Date: Wed Feb 13, 2002 10:56 am

Subject: Anxiety, Panic after W/D

Hi Again, I found that my anxiety and panic became sooo much worse after taking benzos for too long and especially during withdrawal. I actually longed for the days to be just an anxious person again. I have learned a lot about myself during withdrawal. I figured things out as to why I was an anxious person and why I had panic and how I escalated my panic with additional fear, shame, and avoidance and actually have been able to reduce these things without drugs today.

This took awhile to accomplish and its something I still work on, but I am also still fragile from the whole experience. My suggestion is to not be too concerned with previous conditions until you are really starting to see improvement. Treat yourself right and learn coping skills while in withdrawal but don't be too fearful of your occasional bad times while in the thick of things. Setbacks and anxiety and disappointment can happen in withdrawal, but it does get better in time. We can't go back to benzos so we must learn to deal with anxiety and panic in a more healthy way. And there ARE healthier ways. Trust me on that.

Last year I started to get panic while taking a flight (withdrawal??) I was actually able to make it go away on my own with soothing thoughts and visualizations of my favorite places and to just let the feelings "be there". Before I would get all that fear and doom that would make it escalate. This wasn't easy to learn this and it may not always work in the future. But like I've said before, not much can scare me after this experience.

Happy to be benzo free,

Tom

ps- "hope and help for your nerves" by Dr. Claire Weekes is a great book on dealing with anxiety, panic, depression, etc. And therapy after improvement may be helpfull too.