When you cut you are healing despite how you feel.

[[Da...]]

I believe this to be true. Everytime I cut I become anxious for a few days and I believe your mind body play catch up and eventually you will stabilize no matter how long it takes. This is the reason for tapering/withdrawing. I believe from what Ive experienced and read so far that you do actually heal some during your taper. Dr Ashton even talks about gaba receptors reuptaking during your taper. So keep your head up friends you are healing as you taper.

[[sa...]]

I think so too.

[[my...]]

Hi Dave,

Even with my limited experience...I think so too.  I am glad to have cut again after a 6 week hold and glad to know I will continue dropping. Only the second day of the cut, and how anxious I was before doing it, but this evening a part of me is quietly joyful.... Glad you posted this positive reminder!

Mana

[[...]]

Is this unversally true? What about for those at low doses, those that have kindled and are holding, etc? Because if it is, that would be great news.

[[Je...]]

I believe this to be true. Everytime I cut I become anxious for a few days and I believe your mind body play catch up and eventually you will stabilize no matter how long it takes. This is the reason for tapering/withdrawing. I believe from what Ive experienced and read so far that you do actually heal some during your taper. Dr Ashton even talks about gaba receptors reuptaking during your taper. So keep your head up friends you are healing as you taper.

 

That is very obvious to me. 

 

My reasoning, and what hit me like a flash as to that fact a while back, has to do with the simple fact that I'm on smaller and smaller doses

and feel better and better.

 

Yes, there is a period of seeming hopeless misery at some point following each cut;  it's part of the cycle.  But the brain adjusts, and so does

the rest of the body, and after anywhere from 8 to 15 days or so I feel so good that I cut again.  Been doing that for almost two years now

and am nearing the end of this stuff. 

 

Different details and side effects and withdrawal symptoms from person to person, although a LOT in common as we look around these

forums and threads.  But we're all human with a CNS and we're all tapering benzos. So, yeah, I agree completely with the premise of this

thread.  Great subject:  healing (even though it so often hurts). 

 

*Jeepy*

[[my...]]

Just thinking about what Jeepy had to say...I have been feeling well and think I will drop another .0625 today, ten days into my New Year's taper  -- not posting it in my signature until I decide for certain  ....

 

but yes...that is the pattern, isn't it?.....cut, after a couple days feel pretty bad or maybe not so bad but at least not great and then once things stabilize, you feel good enough to cut again.  And the cycle repeats...  Jeepy, I see that you have taken it pretty slow which is perhaps why you have been able to get along so well and gotten this far...  And Dave911...yes...as I wrote before...it must be true that we are healing when we taper. At least I want to believe that.  Need to re-read the Ashton protocol again as I think she insists this is true.  I need to be reminded by a doctor and a scientist who spent her professional career studying and writing about this process.

 

My hope is to cut slowly enough to continue with normal life and continuously enough so that it doesn't take forever....time will tell.

 

Patience and perseverance is all...that - and our friends here at BB!!!!!       

 

 

[[xe...]]

Is this unversally true? What about for those at low doses, those that have kindled and are holding, etc? Because if it is, that would be great news.

 

Speaking only from my personal experience, I think a lot of good things happened as I cut from ~20 to ~5mg valium. When I got to 2mg I felt like I hit a "wall", and spent something like 14 months getting off those last 2mg. In hindsight I think that was a mistake, and that continuing to take any amount of the drug for so long just kept me in a very unpleasant, unbalanced state where I wasn't getting enough of the drug to feel okay, but was still getting way too much of it to actually heal.

 

I jumped off and then reinstated tiny doses three or four times before I managed to stay off; every time I'd kick the last bit, I'd feel so bad one or two weeks later that I'd convince myself I needed to go even more slowly. I do not think I ever stabilized after I cut below 4mg -- or I did, but not until about three months after I jumped for real.

 

That was an extremely, extremely unpleasant time of my life and I still feel the aftershocks of it, but even though I don't think it did me any good to microtaper or reinstate, I do not exactly regret making those decisions. The end result was that I was able to get off. Most of the things I worried about during my w/d are so gone to me that I can't even relate to them. The memory of early withdrawal is like the memory of a nightmare, it's more a sense of colors and a feeling than a record of fact.

 

So, from all that - when you cut, you're forcing your body to reacclimatize to functioning without a drug in you, and that's what allows you to heal. Your body will not figure out how to function in the absence of something it's still being provided.

 

Edit: changed name in quote

[[Fl...]]

The jury is out on whether or not we heal as we taper, I'd say we probably do heal to an extent on the way down but complete healing can't happen until you are off. The way I see it tapering is almost always a good idea with these drugs and any progress toward getting to zero is a step in the right direction. Time is the ultimate healer.

[[Ro...]]

I don't know about anyone else, I know me- and I say: I'm healing during my taper.

 

Maybe not the best healing, but it's still healing. The last couple nights- I actually something akin to feeling refreshed after sleep.

 

The Full Healing will come after I've eliminated my Ativan, and then once I've stabilized - I'll be working on weening myself off of the Citalopram.