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[gettingoffpoison]

I´m on 20 beads currently. Have been reducing very slowly, almost a year now from 30mg.

 

I was fighting the withdrawal effects consuming a lot of coffee and cigarettes.  Three cups a day and a pack. I know serotonin, adrenaline and dopamine are stimulated this way, so I was “cheating” to put it somehow.

 

Four weeks ago I stopped smoking and reduced coffee to one cup. I thought this would be impossible while on this withdrawal process… I guess anxiety does get better with time.  

 

I feel very different now without smoking, the withdrawal form cigarette was a horrible experience (as I knew it was going be) for the first week.

 

Now, 4 weeks later I just feel numb. Don’t want to do anything that demands a little mind effort. Just writing this is so confusing and hard. I feel I can’t articulate what I intend. Can’t focus, can’t concentrate. Feel very unproductive, feel guilty because of this, time passes and I don’t want to do nothing.

 

During times smoking and having a lot of coffee I had productive mornings but most of the times followed by long naps and afternoons with a lot of anxiety. I was worse really.

 

I feel I´m doing what I should to end this process faster, to get healthy faster. I feel so weird while I write this. Everything I say it’s just not enough to express myself, I read it again and I think its nonsense, next I ask myself why I write this. Next I think I should take a walk and it feels like it will be such an unpleasant thing to do…    Maybe this explains better how I feel.

 

I guess I was avoiding feeling like this, like on the edge of falling again into big depression, I know this won’t happen, still it’s scary.

 

I do feel like a lot of things have improved. I see myself in more equilibrium.

As If I was remembering things of my life before taking Cymb. As If I was remembering my past life.

 

So hard to describe this feelings and reality… but I do feel the storm is fading away slowly.

 

I feel now in a process of convalescence… just waiting.

[thismoment]

Hi gettingoffpoison

I like your name "gettingoffpoison", and that's exactly what you are doing. As you've noted, withdrawal comes with a price: exhaustion; anxiety; some depression; cognitive dysfunction; inability to concentrate, and others. But as you've also stated, it slowly gets better and better as you withdraw from these neurotoxins.

Psychiatric drugs like benzodiazepines, SSRIs, and SNRIs are depencency-forming and they are neurotoxins. Caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol are also dependency-forming, and they too are neurotoxins. These toxins launch a sustained attack on the synapse, and when combined, their effect is compounded!

You are withdrawing from several of these neurotoxins at once, and your symptoms attest to this.

Hang in there! Soon you will know how your brain was designed to work without the continuous assault on the synapses whose job is to shuttle communication between cells; neurotoxins act like a handful of porridge stuffed into the microphone of your telephone; communication becomes muddled.

Take care.