• H&R Moderators: VerbalTruist | cdin | Lil'LinaptkSix

August Getting/Staying Clean/Sober Thread v. Full Moons and Nights

Sorry I haven't been posting much. My OCD is getting the better of me lately. I'm feeling a really bad resurgence of both doom and gloom thinking and compulsive behaviors. I haven't left my house in a few weeks and now I only leave my room to smoke cigarettes. I have a doc appointment tomorrow. I am very seriously considering going back on clonazepam just so I can reclaim my life back a little.

Hope you're feeling better chef! I'd say do whatever you've got to do to keep your sanity. You know the risks and benefits of benzos.

I get into funks where I don't want to leave the house much all the time but you're almost kind of shut inside with heat in the summer down here in FL.

Talk about OCD, I had it big time. It may have been compounded by the type of work I did. You have to be somewhat meticulous with database programming and the like. The SSRI may have quieted it down some. Still, sometimes when I leave the house and know I've locked the doors, I can't resist the impulse to go back and double check.

My self-talk is absolutely off-the-wall insane sometimes. I know at some level it's not who I really am. The worst one is that now that I'm retired, I've outlived my expiration date and reason to exist. It's amazing how conditioned I became to associate my self-worth with my job. I don't have any kids but I'm glad I at least have my wife and I have to stay alive to take care of my older ex-acidhead schizophrenic brother. He's as crazy as a loon, but happier than me, hardly ever worries about anything.

I think you're only about 90 minutes east of me. Give me a shout if you're ever in the neighborhood. We can go out dolphin watching or something in my boat.
 
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Sorry I haven't been posting much. My OCD is getting the better of me lately. I'm feeling a really bad resurgence of both doom and gloom thinking and compulsive behaviors. I haven't left my house in a few weeks and now I only leave my room to smoke cigarettes. I have a doc appointment tomorrow. I am very seriously considering going back on clonazepam just so I can reclaim my life back a little.

If you think that's best.

You can get out of this funk man. Stay strong.
 
Sorry I haven't been posting much. My OCD is getting the better of me lately. I'm feeling a really bad resurgence of both doom and gloom thinking and compulsive behaviors. I haven't left my house in a few weeks and now I only leave my room to smoke cigarettes. I have a doc appointment tomorrow. I am very seriously considering going back on clonazepam just so I can reclaim my life back a little.

Ultimately do what you think is best for you, but as somebody who has extreme OCD (from our texts we share some of the same compulsions) and someone who quit and stayed off benzos you are nearing the climax of feeling lousy and uncontrolled OCD. It does get better, it just takes time. You haven't had benzos in a few months and that is why everything is so much worse.

If you can stick it out a few more months everything gets substantially better. I can say that by being off of benzos my OCD and anxiety is the best it's ever been in my life. The rebound anxiety from stopping Xanax forced me to learn CBT and other techniques to deal with it. Now that I am close to baseline, with those techniques in place I am almost a normal functional person.

In the last six years of getting healthy I have learned that long term benzo use actually makes anxiety and OCD worse. There is a direct relationship between the amount of time you are on them and how bad stuff gets. The rebound anxiety and OCD from stopping benzos is the hardest thing I have ever confronted in life, and getting to the other side made me appreciate how true strong I am, and how manageable anxiety and OCD actually is, but I had to get to the other side to learn this.

I know how horrible it is, and I know I had a solid support system in place, otherwise I probably would have committed suicide. I feel like you're close to getting to the other side of it, and just wanted to point that out. You have to do what is best for you, and only you have that answer. Either way you go I hope you are proud of what you have accomplished - you've made it it farther than most people who are in this situation.
 
Sorry I haven't been posting much. My OCD is getting the better of me lately. I'm feeling a really bad resurgence of both doom and gloom thinking and compulsive behaviors. I haven't left my house in a few weeks and now I only leave my room to smoke cigarettes. I have a doc appointment tomorrow. I am very seriously considering going back on clonazepam just so I can reclaim my life back a little.


Sorry to hear bud. I hated going back on clonazepam but it's the only med that helps my anexity. I never abused them . You deserve a peaceful life and if clonazepam helps and your not abusing I think you should
 
Ultimately do what you think is best for you, but as somebody who has extreme OCD (from our texts we share some of the same compulsions) and someone who quit and stayed off benzos you are nearing the climax of feeling lousy and uncontrolled OCD. It does get better, it just takes time. You haven't had benzos in a few months and that is why everything is so much worse.

If you can stick it out a few more months everything gets substantially better. I can say that by being off of benzos my OCD and anxiety is the best it's ever been in my life. The rebound anxiety from stopping Xanax forced me to learn CBT and other techniques to deal with it. Now that I am close to baseline, with those techniques in place I am almost a normal functional person.

In the last six years of getting healthy I have learned that long term benzo use actually makes anxiety and OCD worse. There is a direct relationship between the amount of time you are on them and how bad stuff gets. The rebound anxiety and OCD from stopping benzos is the hardest thing I have ever confronted in life, and getting to the other side made me appreciate how true strong I am, and how manageable anxiety and OCD actually is, but I had to get to the other side to learn this.

I know how horrible it is, and I know I had a solid support system in place, otherwise I probably would have committed suicide. I feel like you're close to getting to the other side of it, and just wanted to point that out. You have to do what is best for you, and only you have that answer. Either way you go I hope you are proud of what you have accomplished - you've made it it farther than most people who are in this situation.
Some people do need them to live comfortably. You may not need them but there are millions that do and don't abuse them. We're not weak or feeding an addiction or not putting the work in and wait years to see if we need them or not. There's no shame in taking a medication that treats a condition. To tell him to ride it out a few more months and see is not good advice when your not a doctor. Someone could feel shame or failure if I wanted to take a med that gave me a better quality of life and was told to ride it out.
 
Think of the disorders on a spectrum....OCD and depression are serotonin related...thus ssri meds are extremely helpful. Anxiety and panic disorder are on the other end of the spectrum.. Benzos help these much better.

For people with OCD Benzos become an addiction because they help short term and lose their ability to stop thoughts.
 
No that's incorrect. Not everyone with ocd gets addicted to benzodiazepines. I have ocd and I take them for my PTSD. I've never abused them and I take as little as needed at bedtime for flashbacks
It's wrong to class everyone the same because you got addicted to them. Everyone is different right?
 
Just because gabaergic drugs are helpful for conditions like anxiety and OCD (short term) does not mean that there are not high incidents of dependence leading to addiction in these populations. It all boils down to how the medications are used, and what the treatments utilized are (just medication versus medication, lifestyle changes and therapy for instance). Benzodiazepines are only indicated for short term use, long term, even in people who find their use very helpful, are well established as having many, many harms and negative consequences attached to their prolonged use (everything from cancers to memory loss and early onset dementia to depression and a working of the condition they were originally prescribed to treat).

Not, to say they are not harmful and that often their prolonged, ongoing use, especially at the cost of learning other healthier and more effective coping strategies is not to say that their use, even long term, will necessarily result in the same harmful consequences other illegal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Given their legal status, if used as prescribed, they will not necessarily result in the same harmful consequences as quickly as more demonized drugs. The bottom line is that benzodiazepines are not indicated for long term use however, and that there will be negative consequences to one's health in significant ways for the vast majority, if not all, individuals who take them in such a way.
 
I'd rather listen to a doctor. Clonazepam has been used for long periods of time without causing bad effects for a lot of people.
Giving medical advise should be reserved for actual doctors.
 
I never had problems with benzos, and I have PTSD.

Everyone's unique. But I can appreciate what chef was saying because we are much more likely to develop problems with them than a "normie" would.
 
Just my two cents. Obviously everybody's situation is different. I couldn't get off Clonazepam without being involuntarily separated from them. They used a decreasing phenobarbital protocol to prevent seizures.

It would be difficult for me to get them again given my drug history and the fact I'm taking bupe so you could read this as sour grapes but I can't see why someone would need to be on benzo's to cope with the stress of everyday life. Short term they are a godsend to millions of people.

I tried one once since and felt that familiar glow. It felt like been there, done that. It was so difficult for me to get off them, I'm not sure I would want to go down that road again just for that fuzzy feeling.
 
It's risk v. Reward. If a medication brings you a little functionality in your life and you are willing to risk dependence for this functionality then by all means do so.

What tpd was saying is Benzos, even when taken as prescribed, cause dependence.
 
It would be difficult for me to get them again given my drug history and the fact I'm taking bupe so you could read this as sour grapes but I can't see why someone would need to be on benzo's to cope with the stress of everyday life. Short term they are a godsend to millions of people.

I think that some of us can get a prescription and use it sparingly, and that's all right.

I'm the kind of person who hasn't had benzos prescribed for anxiety for what... years now. Someone offered me xanax recently (a stranger I met at that), and I still said no, because I just don't need it or crave it, or see much joy in taking it.

They are best taken sparingly, or only for the short term as you said. Daily benzo use usually becomes a problem for anyone.
 
Sorry chef, should have read the whole thread before I posted. I have the attention span of a gnat these days.

The idea that physical dependence can occur without addiction always intrigued me. People can take their medication as prescribed and not develop an uncontrollable compulsion and loss of control. So apparently simply a desire to avoid withdrawal is not addiction.

I could definitely see that type of control being possible with some drugs, where others are just too addicting. Obviously they must act directly on reward centers in the brain where physiologically you just have no say in the matter over whether and how much you'll use.
 
I think that some of us can get a prescription and use it sparingly, and that's all right.

I'm the kind of person who hasn't had benzos prescribed for anxiety for what... years now. Someone offered me xanax recently (a stranger I met at that), and I still said no, because I just don't need it or crave it, or see much joy in taking it.

They are best taken sparingly, or only for the short term as you said. Daily benzo use usually becomes a problem for anyone.

I don't really crave them either like some other substances Captain H. I had a pharmacist friend years ago who was heavily into xanax. He said, and you guys already know this, that when you really are in need of a benzo, like really stressed out, you will not really notice the effects. You will only experience the absence of anxiety. When you are taking them recreationally, you will experience the effects.
 
What tpd was saying is Benzos, even when taken as prescribed, cause dependence.

Very concisely and precisely put.

When prescribed in a conservative fashion and taken as prescribed (two big ifs, at least when it comes to American psychiatry and both current and former addicts who face co-occuring mental health challenges) benzodiazepines can have very positive results.

I have already stated the two big caveats however, and the research is clear that heavy long term dependence on such drugs often cause complications and issues for the patient. This is especially the case when other avenues of therapy, both chemical and non-drug, are not thoroughly explored.
 
As of today It has been exactly a week since my last cigarette!! I can't even believe I made it this long...

what happened was I got a bad cold last week and as any body knows smoking ciggs when you have a cold is horrible, so I took this opportunity to try and smoke less but i ended up just not even smoking at all! Not even one cigarette! In a week!!

I really am proud of myself, put I must admit I didn't quit cold turkey I actualy have been using dip :(, not the heavy long cut stuff, but the little pouches... I use like 2- 3 punches a day, it helps the cravings to smoke and its why I didn't get any nicotine withdrawal

yes chewing tobacco is still very bad but its not as bad as smoking, I can notice a difference in my lungs already! feels amazing!! I have surfing motivating me to keep going so I can hold my breath longer when Im held down, but idk the cravings are getting bad I really wanna smoke!!!

on aanother note, its been a little over a month since I smoked any crack, and like 3 weeks since I shot any dope. I am on suboxone maintenance and take my medication as prescribed. I don't shoot it or abuse it. I am ok where Im at in my recovery, even tho Im not technically sober...


guns keep pushing tho see how long I can last wish me luck
 
It's risk v. Reward. If a medication brings you a little functionality in your life and you are willing to risk dependence for this functionality then by all means do so.

What tpd was saying is Benzos, even when taken as prescribed, cause dependence.



yes and I agree with that but I don't think someone should be posting things about how you don't really need it and to just push through. Someone reading that might be made to feel as they gave in or wasn't strong enough and that just adds to the stigma of mental illness . I'm dependant on them but also I don't take daily. Some anniversarys or bad days I take one so I can sleep without waking thinking I'm in a warzone with body parts scattered. A lot came back with ptsd. A lot like me cannot take antidepressants and this is one of the few meds that give us any quality of life and seeing statements like that is not helpful at all


congratulations mrs snowy!!!?
 
Yes, that is a super valid, worthwhile point to make when you put it like that SJ. It is important not to put one'side own anecdotal experience on a pedestal that overshadows cold hard scientifically researched evidence about the medicines we consume and the behaviors we engage in though. It is important to balance humility and realism with kindness and self-compassion is we are to make progress in this thing called Recovery, as opposed to merely maintaining abstinence.
 
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