Total and complete 100% success after 22 months

[[Buddie]]

Very encouraging to read. Can relate, thx. Been off 3 weeks and happy about that. [...] to things [...] and better! Not worse and worse.

[[Buddie]]

Thank you [...]. I’m 21 days into my taper from Alprazolam. I thought reading success stories would help me through this phase of symptoms. It was hard reading your side effects, but enlightening to see that there is a [...] after these awful meds. I am so happy you got your [...] back. That’s my goal too. Thank you for inspiring me to keep going.

[[Buddie]]

I’m sure you don’t come on here anymore..but I’m nine months off and in a set back and this really gave me [...]. Thank you so much.

[[Buddie]]

Best thing I have ever read.

[[Buddie]]

I have read so many success stories where the person says, I still have a few symptoms but am basically doing fine now. So I wanted to write mine. I have no symptoms at all. I am 100% back to normal, maybe better.
Through all of it I was [...] for some kind of insight into the meaning of [...]. I thought of ending my suffering so many times but refused to give up because my adult kids still needed someone, even if it was only to talk on the phone once a month. I think I have, however, found greater happiness than before. I appreciate small things like the taste of food, rain, cooking, giving my very old dog a massage. He can’t walk anymore but he can stand so I carry him into the backyard, wait for him to go, then carry him back inside. I would have considered euthanasia before, but I have a new appreciation for [...] now and he still wags his tail and enjoys French fries so I want him to have as much time as possible.
My speed of thought has increased tenfold in the last two months. My memories are now back and don’t come fluttering out of nowhere like a deck of cards thrown in the [...]. My word recall is just as fast, maybe faster, than it was before. I’m no longer sad, or worried, or think about all that’s wrong in the world.
I started Klonopin about 10 years ago at .5mg per [...] for restless legs syndrome. Gradually I worked my way up to between 3 and 5mg per day. I started having bladder pain and urination problems and asked all the doctors if the Klonopin could be the cause. They all said no and gave me bladder pain drugs and Flomax and said all men my age develop those problems (I was 50). Nothing helped and it continued to get worse. I read everything I could and decided it was a side effect of the drug. I didn’t believe I had overactive bladder and benign prostate metaplasia simultaneously. My options were surgery or quitting the drug so I quit. I tapered for about three months and lost patience, then quit altogether 22 months ago.
Basically everything got worse and worse for about the first three months then leveled off at six months and I didn’t really start making progress until about a year to 18 months. [...]’t remember all the symptoms but a few include: Feeling like a time traveler, feeling like I was outside the flow of humanity, obsessive thoughts, constant suicidal ideation, I didn’t sleep at all or in 20 minute periods for about six months. I am not religious in any way, nor do I believe in spirits, or anything remotely supernatural, yet I often felt pursued by a machine-like intelligence that enjoyed making me suffer. I felt like the world had turned evil, most people were bad, I often felt like I was tethered to a string, floating in space high above my body.
I had partial seizures where I would suddenly lose consciousness, then wake up a few minutes later and not know who I was, or if five minutes or a thousand years had passed. I felt like I had to urinate 24 hours a day and had severe pain. I would go the bathroom every ten minutes but it always felt like I had to go. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t but it always hurt. I had spontaneous bleeding through the skin on my shoulders and chest. I guess that’s where the term sweating blood comes from.
I had the typical stuff too: incredible stomach distention, constant itching, my face would bleed when I shaved, my scalp itched, severe joint and back pain, blinding headaches, pins and needles in every part of my body. If often felt like my face was going to explode. My eyes watered constantly and stung and itched. My sinuses would swell and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I had constant heart palpitations and my blood pressure would go to 240/160. I couldn’t watch movies – everything looked like a really bad high school play. I rarely read books, although I previously read up to four or five books a week. I hated music. I would have watery diarrhea followed by what looked like aquarium gravel. My teeth hurt so much and so often they felt like they were all loose. It was hard to eat because of the pain.
I had crying spells that would last ten hours. I envied other people who weren’t going through what I was. I had always tried to be a good person and I wondered why I was being tortured so horribly. My emotions would cycle from profound sadness to anger to extreme anxiety to hopelessness to complete out-of-body experiences that felt like I was spread across the Universe like the surface of a soap bubble. I felt like I was living in an old black and white Twilight zone in a ghost town where tumbleweeds rolled across the dusty streets and you could hear the creaking of the barroom doors swinging in the [...].
I would suddenly get searing pain like a sword had been stuck through my back, or a thumbtack driven into my knee. Those are all gone.
I couldn’t read the credit card swipe machines and had trouble filling my car with gas. My memories were often so unreal I wondered if they really happened at all. Even around 18 months I was convinced I had permanent brain damage and would [...] be the same.
I could list another hundred symptoms but you all know them. My point is that it has all gone. I feel smarter, happier, and wiser than I have in ten years. I have no anxiety at all. I laugh to myself at silly things, I love people more than ever, I feel connected to every living thing. I think I have actually achieved the wisdom I searched for all my [...].
The last symptoms to go were extreme exhaustion and apathy. My depression lifted at around 18 to 20 months but I didn’t care anymore about anything and all I wanted to do was sleep. I still had [...] bizarre nightmares right up to about a month ago but those are now gone too.
My interest in work has returned. My sense of humor and wit has returned. My bladder works perfectly. No headaches, my teeth don’t hurt, my skin doesn’t itch; even my shoulder, knee and back no longer bother me at all. I feel competent once again. [...] see better. [...] multitask. [...] make instant decisions. Even the texture of my hair and skin has changed dramatically.
I was taking seven different pills a day for blood pressure and now I’m down to one. My blood pressure is normal. I had gained 50 pounds and I’ve lost 30 of them in the last two months. My stomach no longer looks like I swallowed a basketball and I no longer have nausea or the spins.
[...] drink coffee again. I have an occasional glass of wine and [...] eat anything without being worried it’s going to result in an anxiety attack or crying spell.
Right up to two months ago I would wake up and wonder if I could make it through another day. Now I wake up happy and eager to get to my list of things to do.
Concentrate on the symptoms that are better or you no longer have. Don’t think about what is still wrong. Compare yourself with six months ago and you can see the difference. If you concentrate on the symptoms you still have it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress. Between 18 and 20 months I was on autopilot. I just kept going, feeling like it would [...] completely go away and I would [...] be the same again. I had come to terms with that, and then a month later realized that I was beginning to want to do things again. I noticed my speed of thought was increasing weekly and my cognitive precision was back. My memories are now back in order and I am able to recall them in vivid detail, but now they have time tags on them and no longer just pop up randomly.
Physically and mentally I feel as good or better than I have in ten years. I have recovered completely and have no lingering effects. My success story has no qualifiers. It has been 22 months and I’m like new.
For some reason, 12 to 18 months was the most difficult. I think it’s because you’re so exhausted and feeling hopeless. After 18 months it begins to get better but you feel like you’ll [...] be the way you were before, that there will always be some lingering symptoms. For me it began to really accelerate at around 20 months. I could tell I was beginning to get better but I had given up on being the person I once was.
I have been waiting to write this until I was positive I was completely healed.
I am.
Thank you everyone for all your help and support during the last two years. It made all the difference to know I wasn’t alone. Neither are you. You will get better. I promise.

Thank you for this post. I'm hanging by a thread grasping for reasons to keep myself alive.
Your healing is a [...] line for so many others.

[[Buddie]]

Thank you for your post. Your story gives me so much [...]. I have 1 year 25 days [...] free. I do have some good partial days here and there. Usually when I do it is in the afternoon. Sometimes when I hear something that inspires me. Sometimes out of the blue. The thing that bothers me most is when I feel good everything seems possible. This feeling lingers for a while then I start to feel fragile, like the wave is coming on. That sucks so bad!!! No one understands. People are tired of my tired ass. I’m 6’1” 220lb fragile man? I’ve [...] felt so much like a little boy in my adult [...] as I do now.

You should be so proud of yourself. For me anyway, this is the hardest thing so far in my [...] that I have ever been through. No question about it. I’ve been through quite a bit in my [...]. This is the worst. On top of it, I have to cope with all the things I didn’t cope with while on Klonopin. Such a horrible drug!!!!

Thank you once again for your post!

[[Buddie]]

I’m sure you don’t come on here anymore..but I’m nine months off and in a set back and this really gave me [...]. Thank you so much.

Riley Jax, how are you feeling now? Are you past the set back?