Glad to be in the community.

Glad that I found this group along with The Ashton Manual. Currently 3 weeks in from a quick taper from 1mg of KP for 5 years. Hopefully I can read some things to ease my mind, found myself in the ER after the second week for an overnight stay due to upper abdomen and chest pains all to be checked out OK.

Hello Want-To-Stop, welcome to BenzoBuddies,

 

I'm sorry to hear you ended up in the ER, those symptoms can be painful and scary, but glad to hear you checked out okay.  How long was your taper, we typically suggest reducing by about 5-10% every couple of weeks in order to stay functional.

 

How are you feeling now, it takes a long time to recover from our benzo use but we'll help you through it.

 

I'll provide some links but please let us know how we can help you.

 

Pamster

 

Colorado Consortium Benzodiazepine Deprescribing Guidelines

 

Post-withdrawal Recovery Support

 

 

Hi Pamster, thanks for the warm welcome! I'm so thankful that I stumbled upon this place community packed with testimonials and information to help with the process. I was on 1mg of KP daily at bedtime for sleep, never abusing. My provider informed me that they would no longer be giving it to me so I had about a 30 or so day supply left and I began then on cutting back. I started taking .5mg and eventually started skipping days until I got to where I would go 3 to 4 days until I was out. I didn't have any bad WD's during this time, it wasn't until day 16 that I got to the point that I was in so much pain that I HAD to know for myself that it wasn't a heart attack or something serious. Yesterday was a really good day, the pain subsided and I was able to sleep in the bed with my wife for the first time in a couple of weeks. Today started off really good and we spent the morning out in town doing things only to start feeling like death again this evening. The abdomen and chest pain set back in along with the face numbness and shallow breathing, stiff shoulders and neck. The part that really worried me for a few was that my head started feeling really tight and just weird and we tend to throw ourselves into our own diagnosis out of fear and I thought that I had just had a stroke or something of the like. I had to calm myself and get on here while waiting approval and read some different testimonials as it helps seeing everyone else's same issues. I'm just continually praying and thanking God that I am getting better and can put this chapter behind me! Look forward to learning what I can to help myself as well as others that my need someone in their time of despair.

I'm glad you did some reading and it calmed you down, I quit cold turkey and had no idea what was happening to me, I thought I'd been poisoned. 

 

Your symptoms will wax and wane, sometimes morphing into other ones, sometimes going away for good but this takes a long time so try to learn as much as you can so you won't fear so much because believe it or not, fear is one of our symptoms!

 

I'm glad you've had some good moments, we call those windows but when that window closes, we're stuck in a wave and well, you already know what those feel like! 

 

Keep looking around and make yourself at home, we're here to let you know you're going to be okay even if your poor brain is telling you otherwise.