CRAZY WEIRD FEELINGS
PART ONE
BEFORE YOU READ THIS SYMPTOMS LIST,
BE AWARE THAT YOU MAY NOT EXPERIENCE THE SAME SYMPTOMS.
I am not a Doctor, nor am I affiliated with the medical profession, the reason for this list is to help people understand withdrawal. I feel qualified to help because I was addicted for twenty years. (Valium-Librium).
I have met over one hundred and fifty people addicted to benzodiazepines over a period of three years in P.A.A. groups. I hope and pray that you do not have ongoing withdrawals in your recovery. I have met people who had no physical pain but had to work hard to live emotionally healthy without pills.
Without the P.A.A. meetings I would not have come through to recovery. I thank God for the meetings and the people who stayed and had the courage to fight their addiction, thereby becoming emotionally stable once more. Keep coming back, "It works".
.......Bill Hermanski
BZD'S stands for BENZODIAZEPINES , A: Experience tells us that the only person who can understand Benzodiazepine pain and withdrawals, is the person who has been through the mental and physical pain, in P.A.A. and off BZD's.
B: Some very scarey things can happen to us when coming off Benzodiazepines, they are frightening but NOT dangerous, not all of us are affected in the same way, withdrawals are sometimes different for each person, because of your age, the length of time you were addicted to the Valium family of drugs and the half life of the BZD's.
C: Here are some of the BZD's symptoms that I have experienced (in laymans terms ). Never quit pills cold turkey. They must be tapered off gradually and it is recommended you get help from a *knowledgeable* addiction medicine doctor.
IN THE VALIUM FAMILY OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS,
KNOWN UNDER APPROX. TWENTY-FIVE DIFFERENT NAMES.
Fear is the worst part of BZD withdrawals, I trusted no one.
Headache, tension in the head, tylenol or aspirin helped a little.
Twitching eyelids, and sometimes a pulling inward cramp feeling in the eye, brightlights and sunlight were painful to me.
Tight facial muscles and jaw tightness feelings, tight band around head.
Tingling of the fingers, loss of feeling in one side of the body, and at times in arms and legs, my right arm would fling out in front of me. At times I would sit on my hand.
Heavy forward feeling, like the earth or floor would come up and hit my face while walking along with dizziness.
Many times feeling uptight with tension in arms and hands and shoulders. You must walk off this tension.
Muscles tighten up in back of neck and head, sometimes the crackling sounds when moving neck or jaw made me nervous.
To help with muscle stiffness, cramps and to help calm down when uptight or anxious
I recommend using
The HoMedics Back Expert 2000
Also available at Sears ( HoMedics SRC700 )
My hearing was hyper-sensitive and people talking or noise was painful to me. I also had constant buzzing and ringing in the left side of my head. It comes and goes.
Our central nervous system is depressed from BZD's so we sometimes get a feeling of imminent death, but the truth is we will not die.
Hollow feeling in body, a scarey feeling of hollowness inside me, and my entire skeletal part of my body was all I felt, but it passed just as fast as I experienced it. Sometimes it would stay for a long time and then other times it would come and go in a few minutes.
Travelling cramp that moves around throughout the body. This was weird and sometimes stopped in my stomach and caused an air pressure balloon like feeling in my chest. Also swelling of the stomach wall, my stomach felt like it was 10 yards in front of me and felt very heavy.
At first a lot of burning pain in the stomach and at times in the intestines. Antacids helped relieve gas pains. sometimes I also had nausea as well as diarrhea and constipation.
Stomach heaviness as well as chest heaviness caused breathlessness at times.
Both arms and hands were heavy, infrequently.
Numbness of the lips, nose and ears, felt like I had no lips or nose.
Burning in the scalp, a frying sizzling feeling in the head, like someone poured gas or kerosene on me and lit a match. Every now and then, also occured in arms, legs and feet.
