Posted by Donna Louise on October 5, 2004, at 13:37:24
In reply to Re: AA Recovery and Benzodiazepines, posted by Rayray on August 29, 2004, at 12:34:22
Boy, am I ever glad to find this thread. I have been torturing myself for awhile now about the meds I am taking. I have been in AA for 20 years and am also a drug addict. With hindsight I see I was self-medicating anxiety and depression that I can't remember not having. I am sure I did alot mor damage on top of what was already out of whack. Anyway, I went the first 5 years in AA with no medicinal help and was greatly influenced by the zealots. I was nearly housebound before I would consider an antidepressant. I have taken them ever since adding more and more over time as my condition worsens. But the latest addition of klonipin is the one that has the zealot voices in my head screaming relapse! But it as another poster said, I am not shooting up anything that will dissolve in water and going into nightly blackouts and doing all kinds of things outside my value system. And I do not want to!!! I take 1/8!!!! mg of klonipin a day for crying out loud. I also take provigil or I would sleep all day from the ssri. I have never desired to increase my provigil to get a greater and greater buzz, it would not work that way anyway. I think I have deprived myself of good appropriate help for these many years due to my interpretation of what the purists have said. I "should" be able to live at peace with only the help of God and the program. Well, I just can't seem to do that and I have spent years beating myself up for it. I am hopefully at a point now where I can except that I must have these drugs to live a decent life, that my use of them is legitimate, and that I am not abusing them or trying to escape reality, blah blah blah. I am considering stopping going to AA but I do not want to do that really. It is a wonderful program, the only thing that would have gotten me sober and kept me sober for so long. It would just be a knee jerk reaction in the opposite direction to stop. so I won't. No one in AA has ever told me what I could do or not do, it is all my internalization. I am, after all, not well :-)
Thanks for giving me a forum to vent this. I hope it helps someone, it has helped me, I haven't known where to go with this.
poster:Donna Louise
thread:367614
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20040722/msgs/399232.html