Knackered Sorts Suffering with Benzos

   Hey there, Knackered here.  Those of us who have signed on as members of the BB support group belong to a sub culture of humanity that no one would volunteer to be a member of.  There are perks, of course:  chatting, supporting and gaining as much or more from those we interact with has to come right up there at the top. We have a front row seat into articles, u tube vignettes, and research that can help us navigate a path through our experience of withdrawal.

   With all that going for us, there is always the downside of physical and emotional suffering that we must endure on a continual basis.  There is much we can do to abate this.  Nutrition, exercise, sleep hygiene and meditation all have a role in helping us along.

   Inevitably though, it appears that we’re left ultimately on our own and must face the fact that there’s ‘no way through it than to do it’.  And that leaves us to the task of somehow dealing with ongoing, extreme discomfort.

   Before we render our situation hopeless, we should look at those who have paved a life in spite of the suffering that history has forced them to endure.  One of those that stands out is Jewish Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl.

   Frankl was a victim of circumstance and the time in history in which he lived. An Austrian psychiatrist, and neurologist, he specialized in the treatment of suicidal patients.  During the Nazi reign of terror he lived as a resident in four separate concentration camps. By the end of WWII he would return home to find that he had lost both father, mother, and his wife as victims of that time.

   Losing everything left Frankl to his own search for meaning even in the presence of suffering, loss and the unavoidable distress of human life. From all this, his first book, Man’s Search for Meaning, published in 1959, remains as one of the most important books that a person should read during their lifetime.

   Rather than lace his audience with platitudes of positive thinking and influential techniques for improving your life, his approach was one of “making sense of the question of life’s meaninglessness.’

   Eschewing even the Declaration of Independence’s claim of the ‘right to pursue happiness’, he put forth the notion that the obstacles in life were the path of life.  His therapy sought not to promise people happiness, but to help them deal with the real life and its unavoidable hassles.

   His work with patients taught them that when “we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.’

   Even though we have the benefit of science, support from friends and fellow travelers along our communal path, we must face the fact that yes, we’re going to face (are already facing!) the inevitability of physical suffering.  Frankl’s answer won’t suit all of us, but hopefully will ring true for many:  “Everything can be taken from a person, but one thing; the last of human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (All quotations by Victor Frankl)