Has anyone gotten their memory back?

[[di...]]

I think you're right about the cognitive dissonance, 64. Many of us also have people in our lives who won't recognise our suffering as valid. They don't believe what we're going through and that must add to our psychic confusion, even if we are consciously certain that it's benzo withdrawal. It seems to be a common symptom that we have to keep convincing ourselves anew about the same things over and over again. Everything feels like a decision, even when it should be obvious. It's annoying and tiring at best and disturbing at worst. When we face doubts from other people, it adds to this problem. They cause you to think again about something you already solved. And this is how it is, our hyperstimulated minds trying to solve everything at once and only succeeding in sowing confusion.

 

[[di...]]

I'm sure some level of decline can go unnoticed, although I don't think it would be possible not to notice the level that I am experiencing. 

I get that and I feel the same for myself. At the same time, being a little further down the road, I'm noticing things returning that I never thought I'd lost. What many people fail to understand is that emotional disturbances and cognitive decline go hand in hand. My point was that some members who become extremely emotionally disturbed may also be experiencing cognitive decline that they are unaware of due to the nature of their circumstance. We understand how the brain works well enough to know that if our emotional state becomes dysregulated, we experience a corresponding dysregulation in our ability to makes sense of our surroundings. At the time, I felt so out of tune to the point where I thought that it must be something like having autism. I could reason in the abstract fairly well at the same time as having no clue how to behave in quite a straightforward scenario. I think this is one of the reasons that my dad can't wrap his head around what I'm going through and basically doesn't believe it. He doesn't understand how these things can be compatible (ability to reason in the abstract but being socially inept) and so chooses to just dismiss it as impossible. I understand that emotional reasoning and abstract reasoning involve different brain processes and there is no contradiction whatsoever.

 

What I have felt return is probably best understood as instinct. I find that I am taking in my surroundings without conscious effort and the right action just occurs to me, rather than being something I have to work out. This might not sound like it has to do with cognition but I'm certain that it does.

[[dj...]]

My brain is completely shot right now.  I probably don’t complain about it as much because it’s generally more of an annoyance than something really painful or scary. 

 

 

[[Pl...]]

I am getting off 8mg a day, tapered down to 0 within 2 weeks. I started taking the supplement “Bacopa”. This is a medicine derived from a plant in India. It helps with Amnesia. I have been taking 1 pill before a meal everyday, along with 400mg magnesium , GABA, and vitamin C. I noticed about 5 days in that I was starting to remember very old memories from my childhood that I had not thought about in years. And every day since, I’ve been getting flashbacks of things I forgot. Now, mind you that I was using other drugs periodically alongside my year of Xanax use, and prior to that year of Xanax use I abused many drugs for a good 10 year period. I’m assuming my memory was messed up from the entire cocktail, but mostly that last year of heavy Xanax use. Anyways, I am feeling more positive now at day 9, and my mind isn’t so foggy anymore. I hope this helps !

 

[[Ha...]]

Diaz-e-BAM, what you have said about instinct makes sense to me.  The very first issue I noticed with my cognition, early in the taper, was like a disruption in the ordinary sense of "knowing" how to do habitual things, like reaching for the soap or turning on a faucet.  I could still do them, but not instinctively.  I literally got stopped in my tracks for a moment, then told myself how to do it and I did it. 

 

Now that seems to have gotten even worse at the lower dose I'm at, where lots of ordinary things just feel ... wrong, or not-right.  Again, I can still do them, but I have to stop and think about them.  It's a very unsettling feeling, to say the least.

 

I really hope we all get through this and recover.  Reading the studies, reading what Dr. Ashton wrote about many people never recovering their memory -- has me really spooked.  No, more than spooked, terrified.

 

Haimona

[[Pl...]]

I can relate to what your saying, I often sit on the corner of my bed knowing what I need to do but just not being able to do it. I’ll be folding laundry and I’ll stop halfway through and just start staring off into the distance and I find myself going off to do another task, only to find myself stuck in my tracks again . It is very hard to stay focused. Or today for example I made myself some soup, poured it into my bowl, and set it on the counter. Then I decided I wanted a glass of juice with my soup ... weird . So I made the juice and ran upstairs leaving behind the soup, totally forgot about it even though I was starving . Then I get to my room and I forgot why I left my room .  Then I remember I left soup in the kitchen. I go downstairs and eat my soup in the kitchen, then go back up to my room. I see the juice, decide I don’t want it and bring it downstairs and spill it out.  :o