Day 87 In Need of Encouragement/support

[[th...]]

 

So my story is weird. I'm 37 dad of 3 14 yo girl, 9 yo girl and 7 month old son. The first week of December 2023 I reached a super stressed point in my life amd got the flu. I got 4 total benzo pulls from a friend - 2 MG mexican xanax and 4 MG Mexican kpin. I had used benzos off and on in my late 20s for maybe a year or two in small amounts to sleep after partying. Then when I was 35 I used 3 weeks of xanax to help me taper off of alcohol when I was a bad alcoholic. I withdrew from alcohol and xanax then but it was only hell for about a month. 

After taking these 4 pills over 6 days to sleep and with 3 total glasses of wine over 6 days, I went into acute withdrawal. 3 weeks of acute withdrawal it was HORRIBLE, spent 1 night in the crisis center. Well anyway I guess it got kinda progressively better but was still really bad until Sunday around day 60 started feeling wayyy better. I guess this was a window. Wellll....fast forward to day 80 and I thought I was pretty much out of the woods feeling a lot like my baseline self. I was feeling so back to normal that I had a small cup of coffee one day....seemingly no consequences. Then the next day a cup of sweet tea at lunch. Well that night my anxiety came rushing back in with a vengeance. That started a week long wave and here I am on day 87 with weird tingly uneasiness and depression and brain fog. This fucking sucks. I just want to be clear for my family. I've been functioning and working 45 hours a week and exercising this whole time but I'm still not better. The tinnitus is deafening at times and I seem to always think bad things are going to happen. Gosh. Any support and encouragement would be nice. I know i don't have it as rough as a lot of people but it feels so bad and so debilitating. I miss my old self

 

[[Ta...]]

You have had what seems like limited use of benzos in pill form, but alcohol is actually "liquid Benzo." And it seems you've had quite a bit of exposure to that.  Perhaps your brain is kind of giving you a "wake up call," and trying to get your attention. My brain really likes, and in fact insists on consistency. They don't like the up and down of alcohol/Benzo use. And adding things that act on GABA, like caffeine and others, just puts strain on the brain that is already working overtime trying to establish equilibrium and balance. There's a list on the Benzodiazepines Information Coalition site that tells what substances act on GABA and cause sensitivity. I'm glad you are writing here, Final Straw, and hope that you (and your brain) find peace and stability, and stay the course.

Healing is just around the bend.