Oh my lord. The other threads that I felt compelled to post on excited me, but this one is draining. I know I'm a month late, but here I go.
Look, I don't claim to be a master of anxiety. I can't, because I take clonazapam, gabapentin, and kratom for anxiety.
But to clarify, I take these medications for SLEEP anxiety / insomnia.
For almost a decade, I had horrible general and social anxiety. A year and a half ago, my daughter was born. And in the months that followed, my general and social anxiety almost completely disappeared. The reason was because my dad was not around for me when I was a kid, so since middle school I have had a great desire to be a dad that can always be there for his kid(s). Since then I have also had a massive fear of "oh my God, what if I suck at being a dad? I want to be a great dad so badly. I know it will be hard though."
Let me also say this -- that whole dad thing was not the center of my anxiety. But now my daughter is over a year old, and I feel so much more confident and so much less anxious because I took a big leap that I wasn't sure I could make. And when I made that leap, like I said, my anxiety started to be replaced with confidence, because I realized that my fears about not being a great dad were just that, fears. The reality is that I'm a pretty great dad, and I'm so proud to say that. And there's solid evidence of this, because my daughter is a freaking toddler genius. And she's so beautiful and always happy. She's so incredibly happy, and it's because of me and her mom.
Like I said, I don't claim to be an expert on anxiety. But how I see it is that anxiety is fear, and the opposite of fear is confidence. So I have a few messages to different posters.
To the OP, I know how you feel. I've been there. I was jobless for a long time and had massive anxiety about rejoining the workforce. My mom was tired of me sitting around the house all depressed, so she offered me a job: to be a server at her restaurant. I almost laughed. Me, the anxiety crippled criminal who had no idea how to talk to humans, being a server? Ha! But I was tired of being depressed. I was tired of doing nothing. So I had to take a leap of faith, faith in myself.
I promise you, despite your fears, you are fully qualified to take on that job. You may have already taken it or not by now, but I'm going to post as if I was posting a month ago -- I want you to take it, because I feel confident that within a few weeks of working there, you will feel confident too. Look, we're all afraid of the unknown. But if we don't take that leap, we will feel even more defeated, and our anxieties will have won over us. Do you want to be a slave to your anxiety? Take medications if you feel its necessary. But whether or not you take them, everything will work out at the job. I have confidence in that. I believe in that. I believe that you can make that leap of confidence. All you have to do is, well, leap. I don't even know you. But the reason that I know that you can make that leap is because the only thing that is holding you back is fear. And fear absolutely sucks. It's one of the worst, most crippling feelings in the world. So I understand why you feel this way. Like I said, I've been there. But you know what you need to do. That's part of why you're so afraid. I'm speaking from experience. So do what you have to do and be brave. Be brave so that you don't have to be controlled by fear, and instead you can be free to be yourself. Break out of this prison and emerge as the capable human being that you are. I've never met a human who didn't have a lick of bravery in him. It's in there, in that prison with you, and it's the only way that you're going to get out of it. So you have two options. You can hide in your cage and be a slave to your fears. Or you can embrace your bravery and take that leap! Which sounds like a better option to you?
Mycophile, hey buddy. Look, I've been taking clonazapam and kratom for years, through three different jobs. This is how I feel about it.
Jobs suck. I half-agree with yompf's post at the top of the thread. I don't think that this is how things are supposed to be. So many people in the workforce are miserable.
When I worked at a pizza place as a manager, there were times when I was on clonazapam and kratom and occasionally weed, and there were a few times when I was on MDMA or oxycodone when I wasn't working a manager shift but was working a driver or kitchen shift instead. I was trained to work all of the shifts. And sometimes, I was on none of those drugs. And I didn't have a single problem not having clonazapam and kratom. In fact, when I didn't have kratom to entertain and distract me, I was way more productive. I was more assertive -- more aware. My head was less clouded. Klonopin is not as clouding as kratom in my opinion. I don't feel like klonopin has made any drastic changes to who I am. But kratom does. And, unlike you, I was and still am addicted to kratom. I took it multiple times every day. But sometimes I would run out and wouldn't have enough money to get more. We talked about kratom withdrawal in the other thread, and I don't remember exactly what I said about my WD experiences, but they weren't world-ending. For the most part I was just slightly irritable, and it was a little hard to sleep at night. But that was it! And like I said, I was also less distracted, and in many ways not having kratom for a day or two before the WD hit made me a much better employee. There was one month when I had no kratom, and I was so bored because of my lack of Kratom that I was undoubtedly the most productive employee that month, once the very brief WD ended. And you, you're NOT addicted to Kratom, so there's even more hope for you.
Even if you decide to start taking it daily to help you with work and you get addicted, oh my GOD are there worse drugs to be addicted to. I used to be horribly addicted to xanax and oxycodone. I'm not trying to undermine the WD effects of kratom, but you are totally capable of being an excellent employee even without your meds. Klonopin and Kratom make life fun and easy, but when you take kratom out of your equation, it doesn't have to make life harder. That's up to you. You get to decide whether the absence of these drugs make you miserable or not. Because the fact is that, I guess, if you were on klonopin and kratom right now and you were at work, you would do a hella great job. And if you weren't on klonopin and kratom right now but you were at work, you would still do a great job. But, disregarding the klonopin for s moment, if you had stopped using kratom a week ago and you were at work, you would do a MAGNIFICENT job.
These drugs, specifically these two drugs, are designed to make life EASIER for people like you and me. But the fact is, jobs, work, being a father, it's not easy.
And the fact is that these drugs dramatically alter our perspectives of ourselves, the people around us, and the entire world.
And it's totally fine to use these drugs to give ourselves a little boost sometimes, especially when something tragic has happened and we need a little boost.
I think that people that take drugs think that the drugs make them normal. I'm speaking mostly of anxiolytic drugs. But these drugs don't make you normal.
In fact, they do the opposite. I know from experience that when I take drugs like this, as a musician and game developer, my creations are not as great as they could be if I were sober. I used to think that these drugs made me a more functional person, but they don't. They take away part of our humanity.
I don't plan on being on these drugs forever, at least not kratom, despite my love for it. It takes away from who I am. Klonopin is kind of important because it slows the onset of dementia for me. But still, it takes away from who I am.
You say that your new jobs involves public speaking. I can tell you from experience that if you go up there on kratom you will do a fine job.
But if you stopped taking kratom for awhile, let the WD and cravings pass, I firmly believe that you would do MORE than a fine job.
Here's a relevant example: I recently watched a stand-up video where a comedian was touring in Canada, and I guess weed is legal in Canada, cause he said that he had been smoking since he landed. His main jokes were about weed commercials, and they were funny. And it was funny that he was high while he was talking about them.
But he wasn't himself. He was less coherent. He was less PRESENT. The full value of his comedy was not present.
I know that kratom is a different drug than weed, but for some people they have the same basic effect: they make life more bearable. But it comes at a cost.
I feel like I'm repeating myself at this point. I don't know how to get you to trust me when I say this, but I believe that if you kicked kratom, you'd end up becoming a better public speaker than if you were on kratom. You might be more nervous, but you got this job for a reason, and that reason wasn't because you were on kratom. Like, I got this nice paying catering manager joba while ago after the pizza job. And right before my interview with the regional manager and the owner of the company, I popped so benzos. I don't remember if they were klonopins or xanax's. But I didn't get hired because I was on benzos. The benzos just helped me calm down. I would've been a LOT more nervous during that interview if I hadn't popped those pills. Even with the pills, I had pretty bad anxiety, and by the end of the interview I was shaking. Take a wild guess at why the benzos calmed me down so much. Take a wild guess at why I would've been more nervous if I hadn't taken those pills, and why I was shaking by the end of the interview. It's pretty obvious. It was because I was addicted to benzos. I was dependent on them. They were like a shield, and I felt like I couldn't survive without them. That's not true
To continue my story, I wasn't hired because of the benzos. I was hired because of the answers that I gave to the manager and owner. Those thoughts came from my brain. The only reason that I felt like I needed to pop those pills that day was not because I was about to have a really important interview. It was because I was addicted to benzos, because I felt that benzos made my life easier. But obviously they didn't, because I can assure you that if I hadn't been addicted to benzos and popped them before my interview, the result would have still been the same. I would have given the same answers, and at the interview I probably would have been shaking less than I had been shaking while on benzos. Because benzos and kratom are like armor. They make us feel protected, but they also make us feel like without them, we wouldn't be safe. I've said this in other threads that you were probably in, but benzos cause more anxiety than they cure.
Here's one more story. It's a pretty well-known one.
There is a legendary saxophone player names John Coltrane who created some fantastic music. For a lot of his career, he was addicted to acid. And I won't deny that acid can give people a great burst of creative energy. The music that he made while he was on acid was so fantastic. But at some point at his career, one of his supervisors told him that he needed to quit taking acid, most likely cause it didn't reflect well on the company. And for a while, Coltrane's music suffered without his acid. Like, very noticeably, his music just sounded bland and boring compared to when he was taking acid. I don't know if acid has a physical withdrawal, but I know from personal experience that it has a dependency withdrawal. Coltrane experienced that to a much higher extent than I ever did. But after a long while, the withdrawal faded. All the sudden, Coltrane's music was magical again. And this time it wasn't because he was on acid. This time it was because he was himself. His music sounded different than when he was on acid, and tbh it took Coltrane a while to get back to that level that he was at when he was on acid, because he spent such a large chunk of his life addicted to it. But eventually, because he no longer had acid or acid WD limiting his abilities, his music eventually surpassed how it sounded when he was on acid.
The same goes for us and kratom. Kratom makes life wonderful. It makes jobs easier. It makes us good at our jobs.
But if we stopped taking kratom, after that WD phase, and after that phase where we crave it and miss it and think that it was the best thing that ever happened to us and that we need it back in our life, if we can get past all of that, then we will be better people, better employees, better public speakers, better musicians than if we were still limited by the effects of kratom.
The point is, you would be fine without these specific medications. We've been in several of the same threads. You are an incredibly intelligent and capable person. You were the first and only person to welcome me to bluelight. That was such a kind gesture. And I know because I too am an intelligent person that you are not kind, intelligent, and capable because of kratom. Kratom may seem to enhance those things, but those qualities come from within you. There are tons of people that take kratom, and not half of them are as kind, intelligent, or capable as you are on kratom. That is how I know that it's not the kratom. It's you.
I'm gonna say the same thing that I said to the OP: you are fully capable of making that leap. I can tell you from experience that working without those medications is not usually fun, simply because most jobs are not fun. Clonazapam and specifically kratom make jobs way more fun. And drugs like these make us more confident. The only thing stopping you from being comfortable working without these medications is confidence. That is the only thing. There is nothing about you that makes you incapable of excelling at your new job other than your confidence. I believe in you. You are my first and only friend here on bluelight. That's why I can't stop typing. I know that you'd be fine with or without kratom, and I know that you'd be better without it. But whatever you decide, I know that if you choose to belief in yourself, if you can have even have half as much faith as I do that you will be okay, then you'll be better than okay. I don't know your real name, but I know it's not Metrigyna speciosa. That's not who you are. It's just something that we take that changes us into someone else, someone less human. So come on, friend. Look, there's a leap that I need to take too. I need to start taking some initiative in my life, or else I'm going to go nowhere anytime soon. Will you take this leap with me? We both deserve to be confident people, with or without kratom. That's the leap that I'm talking about. Not quitting kratom necessarily, but we have all of the tools inside us to be confident people and to stop being afraid. I'm so tired of being afraid. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to be a confident person again, so that is who I'm going to become. I'm taking the leap with or without you, but I'll wait on the other side for you to make the leap too. I'm not going anywhere. You may not know it, but you've really helped me, simply by messaging me and replying to my thread posts with intelligent banter. It's complicated. But my point is, you did me a huge favor, so I'm going to make that leap and wait for you on the other side. I'll wait as long as I have to. But I hope to see you soon.
My last job, which went for about 3 months (contract role) started well, no anxiety in the mornings and relatively calm during the day but just went downhill towards the end, and for no reason: the job was simple, and the place was calm with few disruptions. Always feeling sick and sweaty, I felt out-of-place and awkward and started making mistakes due to the confusion that anxiety kicks in for me. I do value the role anyway, because it helped me realise that I totally needed to get help for this problem giving how deeply it was effecting me physically, and I've been seeing a therapist ever since. Practising things like meditation, and deep breathing, refocusing the mind, grounding oneself and addressing cognitive distortions. I've found it really useful, mainly the breathwork tbh. OP, have you considered it? I think that once anxiety makes you physically ill, its probably time you tried to address it somehow. I hope that me relating my own story and possible resolution has helped in some small way. I'm curious to see how useful it is whenever I can get back to work