Total and complete 100% success after 22 months

I love your success story, lostdog and yes!, thank you, windwalker for bringing it back.  It really made me laugh---mirthlessly!----when you described the ghost town and the tumbleweed and the saloon door swinging in the breeze---fantastic---just the way I often feel!  I, too, will be returning to read again as I go along what you have so beautifully written.  Thank you and Happy Trails!  I'm assuming you're more like Roy Rogers now, confidently riding the range.

Bumping this wonderful success story. I think we can all do with some good news... 

 

So deeply grateful, Lostdog, for your post. Always. You'll never know how much this one means to so many of us every day.

Great and hope filled testimony. 25 years on Zoloft and K. 13 months off Zoloft, 4 months off K. been cutting and holding for 2 years.....slow slow slow and slower. Horror is not the word. 33 years off booze and it was no where close to what these two "medications" ended up doing to me. Congratulations and enjoy the rest of your're new life. I'm 64 and just retired 12 months ago. I hope I can start enjoying life again. 

 

Dang Lostdog

This is one of the very best S.S. On here♥️

I’ve read it serveral times.

Prior to my healing it gave me such hope and even to this day,

it’s enlightening and wild all at the same time. Almost like a on the edge of your seat exciting movie  ♥️

Thx for your words 😁😁

 

Pacodoo ♥️

Thank you!!! Congratulations!!!

 

 

Just wanted to leave a big THANK YOU Lostdog!!! You've made my last couple of days better and given many of us some much needed hope. 

 

Question to our body Lostdog. Are you still symptoms free? Or did you write your success story just to find out later on that it's not over yet?!

Question to our body Lostdog. Are you still symptoms free? Or did you write your success story just to find out later on that it's not over yet?!

 

This was one of his last posts, written 13 months after his SS (one of my favorites, esp now as

I'm nearing 20 months free    )

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=84857.msg1482633#msg1482633

lostdog,

 

Thank you for sharing your story. It brings me hope every day. I wish you all the best.

wow. so glad you made it.What a journey! I love the way you describe your symptoms. It really is that weird I know coz I'm still going through it.Sounds like you've been to hell and back, danced with the devil and survived and returned to life. thanks for sharing and caring about others.

That!.....is an incredible and inspiring success story! I hope all is still well with you, lostdog! Thanks for sharing your story!

I absolutely love this story and the way it's written. I can taste your love and new connection with life.

Thank you for sharing. Stay well for ever.

Love,

Lucy

I truly needed this today as I am in that hopeless place. But reading your life journey and healing, gives me hope.

Thank you for sharing! I wish you all the best!!

Lost dog.....I read your success story almost every week. It has been a close friend to me in these times. I have come to your success story post for comfort in my darker hours without fail. When nothing else was there, this was. Thank you for this thoughtful and detailed post. thank you for emphasizing that your healing had no qualifications and for waiting until you were 100% healed to write it. That insight has meant all the difference to me when deciding if my situation was really hopeless or not. Your post has been a light that keeps the darkest thoughts at bay. Again thank you. I felt it was time to show some appreciation after my 1000th visit to this shrine of hope. I hope if you ever see this message it is after a fulfilling day of living and enjoying life again.

 

Cheers

 

Pinky

wow what a journey. I'm glad you have recovered. thanks for sharing

This post gave me chills! Amazing. This was everything I needed right now. All these symptomps is trying to take over right now, almost 7 months off, and I am totally hopeless. Not anymore.

 

Thank you so much. Life is beautiful.

 

I love you all.

This was everything I needed right now. All these symptoms is trying to take over right now, almost 7 months off, and I am totally hopeless. Not anymore.

 

[...] Life is beautiful.

 

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

This is one of my absolute favourite success stories, I can mirror myself so clearly in everything and it givesme hope again and again whenever I'm stuck "I'll never heal" limbo.

I'm 18 months out 5th of May and I'm currently in that limbo at this very moment, and it sucks.

Thank you again and again for your story and I hope life is treating you well and sun is shining on your soul. 🎈❤️

I come and read this success story every single time I have a bad day. I am 12 month and 3 days off and I still feel horrible. Story's like this gives me hope. Thank you so much for posting this.

This is one of my absolute favourite success stories, I can mirror myself so clearly in everything and it givesme hope again and again whenever I'm stuck "I'll never heal" limbo.

I'm 18 months out 5th of May and I'm currently in that limbo at this very moment, and it sucks.

Thank you again and again for your story and I hope life is treating you well and sun is shining on your soul. 🎈❤️

 

At 18minths have you started having clearer windows yet? I’m at ten months and I haven’t experienced any, which is leading me to believe that I might have done some permanent damage to myself.

Had to revisit this one! Always gives me hope!

Thanks. I am in the middle of month 14 and just exhausted from it all. Feels very isolating as no-one can possibly understand what this is like except those that have gone thru it. Feels like whining if you do complain to others as it has been so long. They get fatigue from hearing it. So tired. Sleep is back to horrible. Depression is high. Ugh.

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 hoping for some kind of insight into the meaning of life. 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 life 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 wind. 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 night 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. I can’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 wind.

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 never 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 life.

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 pretty 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. I can see better. I can multitask. I can 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.

I can drink coffee again. I have an occasional glass of wine and I can 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 never completely go away and I would never 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 never 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.

 

I  love this so much I am printing it off and will read it daily. Thank you from my innermost soul.

Bump

Wow I needed to read this today. I am at the beginning of my taper and don’t  know how I will

Make it through.

Bella