My experience with finishing a 15 month taper off of Lorazepam and Diazepam
Hi everyone i’m back for a follow-up um i finished my paper about two months ago and i just kind of wanted to give some just ya advice and and just go over some things that maybe you can relate to that i think in speaking with other people who have finished or are finishing their papers we have a lot in common so just for those of you who don’t know i am began not
This spring but the spring before last so just over a year ago in march is when i started trying to taper off of two milligrams of ativan and i try to cut it by about an eighth of a milligram a week and that did not work out well and i actually ended up doing it i think i was cutting about an eighth of a milligram every two weeks because it was just so impossible
And then i ended up crossing over to valium in the er i actually showed the er doctor benzo rqk and convinced him to cross me over to an equivalent amount of valium and that i’m pretty sure that saved my life i was i was just in the worst in er dose acute withdrawal hell imaginable at that point i couldn’t do anything couldn’t take care of my kids if you want to
Learn more about that story you can watch my first video um so after i crossed over to valium i spent about a month stabilizing out as much as i could pot so please stabilize out on 13 milligrams of valium and then i began to do liquid titration using water and uh yeah so like i said i spent about a year doing that taper i jumped off at 0.25 milligrams and here
I am two months later i keep waiting for a good time to make this video but there really has then a good time and so initially what happened and it makes a lot of sense even people who get off benzos too quickly i’ve noticed there’s a pattern on me you get kind of as high for a couple of weeks and i definitely had that high not that i was feeling super but i
Was feeling pretty good and then um and then it kind of hits you at about four weeks but mine was a little more complicated because i am i took some progesterone and with all the advice that i’ve given people and everything i don’t know how i missed that progesterone is a gaba antagonist but i did and somebody took some and i felt really great for about two days
I thought well maybe i was just maybe this threw off my progesterone i’m slow on progesterone and i need start treatment so i started looking into doing some kind of natural hormone replacement therapy and then i crashed after that a couple days later i crashed hard and i was in bed for about a week i wasn’t able to do a whole lot come it was really really bad
All the mental all the physical just came crashing through and been i’ve been recuperating this this week from that but i’ve been getting better and even with that i noticed a lot of improvements and a lot of changes not major changes but initially um i just noticed that a lot of the mental and emotional stuff cleared up um the physical got worse initially like
Right off the bat i was it still in a lot of pain and um yeah so that that remained the same or worse um i noticed that i felt a lot more spiritually connected i felt extremely disconnected the entire year really troubling and upsetting i know a lot of people who are in you know religious support groups and things they they complain the same thing you feel really
Spiritually disconnected and almost immediately after getting off i did so that connect again so that was good but then when i took the progesterone that disconnect came back and and now i seem to be getting my spirituality back and um some other things that i’ve noticed that i’ve had in common with other people are that the eye pain i have had a lot of eye pain
And took off my sunglasses for you people but i’ve been walking around with sunglasses 24/7 um which really helps so it’s nice to have that option i guess as opposed to some of our other symptoms that aren’t as easily taken care of face pain weird face sensations or kind of a neuralgia i guess i’ve been noticing i was getting really bad boils and on my face and
Those got so bad and i didn’t know why and up and then i found out again just kind of after the fact that i had been doing acupuncture regularly and acupuncture and i’m assuming other kinds of natural treatments can cause something called a healing crisis which is cuz it’s kind of like detoxing i think and so every time i would go in to acupuncture it would just
Cause this healing crisis and i kept getting more and more boils to the point where my face is actually scarred and still healing from that scarring um i really loved what the acupuncturist did for me when my symptoms be just became overwhelming and unbearable and i’m not saying don’t do any alternative therapies don’t do acupuncture but i am saying all things in
Moderation throughout this because we are so sensitive that anything that can go wrong is probably going to go wrong my dad’s a chiropractor i’m a big fan of chiropractic but i noticed early on with this that i could not go into chiropractic regularly i had to really just limit it to only going in when i was really bad when something was really out and it was
Unbearable and i needed it taken care of same thing with massage it just it just seems to exacerbate create more inflammation and so if you’re looking at to trying anything any kind of a supplement first off google whatever you’re going to take and gaba just take that precaution it is not worth it to set yourself back this really is this has really taught me a lot
Um about how this really is a do to gaba down regulation or gaba receptor down regulation professor ashton was right because i felt really good taking progesterone which is a gaba antagonist and then i crashed and it sent me into a bad wave and again any treatment or therapies that you’re thinking you’re doing really journal or just be aware of any symptoms that
You may have that may pop up that are new or that are aggravated we just have such a tendency to blame everything on benzo withdrawals in and that’s not always the case so it would be careful there um but um i’ve my kids are in school now and i’ve really been able to see how much healing has taken place over the summer since the last school year because last year my
Daughter wasn’t in school yet but i had neighbors and friends who would help watch her in the afternoon for me so i could lay down each afternoon before my son came home from school and i would lay down every single afternoon some afternoons i would barely make it to lunch and getting her off to her friends or whatever sometimes i really didn’t make it to be honest
But i’m finding this year when i’m not in a bad way vande i’m sure there will be more i’ve got another at least good year of healing ahead of me but i’m able to drop my daughter off at kindergarten i’m able to go and maybe run an errand or two and then come home and i don’t have to lay down i can do other things i just have to take it easy um i find that socializing
Is all of a sudden much easier for me i thought that that would be one of those things that really want to get better until my other symptoms improve because just trying to talk to people would just make my head spin it would just say i’m actually getting these symptoms now trying to look at this computer screen but being outside and talking to people has just it’s
Just suddenly become so easy for me and uh you know i still have other symptoms going on so i’m really really grateful for that um and there man there’s so much advice that i wanted to give everybody with this because uh one important thing i think for anybody who is still tapering to understand if you’re doing micro tapering it works that’s definitely something
That i’ve learned after finishing is micro tapering works when i when i got off there wasn’t a whole lot that changed i was the same and that was kind of anticlimactic it was like oh i just worked really hard this whole year and i’m exactly the same but that’s actually a good sign because that means that the taper worked because if i had gotten off even a quarter
Of a mil a quarter of a milligram sooner or a milligram earlier i would not have been okay i would not have been stable so micro tapering definitely worked it and and one thing that kind of hit me hard is that my symptoms were not due to tapering they weren’t initially trying to get off sort of i don’t know if it shocks your body into this syndrome or something but
Um initially yes the inner doak’s and all of that it was because of trying to get off the drug but after stabilizing and beginning of my taper all of my symptoms were really do to gaba receptor down regulation to the syndrome that we have some people call it dysautonomia which is a good term or a good diagnosis to use if you want to help your doctor understand or
If you need a diagnosis code it is it is fairly inclusive of most of our symptoms not the mental but the physical it’s a good way of describing it but it really is due to gaba receptor down regulation i know that now for sure after and i’ve learned through making mistakes and hopefully um you know me making all the mistakes will help you guys did not have to make
Those sandwich days you can learn from my mistakes because i was the picture of health i really was a picture of perfect health before this i ha i had had three babies i was fit um if anything i i was almost close to underweight not that i was super skinny i’m just very fit and i’d have you know i had a lot of muscle and i went from peeing you know and my skin
Was clear i had great hair it was just i was a picture of perfect health and then i after taking after one week on ambien i changed from being that to hair falling out and boils and i can’t read and i can’t do math and i am a horrible pain and i can’t walk around the block and i can’t eat foods and i’m malnourished and and i’m bloated and i’m swollen all the time
And hum dum just just the complete opposite end of the spectrum is what i’ve gone to so i have a long way to go i’d say i’m about 50% healed my sleep is is oh my sleep became really erotic after getting off super radek but that seems to stabilized out i’m getting about six and a half hours of sleep now which for me i would get at least seven a half or eight before
All of this so we’ll see if i ever go back to that i hope so but anyway i just wanted to give you guys some hope it does get better it gets better and i’m really hopeful now that it will continue to get better don’t get discouraged if you get hit by a massive wave if it’s really common especially after that first month mark alright and oh i just wanted to let
You all know thank you first of all thank you so much for those of you who have commented and sent me messages saying how my videos have helped you are my stories helped you um not only has it made it worth it for me but it’s made it worth it for my husband because the times where i have done well or been in a slightly good window you know he wants me to spend it
With him and the kids and i would take that time out to make these videos or to edit these videos or to respond to people and it was hard enough for him having a wife who was you know so disabled all the time then to have me spending what little good tonight i did have on these was kind of hard and i got a message from somebody the other day who said that my own
Bensel bully video that she watched it and it was the first time that she realized that she wasn’t crazy and i’ve had people just yeah say the kind of things really all the response has just been so positive almost all of it so thank you thank you so much for that it really does make it worth it and i just want you to know i’m going to start telling other people’s
Stories i’m trying to get my cap to work on the skype i’ve been able to get it to work but hopefully i’ll be able to start getting you other people’s stories people who are incredible people and his who have suffered and to an incredible degree all because of benzodiazepines so you know i hope to be bringing you those sometime in the near future and also um maybe
This needs to be another video but i was involved in a documentary recently um it’s with holly hardman she’s a director making a documentary about benzodiazepines and people like us who have suffered from it i’m really excited about that i’ll post a link to her blog below and i really encourage anybody who is going through this or anybody who’s helping someone go
Through this or who is made aware of this to please encourage and support this documentary i think it’s going to be pivotal and changing and changing you know how the public looks at us in bringing awareness to this and um yes i’m still dealing with ben’s overing but i just think i think it’s important and i think she’s incredibly brave for taking on the largest
Oligopoly to ever exist one of the largest to ever exist on this earth i mean if you think big tobacco is big um big pharma trying to speak out against big pharma is just insane if you’re interested in joining any activism efforts or legal efforts please join our group benzodiazepine awareness and legal action or bala we’re working on that still to to change the
Face of benzodiazepine awareness and and how they’re prescribed and how people are warned in the us alright so hang in it there everybody and keep healing
Transcribed from video
Post tapering advice- 2 months off benzos By Benzo Brains