Natural remedy triggering severe withdrawal symptoms

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Hi buddies,

Brief (recent) backstory: my husband is still dealing with a fiasco that happened in June, where we discovered that his valium was inert and there was a problem with the compounded clonazepam, causing an unintentional cold turkey that started a nightmare of symptoms, ranging from akathisia to acute withdrawal symptoms. There has been slight improvement over time, but because he had made such progress and because he is cerebral and a problem solver, this process has been emotionally agonizing. In part there are chemical emotions, during akathisia, but beyond that as well, but also a crushing feeling of depression about feeling forced to halt everything and not seeing a clear end to this so he can resume tapering (he stopped tapering at the end of June, tried to resume in August, but symptoms started to increase at the end of August, requiring that he stops again).

Last week I had to travel because of work, which was the first 50 hours we spent apart in over a year and I had never left before while he was in such bad shape. While I was gone, his allergies started to act up so much that he was unable to sleep. When I got back, I could see why. He has always had allergies, but this was something else- sneezing and coughing so hard that actually vomited more than once and his asthma was getting worse and worse. He cannot take allegra or zyrtec, because both have triggered akathisia in the past. He cannot take benadryl because it increases his agitation and restlessness. Cyproheptadine worked well 3 times; the 4th he experienced a hypo-manic episode... which in his state of anxiety and withdrawal was near insufferable.

We had spoken to a consulting pharmacist that had recommended Histaminum (Boiron). He had tried it in the past at the lowest dose (6 cc) which did nothing for him. Out of desperation after having gotten up in the middle of the night because of allergies, he tried the 30 cc version at a lower dose (the website says 5 pellets 3 times a day, he took 4 pellets). It did help, but he also noticed an increase in anxiety and wakefulness. He took another 4 pellets on Monday evening. On Tuesday he took the 4 pellets 3 times, the last time being at 8 pm. He reported increased anxiety around 9 pm. He had also taken Fisetin (a polyphenol like Quercetin, which he had been taking with no issue for over a week). I went to bed at at around midnight, woke up around 4 and saw that he was still not in bed, so I got up and found him extremely anxious and spastic/ having tremors. He felt weak and really unwell... he did not eat anything until around 6 pm, but did consume 56 oz of water. In spite of not sleeping throughout the day yesterday and going to bed around 10 pm, he was awake with a start at 1:30 am. He felt tired, weak and had brain fog.

I am not sure if there is a way that I can help him. I am also not sure what can be done about the allergies. We have a purifier in every room and I clean at least once a day (ideally twice). I would be grateful for any suggestions.

 

[[Ha...]]

Sorry to hear your husband is having such a hard time of it. If he basically cold turkeyed in June it's unfortunately very early days and reactions like he's having are very common. His CNS has had a shock and it takes time to calm down, so introducing things with a sensitized CNS can further aggravate things. It's always best to start with a small fraction of a dose when adding anything new, so for an example with the Histaminum suggesting 5 pallets x3, a better place to start would have been 1 if not less. It's better to increase if tolerated than deal with the increase in symptoms. It's likely though that there will be certain things however that he simply won't tolerate. There's no 1 size fits all solution unfortunately, perhaps he could consider increasing the fisetin or try quercetin? It's going to be a little trial and error for a while until the nervous system calms down, but the good news (if there is any) is that reactions to supplements generally don't last too long