OMG that is very true!
"People that don't have their lives mangled by anxiety generally think benzos are overrated, boring, or just put them to sleep. People with predisposition to or suffering from anxiety disorders likely have feelings of mental clarity, improved cognition (for a while), more enjoyable social interactions, and a good night sleep."
I remember my first experience having benzos given in a psych ward I was in for a week after a serious health diagnosis. They didn't have the same effect literally just put me to sleep and felt nothing more than a sleeping pill. I didn't like them but it was some protocol as I wasn't sleeping or leaving my Psych room to take them every night
However 2 years later when I started having panic attacks and constant anxiety I got prescribed them whilst waiting for a therapist I told the Dr they are just sleeping pills won't do a thing to me... I wish it just put me to sleep and nothing else like the first time .
However when I took it this time round It literally felt like a breath of fresh air like this is how your supposed to feel!
I gave one to a friend who was emotional at the time said did nothing to them.
Interesting how drugs affect us differently and at different times in our lives.
Stay away from benzos! Unless it's an emergency! These drugs should be kept one dose at a time in a plastic breakable container used only in an absolute emergency!
So sorry to hear, all that happened to you, mauve.
I very feel more grief towards people such as yourself, who I consider a victim of the war on drugs, than say myself, who wasn't exactly a casualty due to my passivity, but rather as someone who thought they were read up and thus felt I 'knew' the negative effects (to the extent one can without experience), and accepted the risks as they were more tolerable to me than my continued state of anxiety and its capacity to metastasise into something more sinister with greater capacity for mental, physical, and social harm from taking no action. I had a long history with anxiety. I only wish it was diagnosed sooner, and was recognised as a severity that required medication in addition to other management techniques.
I had explored, investigated, invested, practised, and ultimately exhausted my available options By the time I decided to self medicate with illicitly obtained xanax. Exercise was such a big part of my life, mostly to exhaust myself so I could sleep, and I gained confidence being in great shape. However, I have to say my body image was a cause of anxiety, and I had an unhealthy relationship around food, weight, mirrors (funny story for another time), body fat percentage, and low self esteem. I was around 30 years old when I first decided to hell with the law, and bought my first introductory 100mg of Xanax. At the risk of sounding irredeemably conceited by this stage I had been kicked out of the Army (thank Allah), had an Honours level 4 year undergraduate with the opportunity to publish my thesis, which I had designed, came up with the hypotheses, testing criteria, statistical methodology, and solid understanding off the theoretical underpinnings of the research area and broad reedings of the other researchers in the niche field, even had made international contacts with some to dive further into them as scientists and potential allies in the field.
Looking back, as a guy that was only 172 cm, and who did not have good posture was a a choice and statement of identity being that I was a skater, and Melbourne rave dancer, way ahead of the reality I was occupied as soldier for most of my adult life (more lols there, later), and for the past 4 years at that stage had been a very diligent nerd, infatuated with psychology, and wishing to rehabilitate my education status above most things. So I had the adopted the laid back posture that came with my musical, and artistic identity rather than that of my prior employment or academic identity, purely out of motivated image projection. At the risk of sounding shallowdickhead (which I was...still am...but REALY was back then. I was full of myself yet incredibly insecure about my body image, and vapid (Despite surprising myself by obtaining great grades at uni, I worked extremely hard to acquire them. I was dumb as dog shit in my general knowledge. Though tried in vein to rectify that, by reading fiction, and generally training to make up for years 3-10 being mostly in suspension outside the VP's office.
TBF, I was not a Not totally stupid as I'm painting myself out to be, but obviously uneducated in the classroom sense which at the time didn't bother me so much, as the education I was exposed to was not worth wasting my time on. Once I learned enough to get by, I went all in on music. But mostly I was crippled by anxiety and fear of rejection. I had other fields of intelligence that were not and should not be part of any child's curriculum.
As a kid in the 90's I spent way to long concerning myself with my body image (which is again another story for a later chapter in life). I hit the gym hard. I manage my diet to the best of my ability at the time (no internet), had effeminate features and grew my hair like Anthony Kiedis. I also spent far too much on clothes. Like holy fuck. The advertisers and consumer culture got to me hard, until I watched fight club (which I was too young and dub to get the deeper themes. For reasons unbeknown to me, as I knew the 'real' me, and how fake I was. How much time, effort and money went into the cultivation of my aesthetics, that I found it hard to accept that women and men (l lot of dudes) found me attractive. I could never play games, and never lead people on, but I had very little interest in being in a romantic relationship, or even superficial one night stands. Just the knowledge that other people found me desirable was enough to validate that shallow part of my obsessive, narcissistic vanity. I wanted to be unobtainable. LMFAO. I guess I desired people who I thought were unobtainable to me, so I wanted other to feel that way about me. What a fucking loser, a I right?
Now sorry, I have fucked up some of the timeline. I didn't start studying at uni until I was kicked out of the Army for pissing positive to ecstasy. But it doesn't change much. I had a passing interest in pop psychology. Thank god Jordan Peterson was not a successful grifter until I entered academia and would later become familiar enough to recognise him as a pseudoscientist, at best. He was not a Psychologists areshole compared to the real academics I came to learn and admire. Though before this, I'll admit with fully deserved shame, that I bought, and read a few David Icke books on the Illuminati, Graham Hancock, on pseudo archaeology, and even spirituality books concerning astral sphere. I actually had a few profound 'astral' experiences that I cannot explain in any other way. That said, I've used hallucinogens more than enough, including DMT on occasion, and I find it as if not more difficult to describe the astral phenomena, as nobody takes that seriously. Not even trippers. Hey, not even I did. I knew the guy was a crank, but that's what I felt gave him his underdog status in pseudo intellectualism that appealed to pseudo intellectuals like me in my wasted youth.
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Enough about my cherry picked life story. I was in my 30's. Kicked out of the army for being too cool, though I will have the last laugh on that matter [watch this space, unless legal advice is to remove it], I was highly educated 'on paper', fit as a mountain goat with a resting heart rate of around 42 bpm, had the heroine chic male body with <5% body fat and veins popping everywhere, while relaxing, and after an hour in the gym, I looked like the models in the posters to motivate people to train hard and by Kalien Klien. I could ride a Giant TRC in lycra like it was fitted for a super villian. Never had trouble sparking up conversation, and because I as/am a-sexual, I really was perceived as a one tracked mind pervert. Also lived in a town of say 100 000 people. I had no friends, but plenty of single serving friends, or hobby specific friends. None of them new me besides what I chose to let them know. And despite all of this unchecked privilege everyone seemed to like me. All but myself. Anxiety ruled my life, from the time I was neglected by my mom who chose a violent drunken scumbag over spending quality time with me (my first impression was spot on), my father who chose to leave my mumm me, and my bro, for a younger psycho bitch, to my most beloved uncle who killed himself in his car parked in his parents driveway [I don't know the full reason why, but I do know a lot was kept from me, as he was a drug user, spent time in the slammer for manslaughter (vehicle accident, DUI, survivors guilt got the better of him), and until them, my family used to gloat that I inherited his good looks. I see it, but he was truly beautiful, I was a $2 counterfeit version of him. I looked up to him so much. I have been waiting to die ever since I heard the news at the age of 10. He was a state champion cycler; I was an avid cycling addict; He studied Carl Jung, I studied A Bachelor of Psychology. He as addicted to morphine. I later became addicted to Benzodiazepines. We was universally loved and missed. I didn't want to exist in this fucked up world. He wasn't a coward. I am, and that's why I'm still here.
Anyway, I can't seem to get to the fucking point. Mauve, I feel bad that you were introduce into the intoxicating allure of benzodiazepines against your will, and it breaks my heart that they were forced upon you until they revealed their false promises which undoubtedly lead you, like any sane person to pursue them to make them come good on their promises. It might be a stretch of my imagination, or a projection, but I see no reason why they wouldn't have made good on their promises and so much more provided that you surrendered nearly all you had to offer to them. Only to discover that they lied to you, about nearly everything. And when you had the courage to call bullshit on them, they already had enough dirt on you to keep using you for fear of them savagely turning on you. Using your deepest fears and insecurities as emotional blackmail to keep you from leaving them. After All they now things about you that you could never tell anyone else, yet they somehow have to power to compel one to betray themselves and their closest relationships. They don't explain to friends and family the power they exert over your perceptions of yourself, others, and your relationship to others, they merely use one's insecurities to isolate, alienate, and potentially decimate all that matters to their host. Nobody has the strength to speak the truth when they're constantly whispering the nastiest things into your mind, gaslighting at every opportunity. Taking the feelings of normality the once offered only to make a disturbing caricature of oneself have the genuine feeling of normality. If only anyone could see that they couldn't unsee it. Self isolation seems the only viable option. To suffer invisibly from loved ones, and in silence if only they'd shut up with incessant intrusive thoughts that sound so intimate and real they don't sound as though they are coming from you. But from a demon possing you since the first time they whispered their false promises of safety, comfort, and unconditional love. Enhancement of all your relationships, so that you're feeling intouch with not only your deep self, but with humanity. The good bad and the ugly, all share a similar beauty once the putrid vaile of reality had been discarded and replaced with chemical rose glasses that distort fears and insecurities into distant memories.
But they lay dormant. Growing with significance to one's self concept in relation to all aspects of self, relationships with others, from lovers, to frivolous indulgences. To nature and what it means to be a part of nature having so comfortably lived apart from it for so long. What is real any more. I can't remember so it can't be to important. Maybe its can wait. Nothing is important that can't wait until tomorrow. Shit!!! was yesterday really ten years ago? I guess, because I don't recognise myself in the mirror, hense why I threw them all away some years ago, yesterday. It explains why my friends are as I remember them, but be damned if I can find them. What's there even to say. I can't remember.
At least I remember making the choice that lead me here. I don't find much comfort in that. Though I dread to think how much I would resent the people who made these choices for me. I'm content with self loathing. It's something I can accept and get used to. But if I didn't loathe myself, who could take my place, and how would I ever convey to them without the slightest ambiguity who I feel about them? They'd likely hang up, or stop reading, or do whatever it takes to avoid facing the reality that I am familiar with, if not comforted by.
PS: I hope you're doing well, mauve. I didn't write any of this with the intent to make you are anyone reading feel worse about themselves, or towards those that introduced them into the monster we likely love and hate, and fight, and perhaps surrender to. I have a bad habit of using 'you' as a substitution for 'me' or 'myself' etc.
I can only guess at how anyone else feels, and never do I intend to put words in anyone's mouth. I'm merely engaging in some writing prompted by your rsponsponse to me above. If there is anything in here that I would want people to take as literal about me, including anything that I have said, it's that I'm an idiot. That's what is undeniably true. That is my saving grace. But it's no excuse to hurt anybody or cause anyone any pain. If I have done so, let me know. I won't ask for examples to defend myself, but if they are offered I will learn from them. And without question I'll remove my post. Such a request can come from anybody, and I'll respect their wishes all the same.
I strongly urge that nobody quote half waking my ramblings. Doing so is a waste of bandwidth, at the very least.
Much love. Stay strong, even when it feels like weakness is preferable. The difference between strength and weakness is relative, to what? Love??? Memories of love??? Yearning for simpler times? WTF do I know??? Nothing would be my strong preference.
