Successful 16 Month Taper, Mostly Healed

Today is my one year anniversary of getting free of benzos. I learned how to microtaper using liquid valium from folks on this site who were very helpful and supportive. It took my 16 months to taper off from 15mg. It was difficult at times, and not so difficult other times; and it got easier toward the end. I jumped at 1mg and had no ramping up of withdrawal symptoms after that (which were pretty much gone by that time).

I thought the WS would be much worse than they were. I ended being very functional. I got tenured as a professor and bought my first house while I was tapering. One thing that was important in my success was that I stopped obsessively reading the scary content here on BB.org, allowed my (slow) tapering process to fade into the background, and just lived my life. This helped me to deal with the fear which is a big part of the battle.

Now, I'm 100% free of all psych meds and celebrating my one year anniversary. I sleep great and have very little anxiety beyond normal levels. I'm happy and productive. I'm actually very, very happy. The only lingering effect I have from the benzos is what folks around here called "cog fog." Sometimes when I'm speaking I can't find the word I'm looking for, or I stumble a bit while speaking. I also experience trying to speak and the words don't come out, like there's a block. I do a lot of public speaking as a teacher and professor, though, and this has generally been easy for me to deal with and overcome.

Mindfulness was and is a big part of my path in healing. 

Peace to you all. You'll get through this.

Jared,

Glad to hear you are healed up! Congratulations on the house and tenure! Big moves, mate!

This was something I needed to read. I'm new to tapering and being on here and quite frankly, some posts have caused me to obsess over the tapering process and my physiological state. I took a little too much benadryl the other night and thought, "Heart palpitations! Just like the forum said!" Then I realized my heart was just a little faster from the antihistamine and waited it out. I'm gonna follow your lead and step away from looking at benzo posts for hours on end.

Thanks for posting! Peace be with you.

MM