TONY'S STORY: Healed after Valium withdrawal

[WebDevElijah]

TONY'S STORY:

 

 

In 2001, I went to my doctor complaining of indigestion and gastric reflux. He did all sorts of tests but couldn’t find anything wrong. He said it was due to anxiety and prescribed Ativan. It seemed to help in the beginning, but then I began to feel ill all the time. He told me to stay on it and increased the dose. I still didn’t feel any better. I started having panic attacks, couldn’t sleep properly, and other side effects that I didn’t like. By the time I came on the internet, I had been on it for 6+ years.

 

I found this site when it was called Benzo-Wise and contacted Bliss Johns. She said she couldn’t give me advice but told me to get hold of a copy of something called the Ashton Manual, take it to my doctor, and discuss what could be done. She said if I decided to taper to make sure I didn’t rush it and that I was comfortable with how I was reducing.

 

Anyway, I tapered over to Valium, staying at six weeks for each dose as I reduced. I had problems—the classic symptoms that tend to appear—some scary and some I could live with. I would feel my adrenaline rush, would pace up and down, and I was in pain most of the time. I mean everywhere, and sometimes it would travel around.

 

My hearing, vision, tasting, smelling—all my senses were distorted. My memory left me. I could not think or make sense of anything, and I was scared of everything. I felt like I had gone completely crazy. I don’t want to scare you by writing everything that happened, so let’s just say it was so frightening it would have made a horror movie seem like a romantic comedy. The nightmare continued for around 10 months, and all this time I didn’t have any windows.

I was very worried and wrote to Bliss every single day saying I wouldn’t get better, and she would reassure me. Every day she reassured me and told me to keep holding on. I kept the Benzo-Wise book under my pillow to read because most nights I hardly slept. It was difficult not having windows. My agitation was so bad I couldn’t focus on anything.

 

Never meditating in my life, I gradually started breathing exercises and would listen to meditation CDs, Buddhist and Hindu chants, and similar stuff. I was very agitated, so sometimes I would be pacing while listening. It was weird but helped me a lot. Sometimes a line from one of the chants or meditations would stick in my head and replace the repetitive thoughts I was having. That was powerful and helped me to cope better.

 

I also started telling myself positive things like I was getting better and that I was healing. Even when I didn’t believe it and was feeling like hell, I would say it until I believed it. I printed off the emails from Bliss and read them over and over. In the book, it talked about what you focus on magnifies, so I didn’t research any benzo stuff or compare notes. Sometimes I would give in and lurk on a forum, but I mostly protected myself from anything I felt would not help me.

 

At the beginning of the eleventh month off, I noticed the symptoms going one by one. Within two weeks, most of them were gone. They never returned. Bliss asked me to tell my story because those of us who heal quickly disappear, and this is why there are so many stories about long withdrawals. LOL, true!

So here I am telling anyone who hasn’t tapered yet that it is possible to get better early o’clock. But even if it’s taking longer, man, we all get there in the end. If I could give one bit of advice, it would be to try one or two breathing exercises. I swear this is what helped me to calm down. Breathing is not meditating. It’s the one thing we must do to stay alive, and something as simple as noticing it going in and out of the nostrils is pretty powerful.

 

 

Withdrawal is scary, but in the end, we kick it, we survive, and we win.