From: "carol UK" <carolann@p...>

Date: Thu Feb 7, 2002 2:30 am

Subject: Re: [benzo] fear of long protracted w/d

Hi love,

Yes not only did I cold turkey twice myself (my story is on Rays site and on mine at http://www.benzodiazepine.org but I have been luckier than most because during my recovery I was able to attend a tranquilliser project where I sat in groups and also has one to one counselling by people who had been through withdrawal. There I learnt a great deal and eventually did some voluntary work there. Doing that gave me the opportunity to see and talk to many people of all ages and much like here in this group at all different stages of tapering and withdrawal. Of course within this there were also many who had either cold turkied or tapered way too fast. While it is not the way we would advise it DOES NOT mean you will not eventually recover. We advise a slow sensible taper because even though that cannot guarantee a symptom free withdrawal it is not quite so traumatic a shock to the nervous system and brain as cold turkey.

Many off us would like when on the drugs to just throw them away and get it over and done with because we feel , and so do many DRs that the quicker it is done the quicker we will get better but generally because it is such a shock and the feelings can be severe we can take a bit longer to recover, we can understand this if we realise that even people on slow tapers find their body screams out for the drug they have just reduced, however small the amount seems so when we just cut out the drug completely or very rapidly it throws the body and brain into total confusion and its going to tell us its unhappy in no uncertain terms. So while the road may be a little longer this doesn't mean you will feel this bad all the time, 4 months is still early days where this illness is concerned and you have done extremely well.

When people talk about protracted withdrawal we think they mean they feel as bad months or even years down the line as they did in early withdrawal, you imagine feeling as you do now in months or years to come. Thats a natural feeling in withdrawal, when in it we can never imagine being normal again but you will, what they mean is that they may still have some symptoms hanging about, maybe muscle aches and pains, headaches, gastric problems but they know what they are and why they have them and they become more annoying than frightening and do not stop them living their life.

Many say to me , 'I thought I was feeling better last year, but this year I feel even better', and they say that as each year goes by, so we go on getting better and better. But we all in time feel soooo much better than we did whilst taking the drugs. Just hang on in there and one day you will be helping someone else through this and when they tell you that they think they will never get better you will indeed be able to say 'you will, I've been there myself, I thought the same, but I'm now recovered'.

Best wishes,

love Carol.