Wednesday 30 January 2008

Gimme

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Withdrawal

Walls closing in

so i am coming off the clonazepam. my doctor warned me that it would be the most difficult of all my meds to come off. it is a benzodiazepine, along with xanax and valium and is therefore highly, physically addictive. there is the danger that coming off the drug can cause seizures, but there is a whole lot more to it than that ...

i have been taking 4 mg a day for over a year now and it is recommended that you dont take this drug over the long term, but it was prescribed to me and i thought it was helping. now i want to stop taking it. my doctor suggested that i reduce my dosage by 1 mg every week. ok ... i started taking 3 mg a day on thursday, january 17 and things were going well for the first week, on thursday, january 23 i took 2 mg for the first time. that night and the next day i started having weird spasms. similar to my normal convulsions except that there was no warning with these and they were fast and scary, often starting with painful neck contortions. the other difference was that i experienced terrible depression and terror during these convulsions. now, i normally find my convulsions scary and sometimes i cry while i am convulsing, but i am crying for a reason. i am crying because i am frustrated, angry that i am still sick. but now i cry out of horror, depression.

i have started experiencing crippling feelings of depression where i dont want to see anyone, dont want to do anything. i cry uncontrollably for no real reason. i feel terribly anxious about life ... every little thing that happens, every little problem becomes a huge cause of stress, depression and, of course, rivers of tears. i am crying as i write this. i am just so fucking sad. sad about what?! oh, i have many things to feel sorry for myself about. i still dont have a job, i am sick and stuck in my mother's house like a child, i am intensely lonely, my boyfriend seems lost and directionless - i am at the mercy of whatever takes his fancy. one moment he is leaving for south korea and i must mentally prepare myself for that, next moment he loves south africa and is going to get a job here, now he wants to stop drinking and spend time with me and then he wants to party with his friends and maybe fit me in somewhere in between. all i want is some stability in my life. people i can depend on.

anyway, this wasnt meant to be a bitter rant about colin. he is dealing with his own demons and it is not fair for me to judge him so harshly, but i have to be honest about how i feel, even if what i feel is 'irrational' or 'unfair'. i just want him to be happy and i want him to make up his bloody mind!

BUT back to the real topic ... all this craziness that is in my head, mood swings, depression, crying fits, anxiety, spasms, insomnia is all thanks to the clonazepam slowly leaving my body. i am the first to admit that i am not the most emotionally stable person on the planet, but these recent feelings. this uncontrollable hopelessness, sadness; this is not me. i am usually able to lift myself out of my moments of weakness and depression. kickstart my optimism. i can enjoy the small things in life like reading a book or lying in the sun. having the house to myself and just relaxing, but now i struggle to find these small pleasures through the haze of anxiety and the rain of tears.

so, things are not going well ... the honeymoon period is over. all my lovely cousins, aunts and uncles have gone back to england. holidays are over and now reality comes crashing down and i want to curl up into the foetal position. unfortunately my clonazepam withdrawal has made me less able to deal with the stresses of everyday life. you see, clonazepam, besides being an anti-convulsant is also an anti-anxiety medication. it is a psycho-active drug and now it is messing with my head. i have been taking xanax to stop the spasms, but i dont want to replace one benzodiazepine addiction with another. so now i try to rest more, i try to relax. i take herbal remedies in an attempt to soothe my frazzled nerves. and if i cant sleep, i try not to let it worry me.

my mother helped me realise that my spasms are being caused by my anxiety attacks and my depressive crying fits so if i can try and calm myself down then i can decrease the amount of spasms i am having. the other thing that i have decided, with my mother's help (she is a nurse) is that i need to come off the clonazepam much more slowly than my doctor suggested. so, i went back up to 3 mg a day and have been taking that for about 2 weeks. i might decrease my dosage on thursday, january 31 by 0.5 mg. but i am still feeling fragile, i had a crying fit tonight (and obviously also insomnia ;-), but at least now i can recognise what is causing all these emotions and this makes it easier to understand them and not let them worry me. at first i believed i was going crazy, now i know it is just clonazepam withdrawal.

that thought comforts me and i need comfort. i feel like a helpless child a lot of the time. i just want someone to hold me and make all the horrid things in the world go away. i just want someone to cradle me, love me and make everything okay. wave a magic wand and make me better and i will be yours forever. this is a very alien feeling for me as i have always been very independent, individualistic. of course i need people and rely on them for comfort, but i used to prefer to sort out my problems by myself. no help needed, thank you! now i have become one of those irritating people that whines about their problems and demands constant attention and reassurance. *see this blog* ;-)

i need to see a psychologist.