I rot. I cannot relax in my new place. I do not feel at home. But there is no other place that would feel completely like home now either. I have been rudderless and sick since I got back here. That was on February 2nd.
I am in more (emotional? spiritual? withdrawal?) pain than I can remember ever being in. I am more physically exhausted and sick than I have ever been as well.
I suffer. My therapist wrote a book on suffering. I’m reading it. The transformative power of suffering. But it talks about natural suffering and neurotic suffering and then transformative, transcendent suffering. Do withdrawal symptoms come under any of those headings? Or is this just suffering with no purpose. Suffering that makes you wither away and die?
Sometimes waves of weakness and fatigue come over me and I have to lay down immediately. It’s so clearly heavy toxicity and my brain crying foul. I cannot walk for more than 10 minutes. Sometimes I cannot walk at all. I am living, quite frankly, with chronic physical illness. And it’s an illness with no legitimacy. I cannot really tell anyone but my closest friends, and they only do their best to understand. Otherwise I have to make excuses. No legitimacy. None.
It’s after 3 in the morning and sleep does not come. I slept two days in a row before today—thought things were turning.
Today (or really yesterday) was the first day I spoke with any friend or family member since I’ve been here. I actually caught up with people today and spoke with about 3 people. I thought I was doing better. I speak to or see my husband everyday. We miss each other badly. We are starting to look for a house.
I need to be in town so I can see my therapist and I’ve also got hooked up with a yoga teacher who teaches yoga for mental health. She is using me as her internship project. So it’s free. Yoga twice a week. She says if I need to we can do stuff laying down. I could not do any of this if I were not in town. So I know it’s good that I’m here. I need some rehabilitation.
But right now I’m so sickened by my pathetic predicament I feel like vomiting. Don’t know how to go forward and there is no going back. This is, I guess, the Lamictal withdrawal catching up to me? Is it? I don’t know? I don’t fucking know anything.
How long? Can. I. Go. On. Like. This.
I am a walking ghost—stuck in the netherworld.
I don’t recommend this to anyone. Really. If you’ve been on drugs 20 years maybe you should just stay on them. If you’ve been on twice the recommended highest dose of several different meds for many years think hard and long about making a change of this nature. I can’t stop or go back. I’ve come too far, but I really don’t know if I would have done this had I known what I was in for. My life may have been problematic, but not nearly as problematic as it is now. Shit, I even hiked 3 hours a day several times a week before I started tapering. I had energy in spite of the sedation. I had a life. I saw friends. I ran errands. I helped take care of a large yard. I did chores. Now I do nothing.
My cats came back with me to town today. I spent the day at my house with my husband. He was working, but yesterday was his day off and we had a nice few hours together. We are learning to be with one another again. This I know is good. The only nice thing right now in this moment is that I have a cat sitting on my lap as I type. I love my cats. They are a little freaked out being in a new space. But they are where they belong with me. Something that belongs. Here with me. I’ve had my sweet critters 14 and 18 years. They feel like pieces of me. My dog stayed with my husband. I love her too, but she is too much of a handful for me to take care of right now and this way we both have animal companions while we are apart.
Would I have stayed healthier had I stayed in California, the home of my soul? 100,000 dollar question. It doesn’t even matter anymore. There is no going back there either. This is where I am. This is where I must deal. Reality.
You may feel stuck now, but this will pass eventually. It is hell for anyone going through it, but it does get better. I remember feeling hopeless for a good two years when I was doped up on psych drugs. I just pushed through it knowing that I can restore my health with persistence.
A good Vital Health book that I am reading right now that I would like to recommend to anyone seeking healthy alternatives is Detox and Revitalize: The Holistic Guide for Renewing Your Body, Mind and Spirit by Susana Belen, Founder of the We Care Holistic Health Spa in Desert Hot Springs, CA – http://www.wecarespa.com
In the book she mentions Dr. Mick Hall’s 5 Principles of Balanced Health:
1. Detox and Balance
2. Nutrition
3. Digestion
4. Exercise
5. Focused Attention
I still have a long way to go, but at least I’m working toward a goal.
B.E.
thank you for your kind words.
I don’t, however, ever think of “going back.” It’s not an option in my mind. I will stay still for a while though.
Also, I have to say, it seems that the really dark part of the last month happened when I was premenstrual. I’m actually much better today. I started my period yesterday.
I also realized I had stopped taking a supplement that is a gentle detoxifier that I’ve resumed since yesterday morning–that too has made a difference.
I think I’m going to be fine.
I will indeed have ugly dark times ahead, but this particular time is passing. It was the accumulative effect of several tapers in a short time, the stopping of an important supplement and PMS from hell that took me to the place where I wrote this piece.
I was feeling that bad for a whole month. It wasn’t a fleeting feeling, but I do think it’s past for the most part—this time around.
It was truly the ugliest time I’ve dealt with in decades.
I greatly appreciate your kind words B.E.
I’ll do a post in the next couple of days once I’m sure I’ve stabilized, but I can already tell the tide has turned.
Hi Gianna,
I am not going to assure you that everything will be fantastic and hunky dory or even ok. I don’t know that. I am not an expert and I have not successfully (as of yet) been through it but most importantly, I am not you. I feel the need to be real and clear on this point.
But the thing is, I think you are incredibly brave. Braver than most people. Possibly baraver than yourself even, in any other previous time in your life. You are also doing an experiment. You are doing a study of the human condition that will help the lives of other people who are suffering too. It is helping me. You are building an informational data base. You are an explorer. Not just with this venture, in general. With this you are exploring the universe of your being. You were doing the same when you went on these medications. You were doing it when you took hallucinogens. You are a venturous spirit seeking knowledge. But enough fortune cookie talk.. I know right now you are thinking of turning back. I have been there. in the middle of it. I went back. (for the time being). But the bottom line is, if you are like me at all, you will always wonder. I am worried about you though. I am wondering if you need some more intensive support. It will only make things go faster. Sometimes I think I could go and try this again on my own, but I have to remember my past experiences.
Anyway, as hopeless and horrific as you are undoubtedly feeling right now, I’d like you to know that you ARE serving a purpose -even now- going through this. It isn’t in vane.
And if you ever feel like you want or need to be back on meds, do not, I repeat: do not feel like you can’t because of this blog or because of anyone else. Its YOUR life. No one else is an expert in it, I don’t care how many certificates they have on their wall.
My thoughts are with you.
Let me know if there is anything I can do.
B.E.
what parts of your body do you massage Ametyst? It does sound lovely!
Thanks so much for your encouragement.
Thank you for sharing. You are in the midst of coming off drugs. Your sharing makes this blog what it is. For people coming off drugs the support you are giving is huge. You are going through so much – all huge stressors. Hang in there, credit yourself for what you have done and come through. Read your old blogs. Its just briallant what you have accomplised.
Write down all the positives, make a list of the things however small that make you feel good. Be gentle Foster an encouraging self, maybe hang some positives notes to yourself on the fridge or better still take some quotes from your spiritual passages and stick them around the house. I have recently started giving myself a massage in the morning before my meditation. I am using Almond Oil, it is a lovely way to wake up in the morning. After my meditation I have a shower. This practise was suggested to me by an ayuverdic practitioner. It is a lovely practise. Basically one is meant to wait 15 mins after the massage and then have a shower. Shampoo is used but no soap – you just let the water run over your body. Sorry I have gone on so long but you’ve got to hang in there – there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you so much Zoe and Cricket,
Some of the despair, though certainly not the physical weakness, is gone. I was at the height of premenstrual hell when I wrote that. Got my period yesterday. Will probably feel even a bit better in the next day or two. It always seems to take a couple of days into my period for the so called pre-menstrual shit to go away.
I suspect I won’t be staying in such a dark place consistently. But I do have this damn PMS so bad. I hope to attend to my hormones once off the drugs. Everything is so confused with the drugs and they mess with hormones too so it seems premature to try to straighten out the hormones just yet.
My perspective gets rather skewed when my hormones are out of whack. I’m sorry for that. Both for myself and for putting you all through it. You might think about that when I’m really going crackers—what time of the month is it?? I don’t always remember…or sometimes it just doesn’t seem to matter that the hormones are coloring everything.
Again thanks to everyone.
It break my heart to know how badly you feel. Know that you give a lot to others as you write about this journey to wellness. The yoga sounds wonderful and I’m glad your cats are with you. You are doing good things to take care of yourself.
Dear Gianna, Words really do fail to say how moved I am by your latest entries. It throws us into a sort of void of unknowing…such bottomless and apparently meaningless suffering. Like everyone else, I so want to offer some sort of comfort, some strength, best of all I wish I could give you your health back!
As it is I will just say thank you for the gift of your blog. You are such an inspiration. I cannot miss a single instalment, somehow, every development has come to matter to me so much! I am sure you would rather have your health than the blasted blog though!
You have got to be up for some sort of award for services to mental health! Although maybe you are too damn radical for that! Services to the blogosphere then!
Take care of your dear self honey. You really have such a rare gift of reaching out in humanity through this strange technological medium. I will be praying for you and putting you in my loving-kindness meditation! Love, Zoe.
thank you for writing this….
It’s nice to see you here, Pat. It always feels good knowing you’re in my corner. thank you.
Gianna,
I am with you in spirit. I too have been beaten and broken by psych drug withdrawal. I have felt that I lost everything when ativan withdrawal tore me apart. Sometimes I think about the physical and emotional devastation and wonder, will it ever be worth it? Will I ever recover? Will I ever be able to make something that resembles contentment in my life? Will I ever be able to live a day without thinking about ending it? But I have never gone back to being as sick as I was when I tried to rapidly withdrawal from the ativan. My MIND is recovering from that. Initially, I was devastated mentally, unable to function outside of my bed and I constantly thought of throwing myself out of the window there. I’ve read 2 1/2 books recently, a feat I was unable to accomplish for several years (after having been a lifelong avid reader). I don’t forget things as much. I don’t get instantly overwhelmed by the need to use mathematics. Sometimes something bad happens, like yesterday something bad happened, and I freak out, releasing adrenaline into my body, shaking and crying, but when that happens now, I calm myself within an hour or so. I still spend the day weak and tired, but I can calm MYSELF. These are small signs of recovery, but they ARE recovery. This journey we are both taking will make us stronger and better, YES it will. I am already more loving, more tolerant and a better listener than I was before. I know you are in the worst thick of it right now my friend, but believe and it will happen. Take your time in silence and breathe. Remember who you love and why, and who loves you and why. Don’t feel like you have to make any decisions about your life now, because you mustn’t. You must let yourself rest and recover and rediscover who you are.
I know you can do this.
Pat
I want to add that anger is an energy force, and we can channel it toward something positive. Just like anxiety. It’s how I got over my fear of public speaking, I used the energy from anxiety and channeled it out. I think when we get stuck–is when we hang onto the energies that drive us: fear, anxiety, panic, anger, sadness. Fear of change is a very real thing, and even when we want something better as a result.
ha Gianna, we are on a energy-driven wave length. Maybe we are psychic. How’s that for a topic? LOL
ha! I was reading it as you left this!
I wrote a post about you. 🙂
Gianna, thanks for your support for me and here I am back for you. Though we are on this journey based on choice, it does not make it easier. Ours are different stories, but choices created the position we are both in, and the end goal I think I can safely say we both wanted when we started, was a real and authentic life, with all of the love, fears, joys and emotions that come with a balanced life. Mostly, I know we just are sick of being miserable on the way there–to that goal.
I myself, cannot see my goal. I think you might be feeling this way too–it’s the in the middle part, the part where we work at it, and it becomes overwhelming. At times, in my situation, I see nothing good coming of my quest for a happy life. Where will I live? will I ever have friends? why have people died who I need now? what about my daughter? and finally, what will become of me? these are all honest questions, and we seek answers. All I can say is something that is difficult to embrace: persevere. Also, hope is a choice. We made a choice, so we can say Thank you for the ability to make a choice.
you know this thread is dominated by Brits….Keener, Sloopy, and my husband are all Brits!
I’m the odd woman out.
Hi, Gianna!
He sounds like a great husband and better still, a best friend.
He’s right too.
I left the home I loved and moved to this arse end of the world to be close to family, and I’ve loathed it, virtually from day one.
I’ve never felt I belonged to this community. It’s lonely, insular and isolated.
The only noteworthy event of this particularly gray Sunday, for example, was the air ambulance passing overhead! These days, excitement like that almost calls for an Ativan!
Yet in some ways, moving here has given me some space to think. Time to reflect on life, and how crap it truly is. But most importantly, time to recognise what I must do to remedy things.
I do like Keener’s insight into anger and its usefulness as an emotional counter-balance. Very Jungian! I see it as a crucial mechanism for building inner strength and determination. A process which typically leads to beneficial change. Love to hate, but hate the right things!
Regards,
Sloopy!
Sloopy,
You’re a doll, thanks. And of course I’ve said as much about the drugs being killers etc etc.
Thanks for a bit of a reality check. I still feel like crap though. Slept a whole hour.
🙂
Hi, Gianna!
Like allotmentjunkies, your words are very much appreciated, however despondent they seem at times. Excepting the agenda-driven shills, we all understand how it feels.
Many of us are in the same boat together. Pooling our experiences of the withdrawal process mitigates the traumas for each of us. So bravo to you!
“I don’t recommend this to anyone. Really. If you’ve been on drugs 20 years maybe you should just stay on them. If you’ve been on twice the recommended highest dose of several different meds for many years think hard and long about making a change of this nature.”
I fancy you will think very differently in 6 months, 12 months, and 10 years time. At each milestone, the reasons for quitting the neuro toxins will look ever clearer, ever more obvious. This is just an early milestone, from where the future still looks hazy.
There’s very good reason for everyone to quit psychiatric drugs. They ruin our brains and our bodies, riddling us with disease and dysfunction, and on an unprecedented scale for modern medicine.
Psychiatric drugs kill, shortening our lives by as much as 25 years, on average. Even the industry acknowledges that much.
I can’t stop or go back.I’ve come too far, but I really don’t know if I would have done this had I known what I was in for. My life may have been problematic, but not nearly as problematic as it is now.
Is life that problematic, or does it just seem so? Your loss of energy is doubtless a transient biochemical issue. Isn’t that the flu-like amotivational syndrome that Breggin documents at length in his books?
“Shit, I even hiked 3 hours a day several times a week before I started tapering. I had energy in spite of the sedation. I had a life. I saw friends. I ran errands. I helped take care of a large yard. I did chores. Now I do nothing.”
Perhaps because of your relentless mental energy, you’re pushing things a little too fast. You’re too eager to effect immediate change, tapering too quickly, and the consequence is an unpleasant discontinuation syndrome, etc. If so, it can’t persist indefinitely.
Besides, it is not as if you are actually doing “nothing”. You’ve just moved house, no small feat, and you are very dedicated to this extraordinary blog, something which many of us appreciate.
Best Wishes,
Sloopy!
and my husband said in an email to me (responding to this):
Some day you’re going to be able to look back and say this: If I’d stayed in California, I’d still have an OK life but would have spent the rest of it numbed by meds. Every few months, I would have needed to adjust the cocktail, switched an older drug for a newer drug and perpetually hoped to find just the right combination. But instead, I went to North Carolina and I went through misery and hell that I thought I never be released from. It took way too long, but eventually I came out the other side and I got my life back. It’s a life – not a psychiatric condition or the effect of a psychiatric drug cocktail – and now I’m living it. I feel pain, joy, sorrow, longing, disappointment, contentment, anxiety, impatience, strength, weakness, hope and occasionally despair, but now I know that this is the stuff life is made of and I love life more than any of its disguises.
pretty damn good husband, huh. Believes in me even when I can’t.
Keener,
I do stay away from the blog, or at least no one really knows what is going on when I feel really shitty much of the time, but I swore when I started it that I would be honest and tell the whole story. It’s not always easy. I imagine there are people out there reading this saying, oh she is simply sick, bipolar. Who is she kidding. I know I make myself vulnerable to people thinking or saying that. But over all I feel good when I express what I think and feel. It’s cathartic.
thank you for expressing appreciation for it. That too helps me continue blogging.
Hey Gianna
I’m so sorry to hear that life is such a battle for you at the moment.
Once again your honesty is appreciated. I shy away from my blog when I don’t feel that I can write anything positive, perhaps given a falsely rosy picture. But you are tackling all of the issues, the doubts and the fears and the grinding despair that drug withdrawal can foster. I thank you for that.
I often come to the same conclusion about my life in general: “This is where I am. This is where I must deal. Reality.” It is sometimes in an angry and bitter tone that I say this to myself, as I turn away from memories of my old life. I find anger rather than regret and despair a more productive motivator at times, when that is all I have left n the pot.
I hope writing your blog has not become a burden. I hope ‘this’ passes soon. But most of all I truly wish you peace gianna.
keener
x