4 years off - back to living life - after 21 years on benzos!!

I had always dreamed of coming back to BB with a story about how I fully recovered. It has been 4 years (and a couple weeks) since my last shard of lorazepam in January 2018. The year 2018 was a lost year for me - months and months of little to no sleep. Panic attacks. Couldn't hold food down. Craziness. A little over one year later, in February 2019, with the help of some real friends who cared about me, I was able to work again. Of course, it was crawl-walk-run kind of process. When they suggested I go back to work late in 2018, I said you've got to be kidding, I will never work again -- I'm a shell of what I was and, at best, would only be a fraction of myself, if anything at all. They said, we'll take a fraction of you over anybody else any day. They believed in me.

 

I agreed to try. It was tough and I was scared. Little by little, I was able to show up at the office and grit through it. It got better and better. I got stronger. I am real close to retirement age but retirement is the last thing I want to do (at this time anyway). I really feel like I am doing my best work that I have ever done. Even during Covid, I travelled all over. I am healthy, in great shape, and loving life with a new appreciation, especially given the time lost. Once a week psychotherapy (for the past 5 years) was invaluable and I do not really feel any stress in my life now. I am now meeting once a month and we are talking about wrapping it up. I sleep well and I am not on ANY meds (except Crestor for my cholesterol, damnit). (Somehow) I learned how to compartmentalize and I very effectively shove anxious thoughts to the side. I was gnarled up for years and the only thing that bugs me these days, in terms of negative thinking, is why I couldn't figure this way of living out decades ago.

 

Maybe you have to pass through the fires of hell to show yourself that you can not only survive, but thrive. I never thought I would be writing this in my life, but here I am.

 

I am grateful to my family, friends and BB. Whenever I think back to 2017 and 2018, my worst years of withdrawal, despair and pain, I wince a bit at the vivid memory of it all. I occasionally shed a tear about it as well. I do know that I reached very deep, far deeper within my soul to gut it out than I ever thought was humanly possible. It turned me into one tough hombre in terms of dealing with whatever life throws at me now.

 

I want you all to know that this is your destiny too. I pray for you and I root for you to get on the other side.

 

I did not often understand, especially in my worst moments, that my Benzo Buddies were saying that "time" was the key factor in beating this. There are no shortcuts and you can feel like you are counting all 86,400 seconds in each day. It is unfortunate, but so true. It's a long climb.

 

Of course, this does not mean that simply counting the seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and, maybe, years is all you have to do. There is work to be done. There are differences in people and their personalities, so there is no one answer. That is frustrating! How the hell, then, as diminished as we all are when we hit bottom, are we supposed to be able to figure out what to do -- what our particular plan must be?

 

Looking back, I think that the backbone of your recovery starts with your will and commitment to survive. You have to decide that you are going to go for it -- it cannot be done for you. It sucks. Then it sucks some more. Then it really, really sucks. Finally, something breaks through. You build on it. You fall back, maybe, but you want to go back to that break through moment again. Eventually, you get there. You damn straight will!

 

There is also a moment where you realize that you (may) have to step away from BB. My last post was August 24th of 2018 and I was not doing so good. in fact, I dropped off online entirely. No more Google searches researching symptoms and side effects. My doctor told me my "sleep architecture" was damaged and it might be many more months, and maybe years, to get it back. So, seeing the agony of others, researching all the bad things that might happen from the meds and hearing another doctor tell me how damaged I was -- well none of that messaging was helping me and was actually sapping my already diminished strength.

 

This is just my story. Take what you need, disregard what does not resonate with your thinking and beliefs. Just know that it is possible to go from not thinking that it ever going to get better to outcomes that are very acceptable. You can get there too!

 

I'll end this by saying as sincerely as I can say it: God bless you all. I think about you all the time. You will survive - and thrive again.

god bless you too, thanks for sharing your efforts! if you may let me know, what about your adhd drug? are you still on ritalin?  Thanks in advance

Why didn't you post it in success story?

god bless you too, thanks for sharing your efforts! if you may let me know, what about your adhd drug? are you still on ritalin?  Thanks in advance

 

Thanks - your question reminded me to update my profile. The ritalin was prescribed by a new psychiatrist who saw me present myself as not having more than a few minutes of sleep for weeks. Somehow he interpreted the way I presented and diagnosed me with ADHD. I threw the ritalin away after about 3 months. I did not want to have another practitioner get me hooked on to another highly addictive pharmaceutical! That was the moment I determined that, in my situation, my only way out was to gut it out the natural way.

god bless you too, thanks for sharing your efforts! if you may let me know, what about your adhd drug? are you still on ritalin?  Thanks in advance

 

Thanks - your question reminded me to update my profile. The ritalin was prescribed by a new psychiatrist who saw me present myself as not having more than a few minutes of sleep for weeks. Somehow he interpreted the way I presented and diagnosed me with ADHD. I threw the ritalin away after about 3 months. I did not want to have another practitioner get me hooked on to another highly addictive pharmaceutical! That was the moment I determined that, in my situation, my only way out was to gut it out the natural way.

 

Your right , maybe it would be of help because dopamine  might work.as an inhibitory monoamine, still you would certainly get hooked, glad your making it, Thank's for replying amd keep taking good care

Experiences like yours saves lives, I think I'm still alive due to the suceess stories n benzo free celebrations.

I'm still tapering but can't believe that such a miracle can happen to me, the anxiety is killing me.

Scared Cat - Some more of my story..... I am not sure of the exact moment, but I came to realize that anxious thoughts, especially the rapid-fire, rolling/tumbling/racing thoughts and panic attack ones, were basically one part of my own mind trying to trick the other part. Most of my thoughts were the creation of my own mind. It was actually a form of self-destruction. In that light, they were made-up nonsense and I had to learn to challenge and, if not able to challenge, isolate and deflect. It surely ain't easy and your mind knows how to drop negative bombs on any situation at any time. Benzo-damaged brains are no match until they heal.

 

One of my most serious issues was major-league insomnia. My nights would be about going to bed, failing to fall asleep, major panic attacks, night sweats and then getting up and pacing throughout the house all night until dawn. This was happening every night for weeks, if not months.

 

This was not sustainable. The daytime each day was awful. I was extra sensitive to light. I had the startle reflex to everything as my brain was fried from no sleep. I could not think straight. And then night would come. I tried to at least stay in bed and would sometimes lie awake all night, perfectly still, not able to sleep, but trying to sort of suspend time. I am not one to meditate, but this was probably as close as I would come to a meditative state. After a while, it started to feel like a safe space.

 

It still sucked and I was still scared a lot of the time. But, I remember the first day that my wife asked me that did I realize that I was actually sleeping. I did not believe her. But she said, no, I was watching you and you were snoring and it was something like 4 or 5 hours. I did not even realize it and I had probably not slept for a few weeks or more before that night. The next night I laid in my motionless, perfectly still mode, and did not sleep a wink. Some waves of panic passed through me and I let it happen without fighting it. Maybe 4 or 5 nights of similar sleepless nights, and then my wife again told me that I was asleep again for several hours.

 

Something was going on. It started to happen more often - maybe 2 out of 10 nights. Then, occasionally an added night with 2 hours of sleep (by this time we had a sleep monitor), and so on.  I was starting to break the cycle and then I started to believe. Before that, I imagined that I was forever broken and would never, ever be able to function in any normal way.

 

That, of course, was my evil twin mind catastrophizing and sabotaging. Turns out those thoughts are all bullshit. Just like I did, your "miracle" will happen. Think of those anxious thoughts as another person that is trying to attack you. You would not let that happen without a fight. Maybe you will lose today's round. Come back tomorrow and fight again. You will (eventually) win.

Are you free from symptoms and back to life?

ScaredCat - totally free of symptoms. Sleeping well (for a few years now). Strong and active - I went to a concert last night in fact. Go to the gym regularly. Travel. Work. Complete recovery after 20 years of (high dose) benzos.

Thank you so much for coming back to share 🙏🏻