Posted by alexandra_k on October 8, 2006, at 22:37:07
In reply to Re: My new meds » alexandra_k, posted by Lindenblüte on October 8, 2006, at 20:03:14
> I have not experienced any "high" or "drunk" feeling.
posted by Lindenblüte on October 5, 2006, at 11:40:40
> ugh. I took my first ever benzodiazepine this afternoon. First I felt a little happy (like 2 minutes worth) then I felt kind of drunk (1 hour) then I felt kind of slow...
> > You are trying to medicate the hypervigilance and flashbacks away?
> yes. especially the flashbacks that make me feel traumatized and suicidal.
Yeah. I understand about finding it hard to cope with hypervigilance and flashbacks. Mindfulness meditation can help you have better control of your attention so that you can distract yourself from the flashbacks. It can help with hypervigilance too. It is hard work though. Takes a lot of practice. But doing it that way instead of the drugging yourself way means that you are more likely to retain this:
> The daily kind of motivating stress to do my best job- I think that's a nice kind of anxiety, even if it feels kind of icky at the time, it often leads to wonderful outcomes.> I'm afraid that you may get the wrong idea of "what I'm trying to do with taking the benzos". First of all, I'm not trying to get a high. I actually don't like the way I feel right now, overall. Sure, some of the anxiety is gone, but I also feel kind of dull, down, and groggy.
Yeah. That feeling lifts as you become tolerant, but the downside of tolerance can be withdrawal.
> What started happening was really scary, though. I guess one metaphor would be that I "turned down the volume" on the main channel, but the background noise started to become more distinct. Basically, the meditative state was producing really intense feelings and reactions that I had no way to deal with.I got into mindfulness meditation in a big way when I was doing DBT. I'm not sure what your meditation involved... Mine focused on how my breathing felt. Once I had built it up to 40-50 minutes per day I started experiencing intense emotions and flashes of scenes and stuff. It was pretty scary... My t asked if I stopped meditating, but I said 'no'. Whenever I became aware of the intense emotions and flashes I'd refocus back on how my breathing felt. In a way I think what was happening is that I was becoming desensitised to that stuff. A flash could occur to me but I didn't have to focus on it I could focus back on how my breathing felt. The intense emotions would come up but I didn't have to experience them I could focus back on how my breathing felt. After a while I started focusing on my body (incl emotions and thought processes) just observing them coming and going and coming and going. Trying to observe without clinging or pushing away. I think... It is a way of processing trauma. I also think... That your mind won't give you anything you can't handle.
Doing that regularly meant that the intense emotions and flashes didn't occur to me so often during the day. I guess it is that my body kind of needs to do that to a certain extent. Giving it time for that to happen meant it occurred less at inappropriate times. Also, I had better control over my attention so when I started to feel anxious or intense emotion or flashes I could refocus on something else like my breathing or a scenery or something.
I need to get back into that. It was immensely helpful to me. Hard. But helpful.
Drugging those things away is only a temporary solution and tolerance and withdrawal is a very real risk.
> It's more about dealing with the eruption of extremely repulsive feelings, memories, thoughts, images and the anxiety that this is causing me.
It can help with that. You can try to drug them away or drug yourself so you don't really care so much about them, but that is only going to be a short term solution.
> Am I at risk of becoming addicted? I don't know. I've never been addicted to anything in the past.> > + Abdominal pains and cramp
> > + Agoraphobia
> > + Anxiety
> > + Breathing difficulties
> > + Changes in perception (faces distorting and inanimate objects moving)
> > + Depression
> > + Fears
> > + Feelings of unreality
> > + Heart palpitations
> > + Hypersensitivity to light
> > + Indigestion
> > + Insomnia
> > + Irritability
> > + Lack of concentration
> > + Loss of memory
> > + Nausea
> > + Nightmares
> > + Panic attacks
> > + Rapid mood changes
> > + Severe headaches
> > + Shaking
> > + Sweating
> > + Tightness in the chest
> > + Tightness in the headI think the trouble with pills is that you experience anxiety, you take a pill, you feel better. You experience anxiety, you take a pill, you feel better. Repeat for a week or two. Then you try to go without the pills. You experience anxiety, you don't take a pill, your anxiety escalates, you know that if you take a pill you will feel better, you don't have any pills, you feel more anxious... And thus you can end up with a psychological dependence on them. And that can be made worse by the withdrawal effects (of anxiety - typically of an increase in whatever it was that led you to take the pills basically). Like smoking. The nicotene dependence is only half the battle (in many respects the easiest half). The real killer is the psychological dependence. The knowledge that if only you take a pill you will feel better almost immediately. Coming off heroin is no worse physically than a bad case of the flu. The flu is pretty bad, don't get me wrong, but the real killer is the psychological knowledge that if only one has a hit one will feel instantly better.
What can happen is that when you try to not take them you experience those worse than ever before. Thats what withdrawal tends to be. Heightened symptoms of whatever it was that led you to take the med in the first place. So what can happen is that one can't cope with the withdrawal. I mean, one couldn't cope with those symptoms which is precisely what led one to take the pill, and if withdrawal leads to an increase in the intensity of the symptoms one has even more trouble coping. So one is led... To keep taking the pill / to take more of the pill.
That can be how the cycle goes... The only way out... Is to find other ways to cope... Either now, or later. The trouble with later is that later can be worse because not only do you have the trouble that led you to start taking the pill but you have all of that heightened as symptoms of withdrawal.
I guess it will be hard to figure the effects of the increase in seroquel since one started taking the benzos at the same time. Even when one stops the benzos it is going to be hard to figure the benefits of the seroquel once one factors in the troubles with withdrawal...
PRN means 'as needed'
It is your decision whether you need it or not...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:692068
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061003/msgs/693195.html