy to go back on them, after being clean a while i can see that its possible to stay of them and pain does ease.

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No more drugs at all since going CT, other than occasional tylenol and melatonin.  I even cut out what little caffeine and alcohol I did use - don't need caffeine bc I'm wired, and alcohol counter productive.

 

Your responses on this thread mean so much to me at this dark time - thank you from the bottom of my heart! 

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In particular, thank you for your calming recommendations to keep fear out, and to look in the mirror.  I had been letting fear take over and rule me. 

 

And, looking in the mirror, other than bags under my eyes, I look fine.  I've been losing weight despite increasing my calorie intake, and healthy exercise.  I think my body is stripping fat cells looking for leftover K stored there.  Not sure that's how it works but that's my theory...

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Hey there!

So you are in the acute phase and yes it SUUUCKS!

But it's all "normal" in benzo world unfortunately.

Honestly, if you are still able to function and do some things, then count yourself lucky as it could be much much worse I promise!

 

All of it is terrible and the insomnia can be brutal, but you can make it through. The human body is amazing at preserving itself! I'm not sure how some of us made it through months and months of multiple nights with little or zero sleep....but we do!

Be be glad you are off and stay off. I know the fear is ridiculous, but try hard to remember it is only temporary!

We tend to lose weight during acute WD due to the massive amount of adrenaline, anxiety etc. Because our bodies are in constant fight or flight mode for quite some time. But your weight should come back.

There is no reason to believe you be will someone who takes years and years to heal. You were on benzos for a short time, so that is in your favor, although it doesn't always mean it will be a short time to heal, it is helpful that you were not on it for years.

Just keep going forward, do as many normal things as you can, and use distraction as much as you can :smitten:

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I am able to function most of the time, which I don't take for granted as there are other times where the pain or panic take over and consume me, as they did when I made my original post.

 

A pattern is emerging where no matter if I've slept or not slept after 4 am or so I am awake for sure for the rest of the night.  I will have high heart rate, shakiness, and chemical anxiety until the evening, during this time I'm not anxious about anything in particular but feel the symptoms of anxiety, but can distract myself with work or my family.  The evening I might calm down enough to watch a tv show and enjoy it and most nights fall asleep for a few hours until 4 am.  Sometimes there are panic episodes, only once or twice I've had a few hour window where I felt absolutely normal.  Nice, but fleeting. 

 

Last night, I got 5 hours of sleep (great!), But been up since 4am and my back is spasming/twitching. Was able to take badsocrefs advice and chill out and it made a world of difference instead of panicking. 

 

It doesn't feel like I'm healing at all, just feels like this is life now.  I am glad to be totally off and wont go back ever.

Is this all normal too?

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[c6...]

From what I can figure out, the 4 am thing is an over-reaction to natural cortisol levels that begin to rise early in the morning to begin to prepare us to wake up.  When in withdrawal, we over-perceive that 'gentle hormonal nudge' as a danger signal and initiate a fight/flight response.  The rapid heartbeat, etcetera is the natural outcome of the fight/flight response.

 

In time, your body will mellow out with the rude early morning awakening jolt thing.  In the meantime, continue to try to realize what has happened and relax about it.  There is no actual danger. 

 

Five hours of sleep isn't bad.

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I was absolutely ecstatic about 5 hours, especially after an hour the night before, and several zero nights the last few weeks.

 

Thank you for the info about the 4 am thing. I am absolutely waking up directly into fight or flight and had no idea why it was always the same time.  This morning, I had been having a nightmare that I had a huge skin infection on my hand, and was relieved it was just a nightmare when I awoke.

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[c6...]
I had some doozy nightmares associated with those 4 am awakenings.  The one about the giant (i.e. man-sized) wasps was a good one.  I'm a bit fearful of wasps in general, so that was a memorable one.
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I love your theory about "your body is stripping fat cells looking for leftover K stored there", its probably not why you're losing weight but it sounds like something I would have thought when I was in your shoes, we conjure up so many explanations to try to figure out what is happening to us.

 

badsocref has given you such great input, keeping calm is the best thing you can do for yourself because stress causes increased symptoms so feeding it makes us feel worse.  Your body is working hard to get back to normal and it's doing a great job, you just need to provide a calm environment so it can finish the job.

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That is a good one, and wasps are scary. 

 

The hand infection was tall and conical, raised an inch off of my hand and shaped and erupting puss like a volcano, so kind of humourous in the light of day.

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Bads is totally right about the 4am thing.

It is morning cortisol rising that our bodies do naturally every day, getting us ready to wake up soon...but yes it is just exaggerated and our bodies just detect it when it shouldn't and thinks it's a danger.

It's VERY common.

It will eventually calm down!

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yeah i believed the same about our body trying to strip any hidden fat, muscles out of benzos, i weighted myself as some days i felt like bare bones, but to my surprise weight was as normal as i had before, i think our feelings of being weak adds to optic we might be losing weight, yet in reality its prob a bit less then we make it to be, once you eat as before, and with minimal movement we dont strip so much, but there are explanations that stress levels induce so much fear that its natural for body to burn more calories, as in some cases we sometimes spend days on fight or flight response. Same with sleep most days i hit the bed at 9-10 in the evening, yet i turn on netflix or some movies etc where i can lose 4-6 hours and it sort of numbs us down, but once we get less sleep and continue to binge at night, sleep becomes harder as we cant turn off on time, and going from good 8-9 hours we get 4-7 at most thats where anxiety gets worse come next day, just in our case theres no more benzos to quickly even out to whatever relaxed stage we want, which becomes very hard to naturally keep calm or not get triggered which is 100 times harder when your on edge.
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Be be glad you are off and stay off. I know the fear is ridiculous, but try hard to remember it is only temporary!

 

 

Belle, you wrote this.  This has been giving me comfort because I've had a bad day and having a bad night and reinstatement and tapering are crossing my mind, but I want to avoid that because I'm already 3+weeks into CT, and I just want the drug out.  Do you have any words of wisdom when those thoughts pop into my head? 

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Well, you could ask yourself "do I really want to start over?"

 

Because reinstating and then doing a slow enough taper to hopefully avoid some symptoms takes a long time. Probably even longer than you were even on them to begin with. And yes, slow tapers are what most of us agree is the most ideal way to come off of benzos. But in this case, if it were me and I was able to function through....I would stay off. Me personally, I think reinstating is good for certain situations. But I don't know yours since I'm not you. Only you can decide if you think a reinstatement is worth it to start over. Some might say it would work and glad they did it, others like me would say, no way because you may end up having the same exact symptoms at the end of the taper anyway!

Keep going!! 😘

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That's exactly right, I'm afraid of starting over and being here months from now.  That said the last 24 hours have been the worst so far. Normally I get a few guys hours in a day, but today was full tilt the whole time, and looks like I'm going zero tonight.. Is that normal?  I know progress isn't linear and this will take a while, but it's demoralizing.  Been reading bads advice over and over and trying to take deep breaths.
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[c6...]

When I found BB, I had already c/t'd and was hurting.  The folks here gave me the same choice - stick it out or reinstate and taper.  Like you (and many) I didn't want to start over, and stuck it out.  It was pretty lousy for a while as you're finding out.  The zero sleep nights were all-too-common, but I survived them.  You will too.

 

Everybody wants a quick fix for withdrawal.  There isn't one.  But there are a whole bunch of little things you can do to help make it thru the day a little easier.  Meditation, distraction or something similar can help you feel a little better, but it's not going to be like prom night (assuming you had a fun prom night). 

 

I just tried to live as 'normal' a life as I could even tho I felt pretty terrible most of the time.  I tried to stay positive or at least pragmatic.  Those chemical withdrawal feelings are going to happen and they don't feel good.  But it's just a chemical reaction - nothing more.  The withdrawal syndrome causes us to worry about things that we'd never normally worry about.  Try to be aware of that so you don't take those concerns seriously.  Avoid Dr. Google.  Imagining you have MS doesn't help.  Better to try to surround yourself with positivity.

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Bads, your advice on this thread speaks to me.  I don't want to start over but if someone came to me last night with drugs to reinstate I would have taken them, bc my syndrome worry was casting doubt in my decision to stick with CT that I stumbled into.  It was on my mind a lot yesterday bc I had been mostly functional until then. 

 

Tapering is not a guarantee of an easy time, and soon I'll have a month under my belt, so stil resolved to stick out. 

 

Days are easier to distract with work, and family.  The nights I get 4+hrs of sleep aren't bad, I've taken your advice.  It's just the languish of the zeros that wear on.

 

I have a hard time staying positive and detached - easier said than done, for me, but something I must do.

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  I just need reinforcement and additional confidence to stick with this when there's so much in my face about the dangers of CT and benefits of taper.  I know everyone must make their own decision, but the gnawing doubt has started to eat at me in the face of suffering.
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[c6...]

I think half (maybe more) of the forum 'staff' did a c/t.  A lot of people do c/t's and we never hear from them since they have no issues.  I think that's why a lot of doctors simply dismiss this withdrawal stuff - it's minor for most people.

 

My only suggestion is to not try to derive confidence from the input of other people.  While it's nice to get support/agreement, ultimately confidence has to come from within.

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I never thought about reinstating, for me it wasn't possible because I knew if I went back on the pills I'd never get off of them.  I admire people who can taper but know it would have been impossible for me to do so I'm glad I didn't have that lurking in the back of my mind.  Besides that, by the time I found BenzoBuddies I was 5 months into my CT and no one advised me to go back on to taper.

 

Another thing that worked in my favor was my stubborn streak, I refused to give up the suffering I'd already endured, I kept thinking my miracle was right around the corner and didn't want to give up on it if it was.  Of course, just around the corner turned into seemingly endless suffering but hope kept me going.

 

The only way out of this mess is through and if you'll read around the forum you'll see many members doing slow tapers who are suffering horribly so even though it's the preferred way of getting off of these drugs, its no guarantee you'll be one of the folks who has an easier time of it. 

 

I hope you can stay strong in your commitment to see this through but whatever you do, indecision isn't helping.  This creates doubt and doubt creates stress and stress causes increased symptoms. 

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You can do it!!!

I promise the zero nights sleep will not harm you.

It is beyond miserable, but it is survivable.

I was one of those horrific insomnia ones, even had doctors who thought about using the date rape drug on me just because I had been so long without sleep, lol!!!!

(And no I didn't do it)

But just saying, it is no joke how awful it feels....but I'm not joking when I say it is survivable.

The human body can take way more than I ever thought capable

 

If I was you and I was still able to function (walk, use my limbs, feed myself, bathe myself, drive to store, take care of myself, cook, etc)

Then I would stick it out and never look back!

 

It will suck for quite a while not gonna lie, but better than starting over for me.

 

Btw, I was non-functioning for months after my ct/rapid

And was in a wheelchair, and couldn't do the above things I listed....

And I still survived it somehow! And I'm doing great now :smitten:

 

 

 

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I felt the same as you 3 weeks out, I’m slightly ahead of you (over 2 months) and I’m glad I didn’t attempt to reinstate, I think I’d still be feeling terrible and may have reversed some of the hidden progress that had occurred. I realised I was keeping Diazepam close by in case things got so out of control/dark, I needed to remove that way of thinking fast.

 

I eventually threw them out.

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Hey everyone, thanks for your excellent input and helping me keep my head on straight.  I'm resolved to continue CT and confident that is the best decision for me.  I realized that if I was second guessing the black/white decision of CT then I'm not mentally equipped for the grays and constant decisions of a taper without constantly second guessing myself.  Also and equally important is that I am mentally unprepared to start over again.  I do think I have some "hidden progress" as kojack put it. 
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