Tag Archives: medication

Hills and Valleys

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Photo by Kristin Kokkersvold via Flicker Creative Commons

Photo by Kristin Kokkersvold via Flicker Creative Commons

The rollercoaster ride that is my life just got a lot wilder. A week and a half ago I took the plunge. I finally stopped taking Temazepam, which I had tapered very slowly over the course of 2 years.  The dose of medication I was taking when I quit was miniscule: 1/4 of a milligram.  Some nights I’m sure that even though I dutifully took my dose, the drop of water I consumed actually contained no medication.  It was time to quit this nonsense.  You would think that after a two-year turtle-taper down to a tiny pinch of powder, finally coming off would be anticlimactic. That’s what I thought.  Apparently I was wrong.

My body knows something is missing.  My muscles tighten around my head and neck like they are trying to perform a facelift without surgery.  Sometimes I feel like my head is full of helium, that it’s about to launch itself into the stratosphere.  And with the helium-head comes a feeling of altered perception you would have to experience to understand.  Some people say it’s like a bad acid trip.  I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never taken acid.  It really bothers me, though, that I know how that feels.

And the pain!  In an earlier post I wrote that I felt that I had been abused and beaten in my benzo prison.  The pain is why.  Searing nerve pain that darts across my chest and makes me afraid to breath.  A tight ache in my jaw that never goes away.  And hatchet-head.  That’s my nickname for the migraines.

I don’t like revisiting these symptoms.  It scares me.

So, I cope with techniques that I learned long ago when I suffered much more than I do now.  I use the good old affirmations, the same ones that pulled me out of my darkness back then.  I stretch and walk and meditate.  I breath.  I stop the mosquito-like negative thoughts that threaten to pull me into a pit of mental suffering.  I love on my kids, my sweet pup, and my husband.  I write and write, sometimes fast and furious, sometimes slowly and thoughtfully.  I take deep gulps of lilac scented spring air.  Yes, I will be fine.

And sometimes I really am fine.  Sometimes I’m on the crest of a hill instead of in a dark valley.  Sometimes I can’t help but grin, tears of joy making tracks down my cheeks.  I’m free!  It’s Spring and I have my whole drug-free life ahead of me.  It will be a good one, I know.

My Story

How I Slew the Benzo Beast and What I Learned in the Process

Metamorphosis

 

 

 

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Challenging the Status Quo

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Challenging the Status Quo

In 2009, my friend Leonie’s 22-year-old son Shane killed himself and another young man after taking Citalopram for 17 days.

Shane is the kind of son every mother dreams of. A student at prestigious Trinity College in Dublin, he was devoted to his younger brothers and sister, regularly gave money and the clothes off his back to homeless people, didn’t drink or smoke and was kind, handsome, gentle and much loved by his family, friends and college professors.

The media storm was immense. How could such a normal young man, from such a good family do this? How could his mother attribute his suicide and killing of another to a drug taken without incident by millions of people around the world? How could his inquest find that Citalopram affected his mind to such an extent that he was incapable of forming the intent to kill himself or another, and return an open verdict?

How could Shane’s mother not crawl under a rock reciting the rosary and hanging her head in shame for what her son had done?

Self Betrayal

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There is something for which I need to publicly apologize to myself.  There was a time when I was so ill because of chemical sensitivities that I could not sleep.  Lots of people can keep going physically on very little sleep.  Where we suffer the most, however, is mood.  I lost so much sleep that I fell into a brutal depressive state.  I knew what was wrong with me.  I just needed to sleep.  And my body needed a break from toxic chemicals.  Many of my family and friends, however, were convinced that I had gone off the deep end and was in serious need of psychiatric help.  To their credit, it’s hard to blame them.  They just wanted my suffering to end.

Eventually, because I was so miserable and felt so much pressure, I caved in and began to concede that, yes, I was merely a severely depressed hypochondriac who needed meds right away.  I said it even though I didn’t believe it.  I said it because I was in desperate need of love and support, and it seemed that the only way I was going to get that was if I denied what I knew deep inside.  I betrayed myself to the point of admitting myself into the hospital for depression although my intuition was telling me that it was the worst possible place for me.

My intuition had been correct.  The hospital experience was nightmarish to the extreme.  On the night when I first tried Risperdal, an antipsychotic, I had a dream.  I saw a capsule being pulled apart and granules from inside the capsule spilling down in a shower as a voice spoke the words “this is not a way to live, this is a way to die.”  My mind was desperately trying to communicate with me, and it was too late for me to pay heed to it.  I was incarcerated in a place where pills are the only way out.

The day after I had the dream, I had a very dangerous reaction to the Effexor with which my doctor was experimenting.  I began to feel extremely light-headed and sick.  I assumed my blood sugar was off, so the nurse tested it and it was perfectly normal.  She then tested my resting heart-rate.  It was a whopping 160 beats per minute.  Shortly after that, I scared my fellow patients with a strange episode which I never reported to the doctor.  It felt like a seizure.  Obviously, taking any more Effexor was out of the question.

I had two doctors and at least one counselor confirm what my intuition had told me from the beginning: I should never have gone to the hospital.  It was not a place for me.  Medication simply does not help me, it only hurts.  I had never really been a danger to myself.  I just needed to sleep.

So, to myself I say this: I am so very sorry!  Next time I will try to listen.

The rest of the story:

Chemical Madness