Hi, hope your all doing well or moving quickly towards it. So here it goes, my partial story, not sure what I'm hoping to accomplish here.
I somehow landed myself in a buffet of all things bad. Eventually I destroyed my shoulder cliff jumping on lsd. I was waiting for shoulder surgery for 2 years and not being able to live the life I was used to I allowed drugs to consume my life. Absolute pure consumption. Ironically the only thing I didn't abuse, even post surgery, was opiates. Instead I turned to xanax. Lots and lots of xanax mixed with a cocktail of uppers.
I could tolerate the pain but not the restlessness, which was "likely" caused from excessive uppers and an inability to move. I self medicated with no limits for many years till I was no longer me. I was a shell.
I wasn't blind, I could see I was spiralling quickly but had many excuses and plenty of lies to keep me going. I figured I'd address the growing issue after recovering from shoulder surgery. I had no idea what I was in for.
First attempt (years earlier) at quitting xanax cold turkey resulted in a seizure. Had another seizure at a party after being up for 3 days and no maintenance dose. Even at this point I never said anything, never seen a doctor and somehow justified that in my mind.
So I told the last few friends I was in contact with that I had to go play hermit in the bush and recover, that was 11 months ago. Nobody knew the extent of how messed up I was. I couldn't communicate it and they couldn't understand it. They could see it but didn't know what to do nor did I give anyone that tried to help a chance.
I moved with family who are very supportive but I mostly hide away on a mates empty farm, I've never talked about what was happening, I felt it was something I had to do alone. So there I was family close by, on a farm removed from the world, small amount of my addictions, a plan to taper off and many tough times ahead.
My taper was brutal. I didn't read anything about tapering or talk to anyone. I knew I couldn't go cold turkey. I knew the resources on hand and I stupidly thought I could maintain some sort of normalcy through all this and function so I was taking on a lot and dropping the ball everywhere.
I figured if I stay up for 3 days on uppers I don't feel the withdrawals as much and I only need to take a smaller amount of xanax to possibly sleep. Honestly, it very well may have worked and I'd gladly swap an addiction to xanax for anything else. I had more addictions to knock down once I quit xanax anyway.
Xanax was near out so the taper I need to do is getting harder and harder. I eventually ran out of xanax and turned completely zombie. Not sure how long, maybe a month or 2 of brutality. I don't even want to describe the pain. Medieval ****.
The only thing that stopped me from getting more is that I'd put myself in a place where it would be hard and to get more anytime soon. And midst of withdrawal I couldn't communicate let alone drive .
Still to this day I've never seen a doctor. It's been 6 months since my last dose of xanax. 2 months for most other things. 2 weeks off smoking cigarettes. 2 days off alcohol. I don't know how long I can or will keep up each sobriety attempt but I know each week I do I feel better than the last
My withdrawal symptoms are still very much present when they want to be but I'm better than I was last month.
I still feel varying levels of being present, most worrying is the random moments when I seem to go completely blank. I could be doing one thing and all of a sudden it's like I'm watching myself quick slip into zombie mode, often even start doing something completely different till I snapback to in a haze of confusion.
Similar to above, more common but less intense are the slaps of blank mid conversation. Someone explaining something simple and bam I go blank for few seconds, eyes glaze over then come back to with no idea what we were talking about the past few minutes.
Sure, there's the depression and anxiety and just a general feeling of being a **** cnt broken. I never had these thoughts before, I'll appreciate them for what they are, emotions. That's all they are. I spent years playing yo-yo with my mind n appreciated the highs now must master the lows. Haha this yo-yo has spun out n needs to be restrung n
I try laugh it all off but deep down it sucks to think about what sort of damage it takes to cause serious & repetitive brain farts. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Last edited: Nov 27, 2018