[li...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Gosh if anyone really knew me and hOw much hell I have been through and how much compassion I have for all of us (Skittles hasn't been here long enough to meet me) they would know I don't have a mean bone in my body. I could hardly post yesterday because I was struggling so my point was that we've found that when someone is taking more than a Benzo it's different than someone who is just tapering a Benzo. Is "level playing field" negative? My brain couldn't come up with the right analogy. Love you all Liza Forgive me if I said something easily misunderstood. Bless you all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[ly...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 I just wanted to clarify that my comments and opinions were my own and I didn't mean to respond on anyone's behalf here. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. I sincerely hope everyone here see's some relief very soon! :smitten: I am ready to cut again and truly believe the hold put me in good stead. I will say that my 10% cut caused only minimal sxs and was by far my best experience so far. We'll see how it goes from here - as always, I will report the good, bad and ugly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Dear Buddies, Thank you for your replies and support recently. :smitten: I am only responding today as I finally have some time . Up dosing and holding the dose has helped me hugely. I just want to share this for anyone in doubt. I was really annoyed that I up dosed, felt a bit of a failure but I was just thinking today that I have not had any major symptoms since my up dose (by .50 mg) in early July. In fact, constant symptoms that I struggled with Most of my taper are gone. Burning skin, bladder weakness, sickness and GI issues. I feel well, almost normal for the first time in two years. An up dose is a good thing for me personally and I would not have known this had I not had to do it. Hindsight is wonderful of course, we all know that. I just wanted to take some time to share my experience. My mother is still ill, not a lot of change. I have decided to take this week at home as I need more rest and I will go down to visit her at the weekend when hubby returns. It will be easier. My sister is living with my Mum, I am learning to leave others do the caring too. This journey off benzos has become a huge journey in living and how to live wisely. I have learned more about myself in the last two years than ever before. :thumbsup: So grateful to this forum for helping me, supporting me and for the invaluable information I have been given on the journey. :smitten: Peace and Healing, Moya XXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[no...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 I just wanted to clarify that my comments and opinions were my own and I didn't mean to respond on anyone's behalf here. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. I sincerely hope everyone here see's some relief very soon! :smitten: I am ready to cut again and truly believe the hold put me in good stead. I will say that my 10% cut caused only minimal sxs and was by far my best experience so far. We'll see how it goes from here - as always, I will report the good, bad and ugly! And the naked :laugh: Aloha Lynn glad to see you still doing really well hun Love Nova xxx :smitten: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[no...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 VALLEYUM please give me your opinion. ( I know there are lots of opinions out there but this time I'd like to hear your thoughts since I am responding to your last reply to me.) You had said I should set my goal at a specific hold time frame and keep that goal in mind. I had set my sights at a hold of two months.Now those two months are up. I am certainly better although I am not totally free of sfx, but I never have been,ever! Now that I am at the end of the two months, I thought I do a test. I'd try a micro taper of .01 for only five days. That would be a cut of .05 (8%) after the five days ended. Then I would hold for at least three weeks to see what happens. ( total would be 26 days hold .) I actually did the .01 cut so far for two days and got a ramped up parathesia side effect on the second day, but I'm not really sure if it was from the cut. (since Valium has a long half life it doesn't make sense to me that I'd get a sfx two days after two .01 cuts ). Maybe it was just because I was never totally free of parathesia ever. Actually as the day went on I did get a window and the bad parathesia had let up somewhat.n I am having a window right now as I type this. And I actually went to the bookstore with my husband today! So I'd like to try this micro taper for just three more days. It would put me at 1.20, down from 1.25 It would be like a test to see if I am ready to move on slowly or if I need to hold longer. I know you are a proponent of long holds and I certainly want to do that if necessary. But I thought I'd do this "test" to see if I am ready or not to move on. In your opinion, is this nuts? I guess I should have run this by you BEFORE I STARTED IT! Heathcliff Sorry for the late response. I was in bed lol. My daughter has to get her tonsils out this morning. In answer to your question, my thoughts are that if you feel good enough to try a small test cut, by all means try it and see how your body reacts. If you get a large uptick in sxs, holding longer would most likely be beneficial. If you do fine with the cut, you are probably doing the right thing by continuing. I try to only recommend holds when sxs are unbearable and interfere with life. The key is finding the right taper rate to keep most sxs in check so they don't interfere with life. In answer to an earlier question about it being the only option I forgot to add the IMO which was sloppy as I don't usually speak in absolutes so hopefully (and I think most who know me do) those who read my posts understand it's just my own opinion. My opinion is that if you have destabilized your CNS to the point that sxs are unbearable, only time will allow your CNS to recover. The reason I don't take offense is I was initially anti hold when I first joined BB and encouraged others not to hold too long lol. A verteran here helped me see my flawed thinking and after becoming nearly bed bound from an overly aggressive taper, I found this group, felt at home here and no longer had a desire to push through sxs and risk a long recovery at the jump. I have spent hours doing research on long holds and see them as hope for those who are in a really bad way. I have stated many times if a person is a short time user or doing fine with there taper, a hold would definitely not be recommended. I simply view the hold as a harm reduction technique and just another tool to use in getting off as we can't hold forever lol. I still do believe that if one is suffering with intolerable sxs, time is the thing that will pull them out if they have the patience to do it. Hope you continue to see improvement! --V Welcome back to the pleasure dome ............................ :laugh: Love Nova xxx :smitten: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[fr...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Wow, see what these benzos do to us. Seems like people lose the ability to think and process info clearly. I think what threw that person was the level playing field comment. I think it was only meant that if you are on other drugs your situation will be different than people who are on only one benzo etc. i am one who is on 3 drugs and I think some of my symptoms come from that and not only my taper and hold. It was not meant as an attack. Can we please all get back to helping each other. Valley has held this group together. He doesn't have to devote his time and energy yet he does and I'm so grateful for this. Also, that comment about s/x's can be fun if you think of them that way, oh boy. That was like throwing a grenade into a foxhole. I am having horrible s/x's and there is no way they can be thought of as fun. I try to be positive etc. but when you are suffering terribly it in no way can be fun, even if I try to make my mind think that way so that was a kind of questionable way to phrase positive thinking. Very hard to do that when you are in the depths of hell. I am just about at 5 months of holding and one of the hard cases. I am thinking about my next step and even posted about it but Valley did nothing but support me. I'm so sorry this has happened but I just hope Valley that you continue to be our cheerleader and whoever sent the nasty PM's to you Skittles should be ashamed. We all have enough to deal with without attacking each other. May everyone have a great big window today and whether or not I continue to hold or try a small cut, I will let you all know how it goes. Liza, Lainey and I are the most vocal ones who aren't seeing a lot of progress but we will press on and soak up all info on all sides and make our own decisions. Lets get back to helping each other now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[ly...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Thanks Nova! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Va...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 VALLEYUM please give me your opinion. ( I know there are lots of opinions out there but this time I'd like to hear your thoughts since I am responding to your last reply to me.) You had said I should set my goal at a specific hold time frame and keep that goal in mind. I had set my sights at a hold of two months.Now those two months are up. I am certainly better although I am not totally free of sfx, but I never have been,ever! Now that I am at the end of the two months, I thought I do a test. I'd try a micro taper of .01 for only five days. That would be a cut of .05 (8%) after the five days ended. Then I would hold for at least three weeks to see what happens. ( total would be 26 days hold .) I actually did the .01 cut so far for two days and got a ramped up parathesia side effect on the second day, but I'm not really sure if it was from the cut. (since Valium has a long half life it doesn't make sense to me that I'd get a sfx two days after two .01 cuts ). Maybe it was just because I was never totally free of parathesia ever. Actually as the day went on I did get a window and the bad parathesia had let up somewhat.n I am having a window right now as I type this. And I actually went to the bookstore with my husband today! So I'd like to try this micro taper for just three more days. It would put me at 1.20, down from 1.25 It would be like a test to see if I am ready to move on slowly or if I need to hold longer. I know you are a proponent of long holds and I certainly want to do that if necessary. But I thought I'd do this "test" to see if I am ready or not to move on. In your opinion, is this nuts? I guess I should have run this by you BEFORE I STARTED IT! Heathcliff Sorry for the late response. I was in bed lol. My daughter has to get her tonsils out this morning. In answer to your question, my thoughts are that if you feel good enough to try a small test cut, by all means try it and see how your body reacts. If you get a large uptick in sxs, holding longer would most likely be beneficial. If you do fine with the cut, you are probably doing the right thing by continuing. I try to only recommend holds when sxs are unbearable and interfere with life. The key is finding the right taper rate to keep most sxs in check so they don't interfere with life. In answer to an earlier question about it being the only option I forgot to add the IMO which was sloppy as I don't usually speak in absolutes so hopefully (and I think most who know me do) those who read my posts understand it's just my own opinion. My opinion is that if you have destabilized your CNS to the point that sxs are unbearable, only time will allow your CNS to recover. The reason I don't take offense is I was initially anti hold when I first joined BB and encouraged others not to hold too long lol. A verteran here helped me see my flawed thinking and after becoming nearly bed bound from an overly aggressive taper, I found this group, felt at home here and no longer had a desire to push through sxs and risk a long recovery at the jump. I have spent hours doing research on long holds and see them as hope for those who are in a really bad way. I have stated many times if a person is a short time user or doing fine with there taper, a hold would definitely not be recommended. I simply view the hold as a harm reduction technique and just another tool to use in getting off as we can't hold forever lol. I still do believe that if one is suffering with intolerable sxs, time is the thing that will pull them out if they have the patience to do it. Hope you continue to see improvement! --V Welcome back to the pleasure dome ............................ :laugh: Love Nova xxx :smitten: LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Va...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 I just wanted to clarify that my comments and opinions were my own and I didn't mean to respond on anyone's behalf here. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. I sincerely hope everyone here see's some relief very soon! :smitten: I am ready to cut again and truly believe the hold put me in good stead. I will say that my 10% cut caused only minimal sxs and was by far my best experience so far. We'll see how it goes from here - as always, I will report the good, bad and ugly! I'm where you're at lynn. Time to start again real soon. Hopefully this time at a rate that will be "under the radar". Hope you can have an uneventful taper from this point on! --V Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Va...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Updated weekly propaganda update: "Yes, most of the time if people hold long enough, eventually they do come to feel better. It can take a long time, especially if they've been tapering too fast and have gotten ahead of their body's ability to rebalance itself. Sometimes people need to just stop tapering and take some number of months for healing, before starting to taper again. In general, I hold my taper whenever I feel my symptoms ramp up at all, and I hold until they settle down. Periodically I will do a longer hold just to give my brain some extra healing time. So far every time I've done that I've had a really great period afterwards, several really good months, even once I start tapering again. That's how I approach holds. However, I'm on a very slow, stable, regulated taper. People who are in more trouble usually need to hold longer, and usually don't get relief as quickly as I do." "Basically, holds are how we give our brains/bodies time to catch up and heal and re-establish some kind of homeostasis during the tapering process. So when to do them and for how long is very variable and depends on the person, the taper, their symptoms, their history, etc." "I highly doubt that holding will harm you, but I've seen people who've taken very long to recover after getting messed up during too-aggressive or unstable tapers. It doesn't look all that different (in terms of symptoms) from when people CT or taper all the way off a med too harshly and end up in protracted withdrawal. It's just that people end up in that same shape without actually having come all the way off the meds." "If you've thrown yourself into chaotic withdrawal syndrome by ill-advised experimentation (or poor advice), holding is probably preferable to further decreasing or quitting altogether. You need to bring some order to the chaos. If you hold at one level (of all your drugs), you are at least giving your nervous system some stability. Given the constants -- which still may be causing adverse effects, etc. -- your nervous system will regroup over time. Once you see some consistency in symptom pattern, you can carefully adjust dosage to see what will help." "If you have been tapering systematically and run into a rough spot, holding can help you get past it. At least, when you hold, you can track your symptom pattern and see what the balance of waves and windows might be. If windows are gradually getting longer and more frequent -- a positive sign -- your nervous system is adjusting to the cumulative decreases and you will eventually be in a position to continue tapering. If during a hold the windows pattern is not promising, a slight updose may be called for." "For me, I hate these meds so much, that holding feels like they're winning somehow. I keep trying to tell myself that it's ME that's winning, as I heal. Because I know that I heal and adapt during holds. I can feel it happening. If I hold long enough, I get to where I'm feeling pretty good. I encourage you to allow yourself the experience of holding long enough to feel good, even if that takes months. It's SO encouraging to get to that point. I cling to the memories of those times, the thoughts I find myself thinking (life is good, there's hope in my future); the way I feel strong and able to deal with stress and extra activity; and the way that even with these tiny increments, when I hold long enough to let myself feel the healing, each step I feel even better than the one before. I can tell that I'm emerging from the damage these drugs have done to me." "Over the course of my journey, I have learned many things. First and foremost would be to taper slowly. Have patience and don’t let the calendar determine when you will be off of your medication. Hold when necessary for as long as necessary to maintain your stability as much as possible. Face your fears and they will diminish or disappear. Keep yourself busy with activities and don’t dwell on your symptoms. Symptoms don’t last forever; windows of clarity occur. Cherish the windows and know that more will come and that they are a sign of healing." "The first three things anyone needs to learn about tapering benzos: 1. Slow slow slow. 2. A sense of feeling panicked and like you need to rush and do something-something-anything-anything about your withdrawal symptoms is actually a classic symptom of withdrawal itself. It's very important to learn to resist that urge. The best thing you can do is usually nothing at all, just support your body's healing by good diet, gentle exercise, meditative breathing if possible, and a regular schedule of sleep/wake/eat etc. 3. There's a lag time with benzo tapers. You can make a cut and do okay, make another cut and do okay, and so on, and then all at once it will catch up with you cumulatively and you can really hit the wall. It's much better to start slow and small with small cuts and long breaks in between cuts, until you have a chance to see how the withdrawal symptoms come and go over time. It's typical with benzo tapers for there to be days when you feel great and you're sure you're all better, followed by worse days, back and forth. So see #1, don't push your luck. With practice and experience you'll learn the best pace for you. But it's a lot easier if you don't overdo it and crash--it can really set you back to do that." "Symptoms are worsened by anxiety and fear." - Prof Ashton "You can return to normal health." - Prof Ashton "You must keep a positive attitude, be courageous." - Prof Ashton "Allow time for your nervous system to recover. It will."- Prof Ashton "The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it." "The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile" "Start small and conservative. Start with a small cut and a long hold. Don't try to follow a calendar schedule; follow your body's schedule instead, by observing your own symptoms. Keep a daily journal of symptoms (ranking them on a numerical scale of 1 to 5 or something like that). Don't trust yourself to remember the way your symptoms wax and wane--the drugs and the withdrawal actually interfere with our ability to reliably perceive patterns. (Trust me on this. It's pretty much universal. Your mind will lie to you.) Write it down each day and you'll see the patterns emerge. Do a few small cuts and long holds this way until you have a feel for how your body is going to respond to cuts and how the withdrawal symptoms are going to unfold and play out and resolve for you. There are often delayed effects from a cut that don't show up right away, and if you taper too fast, those "lag time" symptoms can add up and hit hard, and it's too late to slow down because you already made the cuts. So take it slow with long holds, and allow the full pattern to play out, so that you become familiar with it. Collect data this way for two or three months. Once you have a track record, you can then decide if you want to try larger cuts and/or shorter holds. Experiment conservatively until you find your optimal rate of taper. This way you will become the expert on your own withdrawal process and you'll be able to tailor it to your own needs and your own life changes." "In order to get my head around the prospects of a really slow taper I have to work through what it represents to me, the things I say to myself that encourage me to go faster. I know that I have more trouble with the holds than the increments. I think I view the hold as disempowering, as an expression of me 'needing' the medication, that I am beholden to it, its dictating the terms. This isnt a very positive relationship to the hold! Rather than a barrier to being off, I need to see it as an important strategy to success and a choice I am making. I also think that not holding long enough hasn't enabled me to have the 'good spells' and the rest I need to recover and keep going, so, being really tired, I've then wanted to speed things up, to get to the other side. My experience tells me to listen to my body and that getting my head around it is important." "What does stabilizing mean after withdrawal syndrome has kicked in? To me, it means not being debilitated by your withdrawals, so that activities of daily life are disrupted.Holding your dose and monitoring it (a journal is a good idea) and your instincts will tell you when you feel strong enough." "Most people are stable on psychotropic medications before their first taper, so there are no withdrawal symptoms. Holding helps to stabilize withdrawal symptoms that are acquired while tapering, going off CT, etc. The meaning of stabilization does not change with the drug. (And the steadier the dose in your system, the more stable you will be and so there are no resulting withdrawal symptoms) Withdrawal symptoms include those which are 'physical' as well as neuroemotions, the latter experienced as emotional while they are actually physical in origin. When withdrawal symptoms subside, your quality of life is better as your ability to cope with the daily demands of living improves. So stable means few or no withdrawal symptoms, whether physical or emotional. The concept of stabilization does not refer to lifestyle issues, though those are obviously impacted when people feel unwell. Most people stabilize when they hold (sometimes for as long as several months), and if symptoms do not entirely remit during that time, they become more manageable." "I'm doing a micro taper and I adjust my cuts and holds according to life stressors and how I'm feeling. Seems like I generally feel the cuts within two to four days after making them, and then I hold for however long it takes (usually a week or two, with the micro cuts). I definitely do stabilize and feel better, although if I know I have a period of time with not much stress coming up, I will push it and make a couple more small cuts before I'm fully at my best. I know I'm going to feel crappy for a while as a result but I know I will hold and it will pass." "When I hold for a longer period I am always rewarded with a spell of feeling pretty good, which lasts even after I start cutting again, for a while. I have always felt better after holds and I have never done well with the "keep cutting even if you're suffering" approach, although some people apparently do okay with that. As always, our own bodies are the experts." " I can only speak for myself. If i held, i know what would happen. If i made a mistake cutting, then all bets are off. I think people are just afraid of making a mistake and then getting the hammer for it. Recovering from a devastating mistake can be terrifying." "I have had to make 3 months holds, or even longer, before I could make some progress again. a few weeks may be too little? be patient." "I had heard about "holding" but I only did it for 3 or 4 or 5 months and then dropped again because I didn't think it worked. However, I now believe IT DOES WORK - I JUST NEEDED TO HOLD LONGER! The first 6 month hold I did I saw improvement in many symptoms, however about half a dozen got worse, so I dropped. The next 6 month hold on a lower dose and a slower taper, saw improvement in all symptoms (to mild) with some EVEN GOING AWAY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 5 YEARS! I felt almost normal for the first time in I don't now how long, it was amazing. I had some good days and I even went shopping for the first time in 5 years! This was AN AMAZING REVELATION to me because with the next drop, they all got worse again. This proved to me that all this is definitely w/d... can you believe I still sometimes wonder and doubt (plus other people seem to question it also). I feel a real calm now about that aspect and somehow seeing that proof/evidence has helped me a lot! I didn't know anything about holds, let alone long ones, but I do now." "I held for 10 months at the bottom of my benzo taper with a good result. I'm the hold queen, and firmly believe in erring on the side of holding too long. I think that tapering when we are symptomatic contributes to needless suffering. I realize some people have paradoxical reactions from benzos, and need to taper in the face of WD symptoms, but they are far fewer than those who benefit from prolonged holds times... several months and more." "A benzo cut can cause an uptick in your withdrawal symptoms, and it may take longer to stabilize once you take a cut. I once held for 9 months and this helped me considerably. tapering slowly has taken time, but my quality of life was only adversely impacted for the first 2 or 3 months." "1 month may seem like a long time but it's not. On the other hand 2 mg of Klonopin is a lot. When I see how fast people went it usually gives me an idea of how long it will take for them to stabilise. In my particular situation I waited for 4 months (with what I know today I would advise anyone in my situation even longer hold). I believe in the healing power of long holds. When we are struggling even minute cuts will make us feel awful. But if we allow our brain to regrow itself through holding subsequent cuts will be less painful." "If I were in your shoes I would actually say, hold not just until you don't feel so terrible any more, but hold until you start to have consistent periods of actually feeling good. It could take a few more months but I would wait as long as it takes. This far along it's not going to make you more dependent on the benzo or cause more damage than has already been caused. And if you treat your brain well and give it the stability and gentle care that it needs, at your age, it's going to bounce back beautifully. Even at my advanced age my brain is bouncing back--after 20 years on meds! So I feel pretty confident that right now it's more important to handle your precious brain gently and lovingly than it is to hurry. It's not a delay--it's a strategic retreat and rebuild. If you get to where your nervous system is really stable and strong, that will give you a whole new base to taper from, and tapering will go much better. You'll have some minimal symptoms after each cut but you'll hold until those settle down. You'll be able to get on with your life even while tapering rather than trying to get through the taper so you can get back to your life, if that makes sense. This is a race that is won by the turtles every time, if "win" means "get off the meds forever and recover fully." "Tolerance withdrawal" is a phrase that's tossed around a lot and usually, in my opinion, used wrongly. In fact most of the time I think it's referring to prolonged withdrawal symptoms. In fact I don't think you can really use the phrase "tolerance withdrawal" during a taper, because by definition tolerance withdrawal is something that happens when you're taking steady ongoing doses of a benzo. However, Klonopin is kind of notorious for causing a kind of delayed withdrawal with holds that might be related to the tolerance withdrawal phenomenon." "Yeah, the way "tolerance withdrawal' is bandied about on the benzo boards (try saying that five times really fast) drives me nuts. Especially since like you said, it's usually used to scare people into keeping cutting faster, which is almost always the opposite of what they need to be doing. VERY rarely is "just keep cutting" the right answer. Drives me nuts. Feels like I'm always the voice in the wilderness on that one. People go too fast, get into withdrawal, hold for a short time; their symptoms get worse (unrelated to the hold, it's just ongoing withdrawal from going too fast before); they get told they're in "tolerance withdrawal" and they need to start cutting again. Yet when someone CTs and has prolonged withdrawal for months or years, nobody says it's "tolerance withdrawal", because obviously that's impossible if you aren't taking the drug. What's called tolerance withdrawal is almost always just plain delayed withdrawal symptoms which are pretty much universal with benzos. Benzos are notoriously up and down and nonlinear and long and drawn out, in withdrawal. Okay, thanks for letting me rant about that. The whole thing drives me nuts (she says for the third time). " "Been 10 days since I began stabilizing, so knock on wood, it seems I have for the most part, won this round by holding, as almost all symptoms across the board have dissipated by 85-90%, even the most minor (tinnitus). Thanks to all who encouraged me to hold out and resist the temptation to further updosing (or going with my doc's advice, albeit well-intentioned) as I was right on the verge of doing so out of desperation to seek relief. Withdrawal is indeed real and until you go through it long enough and then stabilize in time, even the smartest minds, physicians included, can be misled by the insidious nature of w/d into making the wrong assumptions as to causation, suggesting a course of treatment that fits a generalized paradigm, but that usually runs counter to our individual genetics and neurochemistry, especially in those whose receptors have become sensitized to any degree from past repeated "insults" to the CNS (maybe not as acute to suggest a case of kindling, but similar). Hello, medical mismanagement! Bottom line: patience and giving time to listen to what our body is telling us. The clue: if you're having windows of any length, is this not a good indicator of your body trying to HEAL? So, I powered through the downtime and let it heal. The more acute the symptoms, the more sensitized the receptors, thus more time required to cool the hyper-excitatory response to discontinuance of a med or meds from which the brain has become habituated. Well, I hope others can benefit from my little experience in giving them hope as well. Now I know how to read this better in the future, as each setback is like a little science experiment and an educational course from which to listen and learn, downright frightening, horrid and unpleasant as they may be. " "The symptoms this last month have been anything but linear - a total rollercoaster, with some hours during the days better than others, and some worse - as this has progressed - and I realize this is part of the process. There is a ramp up period, followed by a small reprieve in symptoms, then it's starts to ramp up again, a perpetual ebb and flow day in, day out. So it's been impossible to judge the progression. In fact, the last few days, I feel like my symptoms are up a notch in severity which feeds into my fears and reinforces my doc's position that unless we "get the symptoms back under control" by updosing, my condition will worsen. I do now agree looking back that the although the cuts were small, the frequency was likely too fast and lag time came on like a freight train. I can see my doc shaking his head in disbelief at all that, but like you said, what can we expect?" "It takes as long as it takes. Also, one thing I've noticed with benzo tapering, is that when I'm going a bit too fast I tend to get into this "rush rush hurry go faster get off this stuff" frame of mind, which tends to cause me to actually cut even faster. I've posted about this here and there and found other people are having the same thing. Something about the anxiety, the way the withdrawal activates our limbic system, something like that, seems to cause us to feel a kind of urgency that actually makes us do the opposite of what we need to do at that point. So now, when I get that "hurry up and taper fast" feeling, I try to remember to stop and think about it, and make myself slow down or hold for a while if I can. Also want to reiterate, because it needs saying all the time and not too many people are saying it: Even a microtaper requires intermittent holds with no reductions, no cuts at all, for a while." "Better to err on this side of safety. In reading thousands of posts, I never heard of anyone who suffered for holding too much/long, only for too little." "There's some mild weirdness going on in my head and legs, which I'm taking as a sign that there's still some instability going on. I've heard people claim you CAN hold for too long, but I don't really believe that. I mean, we've been "holding" on these drugs for years and, apart from the usual side effects, nothing awful happened because of it.." " Your CNS is very sensitive to these drugs. Please listen to your body.. Do not taper until all or most of your symptoms have resolved. If I were in your position.. knowing what I do now, I'd plan on holding for 6 months, then starting to taper at 5% a month. If you are okay with that pace for 2 months, you could then try going to 10% a month. As long as you are having withdrawal symptoms, your body is acting as it still has the drug. So it's possible to actually get the drug out of your system sooner, but have your body reacting to it longer.. so, your body ends up responding to the drug longer than if you came off gradually and preserved your quality of life. PS.. if you have a 'window'.. a sustained period of time that lasts, say 2 months, you could think about tapering.. but if you think in terms of say, 6 months, you might do better by removing a constant temptation." "While I understand the desire to get off these drugs fast, I don't think there's enough discussion of the possible benefits of an extremely SLOW taper. And how many stories do we all hear, of people who've tried over and over again to get off meds, and have to reinstate, but have never tried an extremely slow taper with long holds? In the long run so many people spend years trying to get off the meds, suffer, are disabled much of that time, end up hospitalized, et cetera, and in the end they don't save any time at all." "I wanted to say that I've been going through this and can see it in my journal as I track my days of symptom severity and klonopin use to offset symptoms (Might not be recommended but I'd be dead without it). I've been through this cycle so many times, and I have a theory that it's a healing process where our body is adapting and adjusting to not having the meds and that's where the pain or worse hellish days come into play, and then we feel better for a bit until our body has found a new way to heal and recover which triggers the pain/suffering cycle again. I think of it as our body trying to find its way back home to how it should be after being nearly totally altered by these meds. On a bad day or a bad few days I think I try to remind myself that this is my body adapting and healing and it will find its way. Those better days are proof that it has though for some it takes a while to get to them and they may only last a short bit. I remember reading something a while ago about how the body knows how to heal itself from just about anything. But often we interfere with that or things interfere with it (things like stress or other meds or other health issues that compound one another). I like the idea of trusting in my body and believing that it knows how to find its way back to its wellness. Bad days are awful but if they mean my body is going through some kind of adaption as it heals, I feel they are worth enduring. Like when you are tired and just want to go home, traffic and bad weather slow you down and can frustrate you endlessly because you JUST WANT TO BE HOME, but those things pass. They are temporary and you will get home eventually. So accepting the traffic and bad weather as par for the course makes the journey home a whole lot better and easier on you emotionally and stress wise. simple analogy that is weak compared to what we deal with during these cycles, but at its essence it holds the truth of what is happening. Storms and delays when we just want to be home (be well again). " "If you are tapering too fast (and I would add moving doses around, crossing over to another benzo, etc.) and get withdrawal symptoms, they may fluctuate in a windows and waves pattern. This leads a lot of people to ignore the warning signs of going too fast (or tapering while unstable). If you continue to taper, withdrawal symptoms probably will get worse. It's the nature of withdrawal symptoms to fluctuate, because the nervous system is trying to correct itself. " "For many reasons, our emotions are on a hair-trigger, amplified, and perseverative. We probably don't even know all of what's going on physically yet, but it includes diminished prefrontal lobe executive functions, rebound amygdala, dysregulated HPA, over-active adrenals, etc. The neuro-emotions include -- neuro-fear neuro-anger neuro-guilt neuro-shame neuro-hurt neuro-regret neuro-self-criticism neuro-grudge-holding ...and more! It is very, very confusing to have these intense neuro-emotions and try to remember that they are not what they appear to be. Emotions are compelling. Emotions during recovery from psych meds are even more compelling. Sometimes, the neuro-emotion is really totally artificial. Some of my neuro-fears have been so unlikely to come to pass as to bear no resemblance to reality or to my personal history. But, I think a lot of the time, part of what makes it so confusing is that there is a grain of reality to the neuro-emotion. For example, some situation might make you a bit angry under normal circumstances, but the neuro-anger is huge. This is when it's very difficult to 1) catch it in the first place and notice this is a neuro-emotion, 2) convince ourselves, yes, this is really a neuro-emotion, not a real emotion, 3) contain the emotion, try not to act on it, or channel the energy into something safe and constructive -- like exercise or journaling or building a birdhouse. Whenever you're having an intense, disturbing feeling, try to remind yourself that, right now -- even if it does have something to do with reality -- it is largely a neuro-emotion that you wouldn't be feeling if you were fully healed. And you *will* be fully healed. It's happening! Get ready! " "After a severe CT it took me about six months to get to feeling stable again. I've seen this in dozens of people. It's not at all uncommon, especially after a CT or a series of ups and downs in dosage or a series of changes of meds, to take many months to stabilize; sometimes a year or more. Seems like everyone does get better eventually, though. I know there must be rare exceptions, but from what I've seen they're extremely rare. Anyway, months instead of weeks is a common variation. It does require more patience but it's not a sign of a bad outcome. Many people have gone through spells like this, stabilized, and then gone on to do slow tapers quite successfully. " "People heal at different rates. In 6 months, you might find you're much better. " ""Healing from withdrawal feels like not healing at all and being certain that I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life and wondering if I'm going to have the strength to endure it. But then finding myself driving in my car, completely relaxed, not worried about anything, remembering how at first, driving anywhere caused a continual state of panic until I got back home. I would put things off for days if I could, just so I could avoid the added stress. Now, there is some residual fear associated with driving, caused by the memory of actually having to do it in such an intense state of fear, but once I get in the car, I relax. It wasn't driving which caused the fear, the fear was there anyway. A secondary fear was created out of the horrendous experience of having to drive around while being in a state of panic, I don't recommend it. Healing is like feeling really awful and believing that its just getting worse and worse, until I think back carefully or read back through my thread or journal and see the truth about just how bad it was, compared to now. It only seems like its getting worse. Maybe its because its been going on so long, its wearing me down and wearing me out. Healing is like walking backwards somewhere with your eyes closed. You have no idea where you are heading, and you don't know where you have been until you get somewhere else and open your eyes for a few moments and look back towards where you came from. Then you close them again and keep going. Sometimes healing feels like I am standing still while the rest of the world races by, leaving me behind, and I panic. But then I calm down and notice that no one is going anywhere. Everyone else is racing around and around in circles and I'm sitting calmly and peacefully in the center, knowing that everything I need is right here." "Don't think that holding is "doing nothing." Far from it. When it's needed, it's needed to free your body to do the healing it knows how to do... if we don't interfere! Tapering is necessary to get off the med, but the real recovery comes from complex healing the body does, and the real healing comes from what the body does to heal, which we don't fully understand. Sometimes a small updose steadies the body out and supports healing, sometimes it doesn't. You learned that in your case it doesn't. But healing processes from anything can be "painful" and we can't see the healing for a while - but that doesn't mean we aren't healing!" "Things get less and less wobbly the longer I hold. So that when I cut again, the system I'm re-perturbing is a stable and strong one that's going to be able to handle and adapt to the new perturbations. I think what I see happen to people a lot is, they cut and then they hold for a while, just long enough to allow the worst of it to pass, then they cut again, et cetera, but after a few of those they hit a wall. I'm beginning to think--for me, at least--it's really crucial not to just hold long enough to be able to function, but to hold, at least intermittently, long enough to allow a stable homeostasis to be established, to give the body/mind a chance to attend to some deeper healing." "Not only is it okay to hold for six months, it would be good for you at this point, to give your nervous system time to recover from what it's been through. You can definitely taper down when ready, it's just going to take a lot longer than you had expected. These drugs are NOT the innocent benign wonderful things we were told they are." "I'm currently at four months in my hold, with a vague notion of going to about 6 months to see what level of stabilisation I can achieve. I'm making myself do it cause I want to know down the track that at least I've given a long hold a good chance." "When people exceed their nervous system's ability to keep up, they get destablized and then must sometimes updose and hold for a few months or more before resuming, and when all is said and done, their taper takes longer than if they had just gone ahead and done the proper taper to begin with! Throw away the calendar and focus on living your life. Always listen to your body. You'll always be taking less and less, which is better than still being on the full dosage from where you came, so it's all good, right?" "Holding makes sense to me. I can't imagine tapering through this. I don't think it is wise to cut through intolerable symptoms." "I will hold until I feel able to reduce a small amount. Every tiny cut feels like a cold turkey and reminds me how I felt during the botched crossover." "Then I think you are on track to keep holding for the time being. I'm currently at four months in my hold, with a vague notion of going to about 6 months to see what level of stabilisation I can achieve. I'm making myself do it cause I want to know down the track that at least I've given a long hold a good chance." " I would hold until your symptoms reduce, then hold for a good four weeks after (or more), given how long you've been tapering and how high a dose you started at, just to make sure your nervous system (central and enteric) really has a chance to stabilize." " I tapered too fast and hit the wall. I ended up having to hold for months before I stabilized. I was feeling so crummy I didn't feel like I would ever stabilize, but things eventually settled down. I know how hopeless you feel right now. The best thing you can do is hold tight, don't mess with your dose and wait until things settle down." "I would say holding is your best bet. You have destabilised you CNS and there is no silver mbullet that will take that away at once. After we destabilise our system it usually takes some times for things to very GRADUALLY start to settle. If you noticed even the slightest bit of relief as opposed to complete lifting of symptoms it would mean you are on the right track." "I have so far seen that holding got me out of any hiccup I've had. Very bad symptoms only meant I had to wait longer. But I have faith that they will disappear because I've seen them disappear just as a result of holding." " Holds are really important. When someone is tapering by cutting a little more each day it's still important to take the occasional hold where you don't reduce at all. You may have gotten a bit ahead of your brain's ability to heal itself. But I think it will be able to catch up if you treat it gently for a while and don't change your dose. I'd recommend not restarting your taper as soon as you feel better, go ahead and hold for an extra month or so just to allow the invisible healing processes to catch up." "It hasn't even been a month yet, and I expect you'll need to hold for at least three months before you notice really consistent improvement, so hang in there. And there will be ups and downs. Don't read too much into them. They would happen no matter what you do. Just stay very consistent, keep your life as stable and regular as possible, keep your meds as stable and regular as possible, and allow your nervous system to balance itself out as best it can. The more stable you are, the smoother your eventual taper will be. Again, I think you may have reached the point that people often do reach, where you just don't have as many options any more if things go haywire. So please don't experiment with tapering faster. Stick with slow and safe." "I have been holding, holding, holding as per your advice and yes it has been a ride that I had to hold on tight but I am now having windows that are clearer and even a few days of about 95%. But, I do fall back into waves but I to much much lesser degrees and that's what gets me through them. " "If you are improving with the hold (as expected), I don't know why you would want to start tapering. Why not wait until the symptoms are gone and then taper. If you start now, your symptoms will slow the rate at which you can taper, and your quality of life will suffer." "I'd continue to hold as long as you are improving. I once held for 9 months.. to good effect. Why have a bumpy taper if you can come off without the pain of withdrawal symptoms." "You don't need to make any more changes for a good time (think 6 months or so), even very small ones. Please let things simmer down! When you get symptomatic, you have wanted to updose, or ct.. or some variation. Please hold onto the fact that the very best thing you can do now is to HOLD and let your body heal. And IMO, holding is the hardest part of all. At least it was for me." "What you suffer from is destabilisation and the best cure for that is stability over time. It's incredibly hard not to do something, anything when we are suffering so badly. But as you have seen so far that only makes things worse. The information describing how our brain remodels itself turned me into a firm believer of healing power of holding. I have to say that after 5 horrible months I'm being rewarded by feeling so much better..." "A month is not a long hold, especially if you're pretty symptomatic. I wouldn't assume a problem with a hold until after six months there was no improvement. Yes of course most of us get improvement and stability with holds, that's why we do them. But like I say, a month is often not nearly long enough." "I still find that holds are at least as important a part of the picture as the cuts. Maybe more. Slows me down even more, the longer holds, but I still get to feeling so much better after holding for a while that I know it's good for me to do it. And overall feeling SO much better now that I'm on these low doses. Turtle turtle turtle is working for me still. I hope other people can bring themselves to do it and it works for them too." "I'm pretty sure that the holds, for me, are a crucial factor in how well I do overall. I notice a lot of improvement with, and for a couple of months after, every long hold. I feel like my body uses that time to catch up and heal and establish a new, better "normal." "We all will recover is the hope that gets me through the days. From all the countless hours of research and talking to doctors who understand kindling and withdrawl the general concensus is that it will get better with time. You are on the right path just keep going one day at a time. I have made the mistake many times of moving a dose or adding drugs only to make things worse." "People feel pretty stable after holding for a while, but then make even a tiny cut and get hit with symptoms. This will happen over and over. Yet those same people eventually, after holding for many months or even a year, are able to cut again with much less trouble. I suspect there is a lot of subtle healing that needs time, lots of time, to work its way through. Our nervous systems can reach a homeostatic state that's good enough when there are not a lot of extra stressors, but they're not fully healed and are still more fragile at that point than we realize, and can be easily pushed back over the edge. I think that's part of why we get those windows and those waves. I could be wrong but I think that's a pattern that I'm seeing." "Holding for 6 months should result in a substantial improvement." "A sufficiently and very slow taper after holding until stable and maybe a bit longer, should make you able to function and have quality of life while tapering." "But as we see so often on withdrawal groups, it is not simply about (tolerating) getting to being drug-free. It is about completing the healing process. I learned the concept that the ideal way to heal, and the least painless, is to balance tapers with healing. So if your body still needs a little more of that healing process, from the cases I have seen, it can actually be a faster healing process to take a bit longer and let the process complete while not jarring your nervous system by going off too soon." "I have noticed a change in the way I feel since I've been holding. It does tell me that crossing over to K and being on it for 3 months and then tapering was not enough time to stabilize on K. So I am now in my 78th day of holding, and I still am feeling change. This tells me that I should hold longer, which I had already planned to do anyway. I will not hesitate to hold a year if I feel i should. And when I do taper, it will be respective of small cuts with sufficient holds. I do not see the need to rush, and that is the position and mindset I now have." "Unfortunately, there is no fast way out and if you hold for a while to let your nervous system settle and catch up to the changes and then do a slow and steady taper you will be in the best position possible. If you taper carefully you can enjoy a high quality of life , as you go . There are quite a few here who while tapering have held down jobs and maintained a happy and healthy life. " "You have to be so careful to taper this crap off VERY slowly! I have also thought that I could not stabilize but that just means your brain type needs way more time to heal. Just hold until you get stable if it does not happen then your brain is just telling you to go slower. Some people just need extra time. If you taper faster then your S/X can heal then jumping just means a long recovery is coming and I'd rather spend that time slow tapering." "I do not care what Ashton says I NEVER cut if I am still feeling bad. I hold until I reach a new baseline and then cut again. This is hard since people tend to push for some odd reason. Personally I think the withdrawal amplifies the sense of urgency so we end up psyching ourselves out and end up going faster and faster. Jumping does not heal you. Feeling healed should be the only reason why you jump. Took me 3 years to figure out this simple fact" "I was very fortunate to have successfully gone on klonopin after what I believe was months off a virtually cold-turkey taper off a large amount of xanax." "There are many reasons why reinstatements to taper are successful. Crossing to the longer life benzo after reinstating AND getting the right equivalency and more. HOLDING is essential and many are coached to "PUSH" through it upon reinstate. The brain has NO time to settle down." "Just be careful in your taper off the clonazepam. If your dizziness and other symptoms increase or are more disturbing, do not be afraid to hold the taper so that you don't suffer in the process." "When doing a microtaper (smaller cuts but more frequently) people can get ahead of their brain's ability to remodel itself. The time it takes a brain to heal and remodel, to build new receptors and remove old ones, to turn genes on and off, et cetera, is just not something that we can control or change. I generally encourage people who are microtapering to continue to take intermittent longer holds throughout their taper, just to make sure the brain healing is keeping up with the cuts they are making." Hope you all have a great day! --V Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Va...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Dear Buddies, Thank you for your replies and support recently. :smitten: I am only responding today as I finally have some time . Up dosing and holding the dose has helped me hugely. I just want to share this for anyone in doubt. I was really annoyed that I up dosed, felt a bit of a failure but I was just thinking today that I have not had any major symptoms since my up dose (by .50 mg) in early July. In fact, constant symptoms that I struggled with Most of my taper are gone. Burning skin, bladder weakness, sickness and GI issues. I feel well, almost normal for the first time in two years. An up dose is a good thing for me personally and I would not have known this had I not had to do it. Hindsight is wonderful of course, we all know that. I just wanted to take some time to share my experience. My mother is still ill, not a lot of change. I have decided to take this week at home as I need more rest and I will go down to visit her at the weekend when hubby returns. It will be easier. My sister is living with my Mum, I am learning to leave others do the caring too. This journey off benzos has become a huge journey in living and how to live wisely. I have learned more about myself in the last two years than ever before. :thumbsup: So grateful to this forum for helping me, supporting me and for the invaluable information I have been given on the journey. :smitten: Peace and Healing, Moya XXX So good to hear you're doing well Moya! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[be...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 I just wanted to clarify that my comments and opinions were my own and I didn't mean to respond on anyone's behalf here. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. I sincerely hope everyone here see's some relief very soon! :smitten: I am ready to cut again and truly believe the hold put me in good stead. I will say that my 10% cut caused only minimal sxs and was by far my best experience so far. We'll see how it goes from here - as always, I will report the good, bad and ugly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[no...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Gosh if anyone really knew me and hOw much hell I have been through and how much compassion I have for all of us (Skittles hasn't been here long enough to meet me) they would know I don't have a mean bone in my body. I could hardly post yesterday because I was struggling so my point was that we've found that when someone is taking more than a Benzo it's different than someone who is just tapering a Benzo. Is "level playing field" negative? My brain couldn't come up with the right analogy. Love you all Liza Forgive me if I said something easily misunderstood. Bless you all Sweetie don't even begin to apologise, your more harmless than harmless, now me? That's a horse of another colour heh! heh! heh! Don't worry where ever there's an opinion there, will always be another one, some will agree other won't. As long as you know your truth don't worry about some one else's. The one thing I have learned about this forum is with so many fragile heads is the nicest of post will get completely taken out of context. And sometimes people will see an attempt to help as pushing your own opinion or some sort of agenda on to them when its not true and the opposite of their personal perception at the time. I have been called many things on this forum, and had some right spiteful and childish shit aimed at me for no good reason that got so bad lots of other people reported it as the were shocked and upset at the abuse aimed at me. But I also now know this, if some one is gearing up for war with you don't even bother replying and if is bothering you put them on ignore. Never ever be afraid to say what you want to, your not responsible for other peoples perceptions, that is their bag to carry the same as the rest of us. We are no greater or lesser than each other and we alone are responsible for what we do or don't do, not the advice given by anyone on this forum. If someone said setting yourself on fire would stop the symptoms would everyone do that? I hardly think so, what we are giving each other is another perspective, option, or choice not a definite ''you should do this''. That's why I usually put ''in my personal opinion'' when asked a question where the other person is looking for an answer, or ''what I did was'' making it clear it was a personal choice not practically an order to follow suit. Either way in life shit happens, but we alone are responsible for sorting it out and if some takes my ''suggestion'' as gospel then does it that's up to them not me. The same as I first took ''suggestions'' as the right thing to do then it bit me on the arse after doing it without standing back and looking at the big picture. And allowing fear to rule me instead of owning my own decisions at the time as being my fault if it went wrong, not it was the ''suggestion'' that fkd me up , fear wil always lead you down the wrong path. As will having a'' see ( C ) you (U) Next Tuesday'' of a neighbour living above you head And whatever we try there only two out comes either it works or it doesn't what we do next is our call no one is holding a gun to anyone head, we wil all get there in the end some much easier than others why no one knows the answer. Look at what happened to me prior to this hold I held for either 10 months or a year and had a nine months'' window''. Or was I actually finally healing with no sxs but plunged back in to hell by cutting 2mg way to fast after getting frightened by too much information on here. Not even previously realising that I had been doing a long hold and it had bought me out of ''tolerance withdrawal'' of over 10 years on my prescribed dose? I am really beginning to think it was the latter lately Love Nova xxx :smitten: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[li...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Can someone address the effect of humidity on our bodies that are already unstable? I've been slowly progressing in this hold until this 90-100% humidity wave this last week. Suddenly I feel ten times more sick and my racing brain, DR and frantic are at a fever pitch. I was going out for about 20 minutes each day and I've heard that even for a healthy body, heat and humidity effects are cumulative. Yesterday I was down all day feeling like I was dying and there was no hope. Slightly better this morning, but does anyone know why this happens with humidity? Even in the AC I feel awful. Could just be a wave but I'm praying it gets better when the humidity drops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[wa...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Can someone address the effect of humidity on our bodies that are already unstable? I've been slowly progressing in this hold until this 90-100% humidity wave this last week. Suddenly I feel ten times more sick and my racing brain, DR and frantic are at a fever pitch. I was going out for about 20 minutes each day and I've heard that even for a healthy body, heat and humidity effects are cumulative. Yesterday I was down all day feeling like I was dying and there was no hope. Slightly better this morning, but does anyone know why this happens with humidity? Even in the AC I feel awful. Could just be a wave but I'm praying it gets better when the humidity drops. Wow - I thought I was going crazy these last few days. i normally prefer hotter weather since I don't get upper resp infections in summer but lately I've felt really run down and depressed here in northeast. What? 100F today in Philadelphia? I also suspect that really poor air quality contributes to overall lousy feeling. Mornings are worse. I have no clinical info on this phenom - just sympathy. WBB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Kg...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Lizagal I know weather effects me big time but I don't know if it has anything to do with a taper or not. I just think our entire body is very sensitive to any change so extreme heat and extreme cold make us nuts. I know I can predict thunderstorms and a change in the barometric pressure - hence my sinus headache today. Also I think going from the hot to cold (a/c) is difficult for us - that is if we are just 'hot' we would adjust but in the modern world every place we go is freezing inside and then we go out and it is very hot - so up and down for our bodies. To ALL: IMHO Re long holds: As many of you know I am one of the many on BB who could not hold- or stop my taper and stay at the same dose for months or in my case even more than a couple of weeks. In some ways I wish it had helped me - but for those of you who are reading this thread and are like me know that if you can't hold - do not rush your taper. That is I know you want off as fast as possible but you still need to go at a rate that leaves you functional. There were many days that I had what over on the KK support group I called 'raft days' or 'grit my teeth' days. With that being said as I went down on my dose I felt better and better. Examples of this: I started putting back the weight I lost (I could not gain any weight even though I ate a lot), I was able to start exercising more and I am now up to being able to do aerobics for 30+ minutes a day, most days I have afternoon and night windows, the awful intractable nausea is better, the stomach cramps which I had for many days in a row now come intermittently - and I could go on but hopefully you get the picture. The ultimate goal for all of us is to get off of these poisons and be semi functional on the way off. Since I am off now - I want to tell everyone here what helped me since I read about so much pain many people are in on this journey. This is MY OPINION: 1. If one way of tapering does not work for you try another!!! Some people do great on cut and hold, others micro taper- some use liquid some the gram scale. Find what works for you - no harm also in starting out one way and trying another way. I went from cut and hold to a micro taper and slowed my pace along the way. 2. Please try to get out of bed and move around. Do whatever you can do- Kundalini yoga is essentially stretches with breathing - please try this out. It has been shown to improve health and brain function. There are many you tubes. I can't say stress enough about movement - any movement - our bodies are made to move. If you are in bed then you can still do stretches and breathing - any little bit helps. If you are dizzy (I was) I just laid on the floor to do my stretches so I wouldn't fall - I was already on the floor - and I found ones that required no standing at all. 3. Be wary of what 'works for others' in terms of supplements. Each of us reacts differently to adding things and you don't want to throw new things at your body. Be especially careful about supplements that act on your GABA receptors. If you want to try something out please start very slowly to see how you react to it - and give your body time to adjust and do not cut while you add something new in. 4. Remember that not every s/x is due to a benzo. Though we all have our stories regarding doctors who put us on these drugs some s/x are not related to benzos but rather are a medical issue that need treatment. Please don't use Dr. Google or even BB as your medical provider - see your doctor if in doubt. It is better to rule it out and know it is the benzos than not. And yes I had every test for my GI tract and it was the benzos but I still feel it was better to be safe than sorry. 5. Never for one minute forget what Baylissa John's says: You can do this- many people have gone before you and are now living healthy and happy lives. What you are reading here is a small % of the population. So many people heal and never come back here to tell us about how great they are doing. I now know why. Even though I am just starting my journey w/o benzos I find it very hard to come here and read about all the pain people are having in trying to taper. It sends me back to a place I no longer want to visit. So I, as many before me have done, will only look at a few posts here, post in my progress log, chat with my friends I have made here during my taper but other than that I don't want to post on the boards much anymore until I can write my success story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[St...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 K girl, thank you for your post....I will miss you on the boards but completely understand, please do keep up your progress log tho, because I will want to read it....when you went to a micro taper, did you do liquid or dry....I am crossing to valium and it is so difficult, but want to stay with dry because liquid Ativan tapering did not agree with me at all!!! I have 1 1/2 dose to cross over and then hold for 30 days and then start tapering the v. Praying it goes better than the a, I just couldn't take the interdose anymore....I wish you much success in your recovery period...sounds like you are doing very well....You have helped me, I may not have expressed that to you, but you have made me see that I have to own my own taper, and do it the way it will work for me....I thank you for that....Stella Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[ba...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Folks, lets all love on each other, ok? No more to say about that. AND I CANT PUT PICTURES IN HERE, it's so frustrating. I am in day 3 of a wave, and of course, my inclination is to cut or change how I dose. So I read Ashton again. I fit the criteria for being in hard wd. I actually have been tapering for longer than my signature suggests, but was experimenting, so didn't count a start date until I went to a method that was not so terrible. I started tapering because the medication quit working (In December of 2015) and my doc kept bumping me up to compensate, and it did not help. I was back and forth until June 6, then started to taper. Have adjusted many times. Finally determined a dry taper worked best. Anyway, during the waves, I get no relief from my symptoms with each dose. Sometimes I get a break later in the day, not always. Essentially, intense wd effects all day, rendering me bed bound, or houseboud, and in agony . I was experiencing this long before the taper, hence I would start cutting or updosing. Trying to figure out how I was medicating wrong. Its a bad habit, and I'm still trying to stop it and be consistent. Only during the waves do I want to change how I dose. I'm afraid that the intensity of wd is due to over/under. Working on that fear. Going over my diary, I seem to have 4 bad , then 2 better days, then 4 and so on. I also keep tinkering around with my doses, something you all have addressed, am still struggling with a dose plan, when it's not giving me any relief. I will do better, it's just very hard to dose when you know the med is not going to help you. The only constant I have never altered is the wait time between doses. Question: During the waves, the doses do not give me relief. As they near the end, my sxs kick up hard. Is this the correct definition of a wave? On the better days, I get some relief from the doses, I still have numerous sxs, but I can actually function and do some of my normal life. And, on really good days, at the end of the dose, I get a "break." Not symptom free, not a window, but it feels better than when I was on the med. I don't even think about changing how I am dosing on those days. Is this typical? And, is my not getting relief and coming down so hard after a dose the true definition of a wave? I actually have been tapering for longer than my signature suggests, but was experimenting, so didn't count a start date until I went to a method that was not so terrible. I started tapering because the medication quit working (In December of 2015) and my doc kept bumping me up to compensate, and it did not help. I was back and forth until June 6, then started to taper. Have adjusted many times. Finally determined a dry taper worked best. I have company coming from out of state in a week, and a dental procedure that will be intense in a week and a half. I want to be stable enough to get through those events. Is staying on the current taper the best way to achieve that? I suspect it is. However, it doesn't feel good, so yada, yada, yada. As my therapist has said: “Discomfort avoidance is the common thread that binds all anxiety disorders.” I know it’s hard to step back and analyze this, but there is important truth here. First, it means that anxiety is based on anticipation. Watching. Monitoring. Checking. It is about the future, bad things happening outside, bad things happening inside, unwanted things, unpleasant things. When you lose that, you are vigilant about anticipation: Will it come today? This hour? Will this Xanax dose work, or suck? Will I take too much, or too little? Can I get outside to exercise? How will sitting here affect it? It’s like a constant duality or contest between you and “it.” Discomfort avoidance. Mindfulness is about being in the moment (no anticipation, no monitoring or watching). Just observing what is happening, and accepting it without any judgment or evaluation whatsoever. It just is. Now. This moment. Unfortunately, this is hard for you because your mind wants to quell unpleasantness (discomfort avoidance) and seek pleasantness or relief. Can’t blame you, but it isn’t working. Quit trying to titrate your medication, shaving off bits and pieces and seeking the “right” formula. Quit (if you possibly can) trying to stop or start things within you. It just is. This is not giving up or giving in. It is the way. Right now, as you read this, can you quiet your mind’s evaluative part and just be? That would mean you’d probably close your eyes and clear your head and let sensory data just flow in and through you. (physical sensations) all devoid of any analysis, conclusions, if-this-then-that thinking. These things just “are;” you are in the moment. They mean nothing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[He...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 I have read all of your stories and so appreciate the fact that I am not alone. I hope we can all get though this together and keep this site going. I have been on other sights but this one has helped me the most. ValleyUm, i hope your daughter is doing well after her tonsillectomy. When I was 3 years old, I had my tonsils taken out. All I remember is a sore throat afterwards. Lots and lots of jello and ice cream helped me heal fast! I feel she will be fine and I hope for a speedy recovery for her! Liza gal, be good, Lynne, Nova, VallyUm,, wannabe better, and all others who I may have forgotten to mention, you are "the bees knees" and "peachy keen" Here's to the day when we are all benzo free. When that happens to me, I'm going to celebrate it like it is my new birthday! Heathcliff :smitten: :smitten: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[He...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Can someone address the effect of humidity on our bodies that are already unstable? I've been slowly progressing in this hold until this 90-100% humidity wave this last week. Suddenly I feel ten times more sick and my racing brain, DR and frantic are at a fever pitch. I was going out for about 20 minutes each day and I've heard that even for a healthy body, heat and humidity effects are cumulative. Yesterday I was down all day feeling like I was dying and there was no hope. Slightly better this morning, but does anyone know why this happens with humidity? Even in the AC I feel awful. Could just be a wave but I'm praying it gets better when the humidity drops. Wow - I thought I was going crazy these last few days. i normally prefer hotter weather since I don't get upper resp infections in summer but lately I've felt really run down and depressed here in northeast. What? 100F today in Philadelphia? I also suspect that really poor air quality contributes to overall lousy feeling. Mornings are worse. I have no clinical info on this phenom - just sympathy. WBB Good luck! This heat is getting me down too. But at least I don't have the humidity here n Los Angeles that you have in Philly. That's one reason I left the east coast. But maybe I would trade 100 degrees and humidity in Philadelhia for the 105-110 degrees in LA along with the smokey sky covering the blue sky and filthy ing the air from a 33,000 acre fire burning not too far away. LOL I USED TO LOVE THE SUMMER, THE BEACH, HIKING, ETC. I LOOK FORWARD TO THOSE DAYS AGAIN WHEN IM OFF THE BENZO! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[He...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Ok,, my test has begun. I am at day four of a five day micro taper at .01 each day. It's a test to see if my two month hold was long enough to straighten out my central nervous system and let my brain heal and catch up after my too fast taper. After tomorrow, day 5, I will hold for two weeks... And see what happens. I hope I find that I am ready to start to micro tPer again, but if I get bad sfx, I know to go back to my starting point and just hold longer. ( thanks VallyUm!) It's really nice to know, and takes a lot of the stress away, now that I know if all goes wrong, I can just go back to my starting point and begin to hold again for a longer amount of time. Heathcliff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[an...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Wow, see what these benzos do to us. Seems like people lose the ability to think and process info clearly. I think what threw that person was the level playing field comment. I think it was only meant that if you are on other drugs your situation will be different than people who are on only one benzo etc. i am one who is on 3 drugs and I think some of my symptoms come from that and not only my taper and hold. It was not meant as an attack. Can we please all get back to helping each other. Valley has held this group together. He doesn't have to devote his time and energy yet he does and I'm so grateful for this. Also, that comment about s/x's can be fun if you think of them that way, oh boy. That was like throwing a grenade into a foxhole. I am having horrible s/x's and there is no way they can be thought of as fun. I try to be positive etc. but when you are suffering terribly it in no way can be fun, even if I try to make my mind think that way so that was a kind of questionable way to phrase positive thinking. Very hard to do that when you are in the depths of hell. I am just about at 5 months of holding and one of the hard cases. I am thinking about my next step and even posted about it but Valley did nothing but support me. I'm so sorry this has happened but I just hope Valley that you continue to be our cheerleader and whoever sent the nasty PM's to you Skittles should be ashamed. We all have enough to deal with without attacking each other. May everyone have a great big window today and whether or not I continue to hold or try a small cut, I will let you all know how it goes. Liza, Lainey and I are the most vocal ones who aren't seeing a lot of progress but we will press on and soak up all info on all sides and make our own decisions. Lets get back to helping each other now. Everyone, I could not have said it better. I also want to thank Valley for holding this group together. I really needed the support last month, and I got it from this group--Valley, Lisa, Gard, Free, Nova, Begood, Lynn and others. It concerns me when people come to a thread such as this and go on and on causing upset. I believe that everyone has the right to voice an opinion, but at the same time one needs to voice it, let it go, and not relentlessly challenge other members. It is not supportive at all. In fact it is the opposite and causes many members that are in a bad state (and even those that are not in such a bad state) much more anxiety. It scares people off, because they have enough to deal with. This is a "long hold" support group and many of us here advocate long holds and slow tapers based on our own experiences. If I did not want to hold or proceed with a slow taper, I would look for another group to join. As we know, everyone is different, and what works for one does not necessarily work for another person. We have to make our own decisions and base our taper on how we feel. Many do well without holds, and there are many that do well with the holds. At the end of the day, we are here to receive and provide support. I am confident that will continue. Anne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[an...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Dear Buddies, Thank you for your replies and support recently. :smitten: I am only responding today as I finally have some time . Up dosing and holding the dose has helped me hugely. I just want to share this for anyone in doubt. I was really annoyed that I up dosed, felt a bit of a failure but I was just thinking today that I have not had any major symptoms since my up dose (by .50 mg) in early July. In fact, constant symptoms that I struggled with Most of my taper are gone. Burning skin, bladder weakness, sickness and GI issues. I feel well, almost normal for the first time in two years. An up dose is a good thing for me personally and I would not have known this had I not had to do it. Hindsight is wonderful of course, we all know that. I just wanted to take some time to share my experience. My mother is still ill, not a lot of change. I have decided to take this week at home as I need more rest and I will go down to visit her at the weekend when hubby returns. It will be easier. My sister is living with my Mum, I am learning to leave others do the caring too. This journey off benzos has become a huge journey in living and how to live wisely. I have learned more about myself in the last two years than ever before. :thumbsup: So grateful to this forum for helping me, supporting me and for the invaluable information I have been given on the journey. :smitten: Peace and Healing, Moya XXX Hi Moya, I am glad to hear your up dose worked out for you. I was in a bad situation last month and I also up dosed. As you say, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I am glad I did it. I feel much better now, and will resume my taper in another month or so. Even though I want to be done with the Ativan, I want to live and enjoy my life and not be symptomatic like I was a month ago. There is no hurry. I wish you continued healing. Anne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[be...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Anne, thank you for your continued support and your wise words, and yes Free said it very well, Our Free is a real blessing and she is someone that will walk with you and hold your hand, while being in agony. I will have to say, it was very disconcerting, since we are all here no matter what stage of tapering to give support and yes even I need support at times and I know where to come to ask for it. Thanks again. Happy that your hold is working for you, I will restart my taper Aug 13th after a 2 month hold and have had tiny blips, but I can function and that is the way I choose to do my dance off of the benzo madness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[li...] Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Love you Anne and everyone else here even though I don't post much. I intend to be a rock star after holding long enough like Valley but right now things are still rough and I don't want to be too negative. As y'all know, this ain't my first rodeo and even microtapering had me psychotic so I'm fine holding a while longer. Blessings Liza G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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