With each day of recovery comes new surprises. Some are positive and well some I would rather not experience.
Yesterday I spent the day with my daughter and ex-wife. We went to our annual English Tea hosted by our church.
I had an unusually good day yesterday but come 4 pm when the tea was over, I began to feel really sick. I had a hard time swallowing and I couldn't catch my breath. I have experienced these issues earlier in my recovery but hadn't experienced them in over three weeks. I thought they were behind me but yet obviously they came back to haunt me. I think it was a neurological problem as I experienced panic as a result of not being able to swallow.
Stephanie was nervous and mostly scared as she watched me in distress. This episode lasted until I fell asleep When I fell asleep I slept like a rock until I got up for the day at 3:30 am. Whenever I experience recovery in it's ugly manifestations my mind is quick to forget and I awaken with little overt residual trauma. It is almost like my brain will not hold on to such debilitating thoughts and experiences.
However, when I experience an episode like late yesterday afternoon my mind does recall the fear and anxiety associated with earlier experiences and it is then, that there is no amount of Xanax ould ever help me get through to the other side. My throat is a susceptible area of my body which is usually affected first by distress or fatigue. I have forgotten the horrific experiences I once ago had with my esophagus. Before I went on Xanax over twelve years ago, I ended up in multiple ER's with what I felt was closing and tightening of my throat. It looked like to physicians that my throat was open and fine. It took me going to a world-class psychopharmacologist to get the right diagnosis of tardive dyskinesia of the mid-esophagus. It was a very rare diagnosis explained to me as needing a smooth muscle-relaxant like Valium for the rest of my life to treat the side-effects. Well when I came off of the Xanax I came off of Valium too. It has been since March 6th that I went cold turkey off of Xanax and Valium as well as Adderall.
Last night I worked myself into such a state of panic that I felt unable to get a deep breath along with the sensation that I couldn't speak very well because of the inability to move the muscles in my throat and neck. As I write this I see how crazy this appears but it is very real and lasts for hours when it comes over me. Right now twelve hours removed from the onset I feel cerebral and logical discussing my account. However, when I am in the midst of an attack, I lose all sense of intellect and my eyes dilate with panic as I brace myself for the horrific episode.
Yesterday as I mentioned was a great day but I do recall having a lot of dread and unfounded fear crop up every so often as I was peppered with intermittently with fear starting around noon time.
I attended the 8:30 am support group meeting and then wore myself out as Stephanie and I cleaned and readied ourselves to shampoo the carpets in the house. It is a stress trigger as I ruminate over the the length since the carpets were last cleaned and needless worry invades my head over the fear of not getting the carpets clean. I read this and I feel like I need to run not walk to the psychiatrist and beg to be treated for panic disorder and anxiety. It is exactly what landed me on Xanax twelve years ago at ten milligrams day. It is the highest dosage allowed by the FDA and I worry ironically that I have organic panic which is so crippling it requires Xanax in a dosage of epic proportions.
I want and need to be clean and free of such mini mental mind fuckers but my deepest seeded fear is that my truth is not compliant with my desires to be clean. I am quickly drawn to my knees with such fears. God only knows if deep breathing and mediation worked I would have been cured of such ills long ago. Physicians who have treated me and evaluated my panic and anxiety have told me my symptoms are like something they have never experienced in a patient before.
In the hospital my psychiatrist who I saw for the last two days of my detox told me point blank that many psychiatrists would want to give me Xanax and that it was my job to avoid such prescribing as it was so wrong and equally debilitating. It is ironic that the doctors who treated me in detox were so matter of fact about not taking Xanax again but they had never treated my naked panic and anxiety. It is easy to sit back in an armchair and play the psychiatric quarterback regarding the non emotive treatment of my three-dimensional panic. None of the psychiatrists treating me in detox ever saw me in the midst of panic or anxiety. I am angry this morning that perhaps this was a very bad idea and that my panic is worse than any long-term effects of chronic Xanax medication use.
Most of all of course, I am scared and on the verge of being petrified. Now I have the history of voluntary detox and psychiatrists will be all the more less likely to prescribe medication that my mental illness may require. What does that mean? Bottom line is it means I will suffer dearly before a psychiatrist breaks down and prescribes what my condition may require. In detox, I was riddled with the onset of panic and anxiety. I asked for something efficacious to treat my anxiety and I was told without mincing words that nothing would compare to Xanax. I feared such words when they were spoken to me weeks ago, and I fear that mindset and lack of sensitivity for my panic and anxiety even more today. I am so far away from a doctor who would truthfully tell me that my situation unfortunately requires the use of anti-anxiety medication. It seems like a true cost benefit analysis is logically being forgotten in the narrow-minded and blind medicine which deems all use of Xanax unacceptable no matter how disabling my anxiety and panic truly is for me.
I, more than anyone, want to stay free from Xanax and all related drugs but I needn't suffer from much panic to understand and want my panic to be treated first and foremost -regardless of the medicinal price. It doesn't matter what the long-term effects of such medication are if the panic and anxiety is going to stress me out and cause high blood pressure and a heart attack first. I seriously am going to consider seeking treatment in Boston where specialists have a wider purview of the reality in which I live. Xanax is pretty benign compared to the stroke level high blood pressure I now live with which requires four anti-hyper intensives to treat it. Seriously the drug-induced liver damage caused by these four medications is worse than any long term side-effects from chronic Xanax use.
My mind is so malleable to the anxiety and fear that I AM and blinded by my demise for self-preservation.
I am \wired for anxiety and I feel electrical with energy. I pray today I am better able to manage my stress and bag of panic. \It is a brave new world without \Xanax and I still want it on some level. Now the hard work begins. I must devlelop a toolvbox of coping skills.
Corey
BORN THIS WAY-2017
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