Posted by Lindenblüte on October 9, 2006, at 8:47:16
In reply to Re: My new meds, posted by alexandra_k on October 8, 2006, at 22:37:07
> > 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...
Thank you for reminding me of this. This little experience wasn't very pleasant. The little happy for 2 minutes was nothing compared to the happy feeling from drinking a glass of wine (which for me lasts for an hour or more.) Also- I took this dose on an empty stomach in the middle of the afternoon. Probably a bad idea, but whatever. Since then, I take one yellow pill in the am, when I take the rest of my vitamins, and the other yellow pill in the pm, when I take my antidepressant and seroquel.I don't think I like that kind of dulling-intoxicated feeling that I got from taking the .5 g of klonopin in the middle of the afternoon. I'll not be doing that again. (unless I'm worried about hurting myself, or in the midst of some meltdown phase).
> > > 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.I actually prefer it when people don't tell me what to expect when I'm on a drug. In my experience, if a doctor tells me about side-effects in graphic detail, I'm more likely to experience them. I prefer to listen to my own body.
> 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.
yes, this sounds exactly like the training that the monks gave us. Vipassana meditation is often translated as "insight" meditation. first a focus on the breathing, then with increasing mastery, an acknowledgement of body feelings (my itchy nose, for example!), and finally mental and emotional feelings that come up- we are trained to notice them, acknowledge them, and be with them, until something more compelling comes to our awareness.
> 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.
Alex, this is SO reassuring to me. I was afraid that I would never be able to handle the emotions and memories that meditation was evoking. I was afraid that I would have to give it up for good. It really did make my life a better place. Grounded me, made me less reactive, and a little more tolerant and organized in my thoughts and interactions with others. I think that now I'm in therapy, I will be able to resume the meditation. Starting in small intervals. I'll get back to it if you will?
> 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.yes. I realize this. My pdoc tells me EVERY SINGLE time that the drugs do not make the problems go away. He says that the real work takes place in therapy, and the drugs are only to make the therapy more tolerable, and to keep me somewhat functional in my daily life until I have more psychological stability (coping mechanisms, more realistic outlook, etc) to deal with things using my own neurotransmitters.
> > 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.yes, that's the plan. It would be awfully inconvenient for me to fly into a rage with my dissertation advisor, or call up my abusers and demand to know WHY they didn't try to help me earlier when I was dependent on them. There are all kinds of trouble that my emotional lability can get me into right now. I want to get that under control asap, so that I will stop isolating myself from social contact.
> > Am I at risk of becoming addicted? I don't know. I've never been addicted to anything in the past.
> I 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...
>yes, I am well aware of the addictive, abuse, and psychological "crutch" type behaviors that this class of drugs (among others, like nicotine, alcohol, etc) fall prey to. I don't want to be addicted to anything. I don't want to be on AD for the rest of my life. At least 3 times a year, I will wean myself off of coffee, because I realize that during finals week I was drinking 2 big ones in the morning and 2 big ones in the afternoon. (PRN) and I don't like that feeling! so, I quit cold turkey. I didn't drink coffee from jan-may of 2006, and when I started again, it was a very happy drug :) Fortunately, caffeine is one of those drugs where the happy dose is also fairly close to the unhappy dose (acute caffeine intoxiacation, with stomach upset, headache, nausea, heart palpitations, etc).
Is it possible to become addicted to lip balm? like the flavor, use it more and more, and then, when stopping, abrupt onset of dry lips?
In the spirit of addiction, I'm going to my favorite cafe now, and drinking a skim vanilla latte with 2 shots of espresso. 16 oz. of joy. something that brings me real pleasure to my mornings (much more so than any pill I've ever tried). It even has calcium and antioxidants. And as I sit there in the cafe, I will get out my computer and tappy tappy on my data analyses and finish the descriptive statistics for my first study of my dissertation. It's a good setting. the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans, the little chatter, the familiar faces, the latte- which is so so so much better than any other latte I've ever had anywhere. Basically, a much more fulfulling experience than the yellow pill that I take along with my multivitamin and my chromium picolinate and my b-vitamin supplement and my provigil.
Well. I'll be honest with you- I promise. if I have regrets about starting to take the yellow pill, or regrets about stopping taking the yellow pill, we'll stay in touch. Beginning tomorrow am, my pdoc said take prn, rather than am and pm. I think I'll take it in the am.
thanks for your thoughtful concern. I'm glad that we're having this dialog. I'm learning a lot.
-Li
poster:Lindenblüte
thread:692068
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061003/msgs/693293.html