What is actually happening with head squeezing?

[Guest [...]]

Does anyone have an explanation for head squeezing? Its horrendous and I have it every day. It is combined with eye-watering pain and sometimes feels like I've been hit with a cricket bat or something similar.  If I could just understand the mechanism it might help so grateful for any insight please

[[mi...]]

Nobody knows anything really about this stuff. You ask ten people you will get ten answers and none of them is rooted in science, it’s all guess work. I’ve been researching benzo belly and you ask ten people and you’ll get ten answers. Self proclaimed experts because they think they have an idea but honestly nobody knows. Ultimately nerves and the cns are the seat of perception so they can create sensations that appear real when nothing is wrong. Pain from them can be in the form of pressure, aching, stabbing, burning, pinching, squeezing, tickling. No matter the mechanism they are sending signals that aren’t appropriate for the situation. Kind of like chemical depression. There is nothing actually wrong but the brain says there is. I think that’s what this is and the mechanism is just that. Misfiring unregulated nerves. The actual chemical action happening I’m sure is a mystery. I always try to figure out what’s happening just to calm me down but 1) I never find answers, and 2) Even if I had just figured out I’m sure I wouldn’t calm down because I’d just find the next symptom to obsess about. I know this because whenever I get into a window I don’t care about my symptoms anymore or why they happened. Not sure this helps but this is how I see it. 
 

I also see you CT’d so I’m sure the nerves are still in a shocked state trying to heal and so they’re not communicating like they should, this the misfiring. I am getting crazy stuff now and I am tapering slowly. It’s all an annoying mystery. 

Edited October 28, 2023 by [mi...]

[Guest [...]]

Thanks @[mi...] for offering up some explanation. Yes probably shocked my system with CT but I was so ill while taking it I couldn't see the point of taking any more and doubted I would stabilise at any level, not that I knew much about all this back in March. I can imagine the laboratory in my brain is working overtime at the moment trying to work out which chemicals to produce and which pathways to use and its all scrambled in there.  It is knowing what one can do to actually help things along, maybe nothing, but one naturally wants to be proactive about things. I'm not used to such a long haul and yet others are suffering for much longer so I shouldn't complain. 

[[mi...]]

I made too many brand changes and my body reacted to each one, going into a WD state that felt like CT each time. So weird how that can happen but i made three changes of brands/forms in a 6 weeks period and my body rejected them and I had 40 symptoms flare up and it was like i wasn't taking my pill. I finally got on my original brand once I found it after 8 weeks but it was too late, my body had been shocked into too many WD states and it became insanely sensitized. I am getting windows, but the waves are still dominant and brutal. I think anything drastic is horrible for our brains, whether intentional or not. That's why so many people microtaper and claim success. The brain wants predictability and when it is forced to make major changes quickly it misfires and goes into a neuro spasm of sorts and doesn't settle easily at all. I don't know the science behind that but that's just truth. I've had surgeries that have set off my CNS. I've had problems for years. Brain wants to be left alone. Seems to heal for most, but some including myself will always be extra sensitive.

[Guest [...]]

Well I think you've just said it, we crave stability. Sounds like you've had too many changes ! We just have to plod along without too much excitement of any kind, just aim for a simple life for the time being. In fact may as well forget about time altogether as that can be another stressor.  

[[mi...]]

Yeah, what ive learned about the brain is there is no rewind button. If mistakes or stressors are made, you can't just stop or reverse what you did and expect it to go back. It has to heal from the "injury" or stressor or whatever. And it seems it can take weeks, months, years, depending on who/what, etc. I switched to a liquid formula 3 months ago that messed me up bad, and after only 2 doses. I have been back on my original brand since and still don't feel like i used to, although im slowly starting to have some windows of relief where I feel the old me trying to come out. I've heard of some needing to hold their dose for 3, 6, 9, even 12 months before finding relief if at all. Others just need to get off the drug to heal. Everyone is different. But once your off the healing really begins. So the clock has begun ticking for you. I was hoping to slowly creep down and walk off without incident over many years, but that backfired. Hoping I can get back to baseline and maybe see if that's still possible. Were you symptomatic when you were on the drug?

[Guest [...]]

Yes I didn't realise when I started getting strange sensations last year and put it down to additional life worries, bereavement being the main one. I would get very shaky and anxiety levels shot up. There was a strange sensation of a hard rod through my head, hard to describe, like a major muscle had ceased up, along with a burning in my neck unlike anything I had felt before. Doctor suggested taking higher and more regular doses and that's when things got really bad.  In a way it was probably good I took more so that I could find out that the drug was a problem as otherwise I might have carried on taking it on and off as before and would never have put two and two together.  I've probably been kindled for years!

I don't know enough about tapering and finding baseline, as I just stopped and all hell broke loose and I'm still in it.  In a way we are all experimenting with ourselves and hoping for the best. I talk to my own brain asking if there is anything it wants me to do but I get the feeling it wants me to do as little as possible and that I've messed things up enough without doing any more!

[[mi...]]

Yeah my wife is my voice of reason and she keeps telling me less is more. Just hold and Microtaper as I’m able. I keep wanting to add more meds, tweak this, tweak that. It’s so hard to do nothing but nothing is often everything with this stuff and it’s scary. 

[Guest [...]]

Doing nothing is actually doing something, ie it is not interfering with the natural programmes of the mind and body. Doing nothing is a positive act.  That is what I think now anyway, even in this hellish state. It makes no sense to treat the effects of one drug with another drug.

[[mi...]]

Yeah exactly. It’s so unnatural to feel suffering though and not run to a doctor but I don’t trust doctors anymore. I’ve been burned so many times in my life and not just with benzos. My current problem is I don’t know if the drug is hurting me or helping me at this point but tapering makes me so sick that I kind of have no choice but to sit still for a while even if it hurts me. Like I said for 18 months, I tapered with minimal withdrawal effects, so minimal that I was able to work and travel and attend, concerts and sporting events with no problem at all. I actually worked as a photographer, and at a school and I had my days that I didn’t feel great but I never once felt like I was crashing into hell. Moore just kind of like I overdid it and I have to chill out for a couple of days but never in a scary way. So in that sense I feel like the drug was working and that I was feeling very stable even as a tapered. And then it just all ended on me at once and I’m pissed. I hate that it got disrupted when I was doing everything right and I had a very good chance at a smooth ride down. My worst symptom right now is severe, abdominal cramping and distentionthat comes and goes. It’s so severe that I’m literally terrified of the flareups. It’s all about actually. The other stuff is not fun, but it plays off of the gut mainly. God I want this to go away. 

[[...]]

Where is the pain? Mine is behind the eyes.

[Guest [...]]

@[...]Pain is deep inside the head, behind nose, cheek, deep inside the ear, down the back of neck and top of the head, all right sided.  The whole of the right side feels inflamed, as though twice the size of the left side. I feel like one of Picasso's models!

[Guest [...]]

@[mi...] sounds pretty rough for you with stomach cramping. I laugh when I think of the reasons I've visited the doctor before,  so trivial in comparison with things now.  I remember the last doctor smiling as he wrote out another valium prescription, just to get me out the door quickly. Maybe we expect far too much from them in the first place. Of course they don't explain what these drugs are actually doing to us and if I'd known.....better not dwell on that too much at the moment.