I Look LIke Hell

[[Mi...]]

Hello Ladies!

 

Challis, count me as another "senior", grandchildren and all.  How did that happen?  Until all this mess gained momentum, I felt like a youngun!

 

Candy and Recover, I identify myself as a Christian too, and I pray daily and try to follow the main tenant of treating my fellow human beings with love, but there is a time and a place to openly proselytize and this ain't it!  Your words summed it up for me.

 

LIZZY!!!! My dear benzo buddy!  You always bring a smile to my face and lift me up and make me feel better and nary a word about religion. 

 

Vertigo, thanks for leaping in and trying to direct the posts into the appropriate forum, but it has been my experience that nothing short of blunt force trauma works in these cases!

 

Press on fellow sufferers!

 

MiniMinnie

[[Ca...]]

MiniMinnie,  Where was I?  Oh yeah.  My eyebrows r falling out and i am pissed!!  lol  I love Spanx.  Candy

[[Ch...]]

Minnie, well said, as usual...

Vertigo, also well said.  Let's get on with positive healing!  I found this helpful advice in a link from Ashton's manual a bb sent me this a.m.:

 

{People bothered by long-term symptoms can do a lot to help themselves. For example:

 

Exercise your body. Physical exercise improves the circulation and function of both brain and body. Find an exercise that you enjoy: start at low level, work up gradually and keep it up regularly. Exercise also helps depression, decreases fatigue and increases general fitness.

 

Exercise your brain. Use your brain to devise methods to improve its efficiency: make lists, do crossword puzzles, find out what bothers you most - there is always a way round it. Cognitive retraining helps people to find ways around their temporary impairment.

 

Increase your interests. Finding an outside interest which you have to work at employs the brain, increases motivation, diverts attention away from your own symptoms and may even help others.

 

Calm your emotions. Above all, stop worrying. Worry, fear and anxiety increase all withdrawal symptoms. Many of these symptoms are actually due to anxiety and not signs of brain or nervous system damage. People who fear withdrawal have more intense symptoms than those who just take it as it comes and think positively and confidently about recovery.}

 

LOVE the last part...I need to apply it!

Challis

 

[[Mi...]]

Challis great post and information.  Very timely as I just got back from a brisk 45 minute walk and I always feel better afterwards.  An added bonus was running into a friend along the way and we stopped and chatted for a few minutes.  Distraction works great for me!  A lot of my distractions are online these days.  Ebay, a wonderful distraction.  Ditto Netflix.  I have watched some things recently that I would never have considered before the days of video streaming!  Also I have online Scrabble, which I adore.  I love word games!  And yes, focusing on our symptoms only make them feel worse, so as hard as it is to do, I find something else to take my mind off it.  My house is cleaner than its ever been.  I clean to distract myself.  A room each day and then I start over.  I feel positively anal but hey, its helping.

 

MiniMinnie

[[Mi...]]

MiniMinnie,  Where was I?  Oh yeah.  My eyebrows r falling out and i am pissed!!  lol  I love Spanx.  Candy

 

To grow your eyebrows and eyelashes back in there's Librow and Lilash.  Google it, it works!  As for spanx, I love how they make my body look sleeker but down here in Florida its heat stroke or go spanxless.  Also one has to dress more bare in the heat and that's no help. No hiding anything under a bulky sweater.

 

MiniMinnie

[[Pa...]]

Anyone else get droopy eyelids from withdrawal?

[[Ch...]]

I also just came back from exercising~~35 minutes on the treadmill at a gym I joined recently.  It's only a block from home, so I can walk there anytime I need or want to.  A friend joined with me so we meet three times a week for an hour.

 

Netflix, eBay, Kindle books and lots of time online with solitaire, BB, FB and FB Scrabble, Words with Friends and lately, Drawsome (word/drawing game with friends), not to mention reading everything I can about benzodiazepines.  Keeps social contacts and brain activity going while still at home.  I'm determined to do everything I can to maximize recovery. 

 

Trying to ignore headache, pounding in ears and heart, hair falling out (mostly the gray ones, hurray!) and bleeding gums and nose (new last night)...I'm willing these things to disappear...playing Pollyanna.  Why not, can't hurt. 

 

Challis

[[St...]]

MISS KIM

 

Though you had moved on.  Wish you had.  There is beautiful and there is ugly.  Beautiful is the love and support I have found with most of these posts as we are going through one of the most difficult times of our lives.  Times that have impacted our entire bodies, including our looks.  Ugly is a smug, self satisfied, condescending attitude that sows discord, helps no one and is cloaked in the guise of "helping". If you can't show the love and the grace your religion espouses, stay off my thread. You may now consider yourself a martyr to your religion so move on. Again.

 

MiniMinnie

 

This has been dealt with, but please everyone.. in the future use the "Report this Post" feature at the bottom right of the specific post.

 

Thank you,

 

Star

[[Ch...]]

Ok, moving on...this is such a great thread, let's keep it going as it was started, with all the humor we can muster up as we move forward towards writing our success stories.  I can't wait!  Well, yes, I'll have to...slow and steady wins this race, my friends.  Of that I am sure.  Of anything else, not so sure...

Challis

[[Pr...]]

Can I just say I JUST opened my browser and headed to this section to post on this very same issue!!!! I seriously was about to make a post on skin issues in w/d. I can't read through all fourteen pages of this right now, but I'll post again later once I have. Seems like I'm not the only one. It PISSES me off bc I am 28 and I seriously do not need this in my life right now. But then again who does. Sigh.

 

-P-

[[jr...]]

Can I just say I JUST opened my browser and headed to this section to post on this very same issue!!!! I seriously was about to make a post on skin issues in w/d. I can't read through all fourteen pages of this right now, but I'll post again later once I have. Seems like I'm not the only one. It PISSES me off bc I am 28 and I seriously do not need this in my life right now. But then again who does. Sigh.

 

-P-

 

I WISH the only think drooping on me was my eyelids.  Everything else droops!!

[[Ch...]]

Princezz,

You're 28!  You're going to have many, many good-lookin' years ahead of you...some of us are grandmas!! Challis

[[Mi...]]

Yes All, moving on!  Panicattackzak, mostly with me is is horrible dark under eye bags.  But overall my skin is looser and dryer so that contributes to everything drooping more.  Princezz, welcome and sorry you have to be here with all these issues!  But we will get through it. 

 

Challis, we have many good years ahead of us too grandmahood notwithstanding.  (She said optimistically)

 

What prompted me to start this thread was seeing photos of myself taken over the holidays.  This was after I had begun to experience horrible tolerance withdrawals and while I was tapering.  I was shocked at how much I seemed to have aged during my 4 month ordeal!  CRONEDOM!  Then I went to my ladies Bunco night and the group had not seen me in 4 months thought I looked ill.  I did!  Its not enough that we are dealing with how bad we feel, the kicker is that we look bad too!  But this too shall pass and I will get my old self back before too long, only better because it will be a benzo free self.  Onward!

 

MiniMinnie

[[jr...]]

I guess I'm also invisible.

[Guest [...]]

hey jrvmc

 

I see you buddy and I see you did a c/t pretty much like me how r u doing with it???  I see your drooping comment.  I think i need to realise that parts of me where drooping way before this lol.  Hard to believe what this stuff does to us. 

 

Would love to know whats happening with you

 

Lizzyx

[[Ch...]]

jrvmc,

Sorry!  No, you're not invisible~~WELCOME TO THE "I Look Like Hell" forum!  You're in GREAT company here..

Challis

[[...]]

I look  like I'm from cell block C.

[[jr...]]

Hi Lizzy,

 

I didn't mean that towards anyone here   It's just how I feel about life, in general.  I also went the gamut of psych drugs for way too long after my husband's sudden death.  I now realize that Klonopin really stole my life from me, and was actually causing every single problem I had.  Now I am just dealing with general sadness and apathy, along with unrelenting anxiety.  Oh, and I also look like hell.

 

Hugs,

 

Jenn

[[Mi...]]

I guess I'm also invisible.

 

No NOT invisible!  I see you my benzo buddy.  Sometimes when I am typing a reply, everything goes slap out of my benzo fried brain and I forget what I meant to say and to whom.  Stick with us, we will get through all this mess!

 

MiniMinnie

[[Mi...]]

I look  like I'm from cell block C.

 

Hey GOTO would that be Cell Block C for CRAPPY??  If so, I look like I'm from there too.

 

MiniMinnie

[[Ch...]]

Jenn,

I think that might be part of the benzo w/d syndrome...and maybe we feel that way because no one can understand this except others who've experienced it.  That's the power of this forum.  We love and care and embrace one another, we hurt when someone else hurts, we celebrate when someone hits a milestone or takes another dosage cut, we feel relief when we find out other people are losing their hair (I guess that's how balding men feel, but we think they should expect it, right?  They're men...men go bald.  We're women, we shouldn't be losing our hair!) and breathe more sighs of relief when we recognize our crazy w/d symptoms for what they really are...withdrawal symptoms, not "forever" changes in our mental or physical health.  Hang in there..."this too shall pass."

Challis

[[Mi...]]

Hi Lizzy,

 

I didn't mean that towards anyone here   It's just how I feel about life, in general.  I also went the gamut of psych drugs for way too long after my husband's sudden death.  I now realize that Klonopin really stole my life from me, and was actually causing every single problem I had.  Now I am just dealing with general sadness and apathy, along with unrelenting anxiety.  Oh, and I also look like hell.

 

Hugs,

 

Jenn

 

Jenn, I'm so sorry about your husband and that you continue to struggle.  Often the traumatic triggering event we were given benzos for heals quicker than the benzo withdrawal.  Benzos stole all of our lives and sucked the joy from it.  There's no way to sugar coat that.  So many people here struggling, it just breaks my heart.  But I just get up every day and ask for the fortitude to get through that day.  I have set myself a goal to come to this forum every day and respond to posts and try my best to lift up another struggling soul like all of you have done for me.  This does more for me than anything else in this whole process.  But I too still look like hell!

 

MiniMinnie

[[jr...]]

Thank you, everyone, for your kind replies.  I am happy to now count all of you among my friends.  This forum and the friends I have made here have saved my sanity and my life, but I still look like hell.   What's really weird is that I don't care!

[Guest [...]]

Hello all

 

Guess what I just got told how good i look wooohoooooo can i still post here or do i have to start an I am beautiful thread hahahah.

 

Lizzyxxx

[[Mi...]]

Do it Lizzy!  You can pop back and forth between the threads depending how you feel.. 

 

MiniMinnie