Short term user in a long term withdrawal

[[Da...]]

 

Hi guys. i realize the post is a bit long, but please bear with me as i need to get this off my chest. 

So, am currently 11 months off, but past my 10th month into withdrawal. i was a very short term user (1 month) and quit cold turkey. Sadly i live in a third world country, doctors are useless and i had no proper guidance. Last july i went to a gasentrologist for dyspepsia. he prescribed me benzos, a very mild antipsychotic, a proton pump inhibitor and finally dexlansoprazole. Doesnt make much sense right ? all this for dyspepsia ? well i was just a patient, didnt know any better, but apparently i was a guinea pig to that money hungry doctor. a month later my body built a tolerance and meds not only stopped working, but they made my health worse. Realizing this, i quit cold turkey. i later found out this was a bad idea. From the beginning itself my case has been very different, my withdrawal started 13 days after i quit. for thirteen days i didnt feel a thing and was still 100% clueless as to what happened so far and what's to come. On day 13, its like someone flipped the coin of my life and everything turned upside down. i researched online and found out tht i was going through benzo withdrawal. a week later i went to another doctor to get some sort of relief, but as i said they are all clueless, this guy prescribes me more benzos and an ssri. the guy says i'll be fine, hard part is over (as if); see this is what i mean by they are clueless. anyway, i didnt listen to him, didnt get more benzos but i thought i'll take the ssri as i was looking for any relief possible. that was the second deadly mistake, the doctor had presribed a really heavy dose and it took only one pill for me to get serotonin poisoning.

This is where my real hell started. everything i was already going through had been amplified by 20 times and i was going through even newer types of pain now. i couldnt sleep for a week, not even a minute. benzo w/d itself takes ur sleep away, now add serotonin toxicity on top which also causes insomnia, so thats why i couldnt sleep a whole week even for a second. Due to no sleep at all for days at a time, i was starting to lose the sense of what was real and what was my imagination. i was in so much pain and agony that i wanted to die, my family wanted to take me to ER but were afraid of the butchers who call themselves doctors, they were afraid what if the doctors gave me something that i have even a worse reaction to and i come back in a body bag. so we decided to wait it out and just pray.

My next month and a half was pure hell on earth. it got a bit easier though as the damage caused by serotonin toxicity healed. these past ten months i have read every benzo related news, article, post, watched every video by survivors or doctors, visited every forum out there that i could find. trying to answer the dozens of questions eating me inside. what am i going through ? how long will it last ? will i ever get better ? when will i get better ? is this normal during withdrawal ? where did i go wrong ? why is this happening to me ? the questions dont end. there is a page, not sure if its on this website or some other, but it lists all the known benzo withdrawal symptoms, they are close to a hundred or maybe more and they are all categorized alphabetically. Most of the posts or cases that i have come across, people mention having like what 10-15 syptoms maybe, it was either physical symptoms or psychological or a mixture of both but the point is there were only a few symptoms and most of those people were long term users. but in my case despite being only a 1 month user, i have had almost each and every symptom mentioned in that list except for seizures. other than tht, be it physical or psyhological, the list of my symptoms has been endless.

My brain doesn't work, i cant think, i cant concentrate, i cant focus, i cant remember, i keep forgetting everything, heck i am having speech problems now, cant remember words, cant make sentences, even in my native language. my body doesnt work, am fatigued all the time, i have no strength, am in pain constantly and body's burning all the time. everybody complains of internal burning up, but for me its so extreme that the moment i step away from under the fan, my body first feels like its getting poked by millions of needles internally and then my body heats up so much it feels like it will implode if i dont cool it down, i literally have tht feeling feeling in my heart and head like something is going to just pop, so i hurry back under a fan. it gets insanely hot in my country, around 50 degrees celsius (122 fahrenheit), so yea imagine being confined to ur bed for the past 10 months because u are worried that ur body might implode. something as basic as getting up from the bed has torn my chest muscles thrice. one second am cold the next am hot. tinnitus, panic attacks, benzo belly, sensitivity to literally every food on the planet, cant eat, cant sleep, cant do any work, basically am as useless as a dirty rag right now. am not even mentioning most of my symptoms as i'd be writing for pages. i have lost my purpose of being alive. so many times i came very close to ending my life, but the thought of my family stopped me. ten months later my physical symptoms arent as intense as they used to be, but my psychological symptoms actually have gotten worse over time. the anxiety, depression, the negativity, the agitation, the frustration, aggression, i hate everything and everyone. my relationship with everybody has been strained, even with God. i have lost the will to live, i dont see a light at the end of this tunnel. because i feel like a dog chasing its tail endlessly. i get a tiny window of relief, i think am healing or getting better and next thing i know the symptoms come back, even the symptoms that hadnt appeared for months and i thought were gone permanently. in the past 10 months i have only felt the sense of normalcy for like 3 times maybe and it was so brief that it felt like seconds. in the past 10 months life has given me hope like 10,000 times only to take it away the moment i felt it. this is what i mean by a dog chasing its tail endlessly. benzo withdrawal really is the most inhumane and cruel thing there is.

Am a straight guy, but am not embarassed to say that ever since this whole thing started, i have cried like a gallon of tears. always wondering what did i do to deserve this ? why me ? no one in my life understands what am going through. and please no judging abt how negative i sound, i saw one guy criticizing a guy like me in a post on this website. keep in mind this is what benzo does to us, everyone has a different experience, different intensity, different reaction to it, everybody is different. something that's an inconvenience to one person can be another's personal hell. everybody has a different capacity/limit. and this withdrawal has literally destroyed every drop of positivity i had in my life.

anyway, up until now i have been a quite observer, but today i was forced to make a post because of a discussion i came across in one of the posts on this wesbite. Up until now what i have known of benzo withdrawal is that there are windows of relief and waves of symptoms that come and go until we are 100% healed and we do heal eventually no matter how far into the future it is. but today i came across some of the members here saying some things that are just new to me. they mentioned having "healed" many times and then having "setbacks". this really confused me and is freaking me out because how can u go back into withdrawal IF you are already healed. and what do they mean by setbacks ? somebody please explain before i make myself crazy with the negative thoughts.

 

Edited July 7 by [Da...]

[[Pa...]]

Hi @[Da...], I'm so very sorry for the pain you've endured and continue to endure, I wish I had answers for you, I wish I could predict when your nightmare will end.  We see recovery for most of our members between 1 and 2 years so I'm hoping you'll fall into that category, and even though your story isn't typical, maybe your recovery will be.

As far as setbacks and healing, many of our members have declared themselves healed when down the line the find themselves facing symptoms again.  This is a shock because they've been symptom free for months or years and something happens that causes them to become symptomatic.  This won't usually last too long but the pain and fear come back full force and members go into a panic, its understandable, of course.

Setbacks can be caused by medication, supplements, stress and illness.

Not everyone will have setbacks, I've never had one and I've been recovered since 2008.

[[WU...]]

5 hours ago, [[D...] said:

Sadly i live in a third world country, doctors are useless and i had no proper guidance.

I don't know where you live but it seems doctors anywhere and everywhere in the world give no proper guidance for these pills. 

Perhaps setbacks are the brain being reminded with some sort of trigger and it temporarily pumps out the same symptoms as it did with withdrawal. But it won't be the same as the drug is long gone so it is just the brain getting a bit over-stimulated and hopefully won't take so long to calm the nervous system back down again. 

[[Da...]]

4 hours ago, [[P...] said:

Hi @[Da...], I'm so very sorry for the pain you've endured and continue to endure, I wish I had answers for you, I wish I could predict when your nightmare will end.  We see recovery for most of our members between 1 and 2 years so I'm hoping you'll fall into that category, and even though your story isn't typical, maybe your recovery will be.

As far as setbacks and healing, many of our members have declared themselves healed when down the line the find themselves facing symptoms again.  This is a shock because they've been symptom free for months or years and something happens that causes them to become symptomatic.  This won't usually last too long but the pain and fear come back full force and members go into a panic, its understandable, of course.

Setbacks can be caused by medication, supplements, stress and illness.

Not everyone will have setbacks, I've never had one and I've been recovered since 2008.

Thanks for understanding and the kind words. I really hope that i can recover soon. My life has stopped ever since this whole thing started. And society, the people, circumstances they don't really make it any easy for us. Its not like there's a magical place we can go to and heal in peace. Life makes this withdrawal harder than its supposed to be. 

 

I guess i understand now what the setback thing means. its just i havent seen anyone mention it until now using those terms. i thought maybe they meant falling off the wagon, like they heal and start benzos again. i thought why would anyone put themselves through that again. or as i said in the original post, how can someone go back into withdrawal if they are already healed. so basically the users assumed they were healed and the symptoms appeared again ? 

 

Am glad to hear that u havent had any setbacks and are totally healed. This thing is so cruel i wouldn't wish it on anyone. I hope i get healed soon too, tired of being a burden on everyone, on myself. Tired of feeling like a dud.

[[Da...]]

4 hours ago, [[W...] said:

I don't know where you live but it seems doctors anywhere and everywhere in the world give no proper guidance for these pills. 

Perhaps setbacks are the brain being reminded with some sort of trigger and it temporarily pumps out the same symptoms as it did with withdrawal. But it won't be the same as the drug is long gone so it is just the brain getting a bit over-stimulated and hopefully won't take so long to calm the nervous system back down again. 

Hi. I am from pakistan. and what i meant was that the doctors are so clueless about benzos they don't even know about its side effects or its withdrawal symptoms. The doctor who started all this, told me "dont worry i know what i am prescribing, i wouldnt give it to you if it was harmful, i know what am doing, this is what i do everyday, i deal with patients like you on a daily basis."

The second genius who prescribed even more benzos during my first week of the withdrawal and gave me serotonin poisoning said "dont worry the hard part is over, just do what i say and u'll come back to me in two weeks all healed and happy". Been 11 months and am still waiting on that healed and happy part.

 

I met another doctor (a general practitioner this time, not a specialist) as a last resort because my pain was too much for me. This was around the second month into the withdrawal. this guy didn't even believe that benzos have such a dangerous withdrawal. First he says benzos arent dangerous, then when i explain everything happening to me, he says "oh thats cruel, the original doc shouldnt have made u take it for a month". And he thought it was all in my head. Obviously he doesn't say this to my face cz i might snap at him, he says this to my younger brother who visited him the next day for something else. He says "take your elder brother to a psychiatrist".

 

Even if i had gone to a psychiatrist who deal these types of meds more than other doctors, i doubt it would have been any different. Doctors here are like businessmen. They don't research about a medicine before giving it out to patients. They think just because they have a degree, they know it all, they can play God with the lives of their patients. They will prescribe the medicine of a company who will bribe them the most. Anyway, thats a whole another topic which i dont wana get into.

 

And thanks I kinda understand setbacks a bit better now.

[[Pa...]]

I'm just sitting here shaking my head @[Da...], you've been treated so poorly by people you put your trust in.  Most short time users can expect recovery in terms of weeks or months, long term is usually months and years but I have seen people like you who used the drug for a very short time suffer this far out, its so unfair.  At least here you can find understanding, people who have never experienced it have no idea how overwhelming our suffering is. 

[[Da...]]

2 hours ago, [[P...] said:

I'm just sitting here shaking my head @[Da...], you've been treated so poorly by people you put your trust in.  Most short time users can expect recovery in terms of weeks or months, long term is usually months and years but I have seen people like you who used the drug for a very short time suffer this far out, its so unfair.  At least here you can find understanding, people who have never experienced it have no idea how overwhelming our suffering is. 

That what eats me inside, why is my case so different ? My withdrawal was a late bloomer, it started 13 days after i quit and for a 1 month user why is it still going on so persistently ? I read about this guy on quora, he used benzos for 5 months and was healed in 8. I thought by that logic i should heal in 3-4 months max, but i was so wrong. Many people i came across, as you said, even long time users healed before me. But then again, i found people like me too, i read about this one girl here on benzobuddies, she was a 1 month user and it took her 2.5 years to heal. When i read that it broke me, because these 10 months felt like a decade, how can i go through another 20 months of this. But at the rate that am healing, am afraid that it might take that long. I used to love lifting weights, up until doing that was impossible for me. But lately my movements have not been that restricted and i read that exercise helps. so i thought why not do some light-weight lifting. But i think it was a bad idea, because tht body about-to-implode type of feeling, the internal heat, i hadn't had tht in a while now and its back, its very frequent, the tinnitus has gotten louder and more frequent, so i think i just prolonged my withdrawal or made it worse. am so bummed about this, i was looking forward to exercising and healing, but i think i just made things worse. and i'll probably go back to being bed-ridden again.

Another thing this withdrawal makes me go through repeatedly is nicotine withdrawal. I have been a smoker most my adult life. I quit benzos and cigarettes the same day. Usually nicotine withdrawal lasts a month max and then its just psychological and u need strong willpower to not smoke. But, since i was a smoker during my benzo use and both withdrawals started at the same time, for some reason nicotine craving also comes and goes in waves even though its been so long. I realized one thing about benzo withdrawal, that it doesn't just make u go through benzo related symptoms. Lets say u had any physical illnesses/issues/aches/problems or psychological issues during ur benzo use. The withdrawal will make u relive those problems too even if they had healed before u quit. This is what makes this withdrawal truly horrifying. I had some physical & psychological issues before and i have to relive them again and again in waves even though they were already healed.

You are right, this whole thing feels so unfair and not being understood just makes things much worse. i have never felt so alone. i have pushed everyone in my life away or they left themselves. Even if u try to explain, no one can understand what we are going through, most dont even believe it and think we are nuts. 

Edited July 7 by [Da...]

[[Ca...]]

Well, you do have people here to communicate with who understand precisely what you mean. Just keep posting....

[[WU...]]

9 hours ago, [[D...] said:

Doctors here are like businessmen

If it makes you feel any better they are the same here in the UK, everywhere "healthcare" is a business, always has been. But it does no good to think too much about their incompetence, better to concentrate on healing ourselves first.

Our nervous system has been injured and there is no quick way to fix it, just rest, move around a bit but not too much, try to eat decent food without being too fussy either. Eventually our brain will get the message and will have made all the necessary adjustments. But always remember we cannot rush this, it happens in its own time.

 

[[De...]]

14 hours ago, [[W...] said:

I don't know where you live but it seems doctors anywhere and everywhere in the world give no proper guidance for these pills. 

Perhaps setbacks are the brain being reminded with some sort of trigger and it temporarily pumps out the same symptoms as it did with withdrawal. But it won't be the same as the drug is long gone so it is just the brain getting a bit over-stimulated and hopefully won't take so long to calm the nervous system back down again. 

I have similar theory about setbecks And What gabor mate talk about implicit memory. How our body remember feeling even if we forget about some situation a that Made us felt in sertain way. That is why when we are stressed even if we are healed we start to expirience this simptoms again because that is how we felt during wd 🫣

that is why i do my best to live quet life And not be stressed about things that would usually upset me. I don’t know if it makes any sense 🫣

just my thinking about setbecks

 

[[WU...]]

55 minutes ago, [[D...] said:

implicit memory

Yes it is like when something bad happened when you were in, for example, a room covered in wallpaper with white daisies and you then connect the wallpaper with the bad thing that happened which now becomes a trigger. Sounds ridiculous but happens all the time and there have been many psychological films with this theme.  We have to try and rationalise things by recognising the triggers in advance. So yes I think this is what happens with setbacks, something has triggered us.

1 hour ago, [[D...] said:

i do my best to live quet life

Absolutely right, me too. Learning to be content with just looking out the window, hearing birds, watching the clouds in the sky and I am very lucky to have a sea view but would also be happy with trees or anything natural, growing and alive, even a cat walking past!

[[De...]]

Yes. Exactly like that.  Life is full of stress but if we are aware of trigers Maybe we can avoid setbecks. At least i hope that will work 💪
i am sure you view is great! I have a lot of trees And wood  And animals around my house so we can change a little bit 😂😂😂 

[[tr...]]

Dante what type of benzos did they give you and how many mg a day did they give you?  

I'm on my 3rd day of not taking  any I pretty much did CT. I keep on telling my self I will be ok and try keeping my self calm. I Listened to some anti  anxiety  audio books.. 

I was taking a low dose for about 70 days when I noticed I was dependent when I missed a dose  then started doing research and was startled how much pain these pills cause. 

I m just 3 days in I hope.the wd symptoms don't get worse but just taking it one day at a time 

[[Da...]]

10 minutes ago, [[t...] said:

Dante what type of benzos did they give you and how many mg a day did they give you?  

I'm on my 3rd day of not taking  any I pretty much did CT. I keep on telling my self I will be ok and try keeping my self calm. I Listened to some anti  anxiety  audio books.. 

I was taking a low dose for about 70 days when I noticed I was dependent when I missed a dose  then started doing research and was startled how much pain these pills cause. 

I m just 3 days in I hope.the wd symptoms don't get worse but just taking it one day at a time 

I was taking bromazepam 3mg per day. That's another part that bugs me, i was on a pretty low dose compared to most users and yet my withdrawal has been this intense and lasted this long. If u read everything i wrote on this page, u'd get a pretty detailed pic of what this withdrawal does to you. I am not trying to scare you, but knowing what's to come kinda prepares you mentally. Although, there have been cases where some people had a really mild and short withdrawal, you could be one of them. Just don't raise your hopes too much or scare yourself to death. 

Have u started to feel any symptoms ?