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Head, face, jaw, teeth pain & pressure


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Hi,

 

I am 3 months and 3 weeks benzo free and having the same thing. I was doing well until the last few days and have seemed to have had an increase in my symptoms. I have been doing the salt water rinse for my head and sinus pressure and that seems to help a little. Hope you feel better soon.

 

birdie

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Hi,

 

I still have this at six months out, but it is no longer constant. It did go away for a while, several weeks, and then it returned with lesser intensity. It is pretty common in benzo withdrawal.

 

TC

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Thank you birdie & TC!  I will start using a Neti pot to see if that helps.  Tylenol helps some but I would rather not take it.
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the jaw tightness/pain/pressure i experience sometimes is so severe that i cannot open my mouth to chew or talk. i've been unable to eat at all for a day or two b/c of this.  also my teeth and gums hurt and this makes it painful to even brush my teeth.  sometimes my head pressure is very severe, usually the ringing in my ears is ridiculous when it's really bad, my ears pop non stop and usually also my neck and back muscles are super tight when this happens. one thing that has let up, is that my face no longer feels like it's turning to stone.  and it's so weird b/c that was such a huge problem for so many months, now i can't even remember what that really felt like. except it was God awful. then again, so is what i'm experiencing now.  it all effin sucks.
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the jaw tightness/pain/pressure i experience sometimes is so severe that i cannot open my mouth to chew or talk. i've been unable to eat at all for a day or two b/c of this.  also my teeth and gums hurt and this makes it painful to even brush my teeth.  sometimes my head pressure is very severe, usually the ringing in my ears is ridiculous when it's really bad, my ears pop non stop and usually also my neck and back muscles are super tight when this happens. one thing that has let up, is that my face no longer feels like it's turning to stone.  and it's so weird b/c that was such a huge problem for so many months, now i can't even remember what that really felt like. except it was God awful. then again, so is what i'm experiencing now.  it all effin sucks.

I can't believe you said "your face turning to stone." I was trying to describe a terrible symptom to my mother and I said it feels like my whole face is cement. If my head fell off it would shatter like a clay pot. It feels like cement. I would get this a lot like the rest. Still get the others but not the teeth, gums, for quite some time and not the stone face but only since last week.
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I have been plagued with these symptoms too except that brushing my teeth and chewing gives me a temporary lessening of the problem.  I can also lessen it by chewing gum but the discomfort comes roaring back when I stop so I don't chew gum.  If any of you are on AD medication (esp Zoloft) you might be grinding your teeth at night.  This is a side effect of those drugs.  I'm using a mouth-guard at night which my dentist made for me.  This has really improved those symptoms for me (not eliminated but lessened).
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im at 1 month off 2mg Ativan (3+yrs). symptons seem to change almost daily except the lingering numbness, sometimes pain in my left temple.

 

It started out with a throb in my left temple 2 weeks ago. Left temple mostly numb feeling for most the day now.

Yesterday i developed a more severe pain in my right temple that comes and goes.

 

Anxiety that sympoms are something other (i.e. brain tumor). Not having fun.

 

not to hijack the thread, but wondering if this sounds familiar to anyone?

 

(p.s. - i know now that 1 month free is not much time. withdrawals strated 3 months ago when i started to decrease dosage)

 

thanks

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I have had these sx: head,  face, jaw, teeth pain & pressure for 2 months. I am in tolerance withdrawal & trying to stabilize. Hope you all feel better soon :) 
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I'm really glad to have stumbled across this thread. I've been off xanax for just over 6 months now and this has been an ongoing problem since before I even started tapering, I started noticing it when I developed tolerance and started having withdrawl without even knowing it. The jaw and tooth pain and head pressure were some of the first symptoms I had appear in the beginning and also I don't know if this is similar to what some had described as there head feeling like stone, but I found the same thing and I just couldn't get comfortable, everything I even rested my head on felt hard like stone.

In the past few months I've seen a significant improvement in my symptoms overall but the jaw pain and head pressure seem to go on forever, they never let up and it's driving me crazy, I've compared the pain before as having my head and jaw put in a vice grip and having it squeezed tighter and tighter by the minute and it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore. I've also been getting allot of sinus, head and ear preassure with ringing in my ears and sometimes it makes me feel like my head is building up to explode.

 

Thanx for starting this thread, it seems to be a common problem throughout withdrawl for allot of people.

I'm hopping it get's better for every one soon.

 

Kc Lee

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wantoff,

I know that aside from being related to ads, that teeth grinding and clenching is also a side effect of being on the benzos and being in withdrawal as well...my jaw has been so tight at times, that is clatters - like, it vibrates uncontrollably. i have a custom made (read-expensive!) night guard that i'm having problems with. it's causing me pain and not fitting properly and i'm going in to the dentist today to have yet another adjustment made. talk about anxiety provoking. meanwhile, i did enormous damage to my teeth, they are all worn down and flat in the back, from the years i was on ativan. i was CONSTANTLY clenching my teeth when i was on the drug. also during my valium taper, as well. and now with the jaw tightness i'm having, it's really stressing me out big time.

bigme, what you're experiencing sounds totally normal for benzo w/d.

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Jestan and other Buddies,

 

My mouth and gum pain is not 100% of the time.  It generally subsides in the evening.  I also feel pressure over the bridge of my nose and my sinuses (sort of like the "stone face" some of you have written about).  Today I hurt pretty much the whole day.

 

My mouth guard does help.  Jestan, get your DDS to refit yours if possible.  For all you may clench during the day (when you're awake and can stop yourself) when you grind in your sleep there's no conscious limit.  Like you my teeth are worn down.  This is actually my worst physical WD symptom.  Through all my years (7) of low dose Clonazepam (and I never took more than 1 mg/day) I've been having this symptom and seeing various experts and no one suggested that being on low dose Clonazepam might be the culprit.

 

Hang in there - surely this subsides as the good old Gaba's recover!

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Glad I saw this, wondering why my jaw had started hurting this afternoon.

Kind of feels better if i push on my jaws right below my ears.

 

In second day of cut.

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hi wantoff,

thanks for your reply..it does help to know i'm not alone with this (damage that i've done) it's a hard thing to reconcile. i did have a good dentist apt today, she saw what the problem was and made the adjustment. i'll wear it tonight and see if it feels any better. if i don't have to take it out during one of the many times i'll be sure to wake up during the night, then it's a good sign.  yeah, hopefully one day this symptom will be over as well...it's amazing to think that pre benzo withdrawal i never had this AWARENESS of my mouth that i've been living with now for months.  i cannot remember what it felt like to be blissfully unaware.

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My w/d kicked off a slew of problems with my jaws, teeth and ears (and MUCH more).  in addition to the horrible tinitus, I developed TMJ and a toothache.  Naturally my dentist said I needed a crown..... which did nothing for the pain.  So a few months later, she re-did the crown thinking something was wrong with it.  My tooth continued to throb for several more moths so I was advised to have a root canal.... which I reluctantly did.  This brought me NO relieve either.  Finally, after about 8 months of throbbing tooth pain from hell ... I had the frigging tooth pulled.  And guess what?!

 

Go ahead, guess.....

 

I still had pain in the exact same spot where the tooth was.  I was mortified at the realization that I had a tooth pulled for nothing.  It was, after all, merely a withdrawal symptom from the lousy benzos.  Charming little story, huh?  I got a million of 'em.

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ugh!  tmak!  i am so sorry.  well, i have had tons of tests of all kinds trying to figure out what was wrong with me only to come to the same conclusion.  the good news is that we are healing every moment and eventually we will feel incredible and have no more sxs popping up.  here's to hope!  :)
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You're exactly right, Ashlandana, the pain is a sign that the demons are being expelled.  I can't quite embrace the pain yet but I didn't have this pre-benzo so I'll likely not have it post-benzo recovery.  What I will have is a lot less healthy enamel on my teeth because of years of grinding.  Sometimes, when I'm by myself, I wear my mouth guard during the day.
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TMAK-  i had heard/read that people have teeth pulled during this process, in hopes of seeking relief from the pain. i think it's in the ashton manual? so..know that you are not alone. and i maybe didn't get a tooth pulled, but like wantoff, i have done so much damage to my teeth and worn the enamel down, worn my teeth flat, etc.  i get very fixated on this sometimes and it causes me a lot of anxiety and distress. i have to remind myself that i get to have my life back and i need to accept my body in whatever state it happens to be in, when this is all over.
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yes jestan, we do get fixated on all the things happening to us while healing.  and that's the way we have to think of it-- all part of the healing process.  i drove myself nuts monitoring all the bizarre body sensations of withdrawal.  this is how we end up in the doctor's office getting tests done for the multitude of symptoms that are common to withdrawal.  i really hated that hyper-aware state that lasted for a long, long time.  i still have issues.  the trick is to be able to discern between real medical conditions and symptoms of withdrawal.
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