Benzodiazepines for as-needed anxiety management work very well when used intermittently, but if you use them too often you build up a tolerance which makes them not work when you need one (hence that time I had to call my doctor in panic to ask if it was safe to take a third pill in 24 hours - it was). You can safely take two in a day with some recurrence but you CAN'T take two in a day EVERY day for very long. Basically, you can't use them daily for more than a couple of weeks without that tolerance forming.
So when I had a nervous breakdown in August, I briefly took them more frequently and they stopped working, when my use pattern before that was maybe once a month or so. Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism's support, after a few weeks of babying myself I managed to mostly stop taking them again, going several weeks without, and typically just taking half again. Unfortunately, then the pipe connecting our tenants' drains to the sewer broke, sewage started coming up in the basement, and we started being unable to find a plumber who could come and bypass the broken pipe. We are stumbling along with a sump pump that has to be raised and lowered out of the septic tank full of sewage and a hose leading from it to the adjacent septic tank and into the working pipe that leads to the city sewer still from our side of the house. This works, but we have to periodically check and reposition it if the hose comes loose, the pump tips over, the water freezes, etc. The sewage-filled tanks are standing open in the yard and the hoses and cables are smeared with poop, of course, so it's all nightmarish. This has been going on FOR WEEKS because none of the local plumbers on our list can find time until sometime next year.
And we got one LAST recommendation for a Finnish-speaking plumber, but Wax is at the stage of nervous breakdown where she can't make herself call, so I'm trying to do it, only he had to be the Finnish one OF COURSE and my Finnish confidence is much lower, so this is now day three when I've taken my anti-anxiety benzo and my ADHD methylphenidate with breakfast and then sat there, staring at my phone, fists clenched, trying to will the anxiety levels to go down low enough to let me call this guy with the Finnish script all written out in front of me. No go so far.
The thing is, the last few days I've been trying to do this, I've taken the benzo but felt no noticeable effect. Because I've been taking them too often recently again, evidently. I can either take two, which tends to actually make me WHOAwoozy but maybe that would be okay, or I can try something else. Obviously willpower is out when you have ADHD, even after the methylphenidate. I've rewritten the script twice, I've made a physical to-do list and marked it up with symbols, I've taken deep breaths. But it doesn't work! Maybe my system needs a shock of some other kind, like you do when you have hiccups? Like maybe if I did something that would make my brain whirl around fast enough and trick it into not falling into the panic spiral, would I then be able to quickly dial?
So when I had a nervous breakdown in August, I briefly took them more frequently and they stopped working, when my use pattern before that was maybe once a month or so. Thanks to
waxjism's support, after a few weeks of babying myself I managed to mostly stop taking them again, going several weeks without, and typically just taking half again. Unfortunately, then the pipe connecting our tenants' drains to the sewer broke, sewage started coming up in the basement, and we started being unable to find a plumber who could come and bypass the broken pipe. We are stumbling along with a sump pump that has to be raised and lowered out of the septic tank full of sewage and a hose leading from it to the adjacent septic tank and into the working pipe that leads to the city sewer still from our side of the house. This works, but we have to periodically check and reposition it if the hose comes loose, the pump tips over, the water freezes, etc. The sewage-filled tanks are standing open in the yard and the hoses and cables are smeared with poop, of course, so it's all nightmarish. This has been going on FOR WEEKS because none of the local plumbers on our list can find time until sometime next year. And we got one LAST recommendation for a Finnish-speaking plumber, but Wax is at the stage of nervous breakdown where she can't make herself call, so I'm trying to do it, only he had to be the Finnish one OF COURSE and my Finnish confidence is much lower, so this is now day three when I've taken my anti-anxiety benzo and my ADHD methylphenidate with breakfast and then sat there, staring at my phone, fists clenched, trying to will the anxiety levels to go down low enough to let me call this guy with the Finnish script all written out in front of me. No go so far.
The thing is, the last few days I've been trying to do this, I've taken the benzo but felt no noticeable effect. Because I've been taking them too often recently again, evidently. I can either take two, which tends to actually make me WHOAwoozy but maybe that would be okay, or I can try something else. Obviously willpower is out when you have ADHD, even after the methylphenidate. I've rewritten the script twice, I've made a physical to-do list and marked it up with symbols, I've taken deep breaths. But it doesn't work! Maybe my system needs a shock of some other kind, like you do when you have hiccups? Like maybe if I did something that would make my brain whirl around fast enough and trick it into not falling into the panic spiral, would I then be able to quickly dial?
- Spinning around in a spinny chair until I get dizzy. I used to do this as a child, but when I've done it as an adult I've found it might make me queasy instead? Also we don't have a spinny chair
- What about standing on my head for a minute and a half first? IDK
- 1 minute of jumping jacks doesn't do it. Already tried that before.
- Oddly enough, I thought of cough syrup. Cough syrup tastes INCREDIBLY disgusting - in Finland it's flavored with salmiakki or black licorice. I have to hold my nose while swallowing the spoonful. I don't have a cough, though. And we don't have anything else salmiakki, because I hate it and Wax doesn't care
- Drinking something else really disgusting??? But the only things we really have are a little box of tiny bottles of Swedish snaps, mostly herbal-flavored liquors that you throw back in one before singing. Most of them are fairly mild but there's the infamous bäska droppar, the worst snaps of all, the one flavored with wormwood. I have tasted it before, not the full glass because I was just trying it, at family Christmases before the children when my in-laws were singing snapsvisor. This would definitely shock my system, but maybe too much? Wax recommended against it and I'm inclined to agree.
- We have this herbal drink called Greek Mountain Tea (genus Sideritis) that is very weird and I thought brewed strong it might have that effect, but it wasn't weird enough; it is still a bit like camomile. (We accumulate weird herbal infusions from time to time, because people know we love tea and don't realize that we love tea, camellia sinensis, not tea, any old random infusion of plants). Anyway it wasn't pleasant, but that small cupful, overbrewed, failed already.
- Maybe brandy? That's what you give a lady who fainted, right? The one and only time I was given brandy to try, it induced a strong coughing fit, so it probably WOULD be shocking, right? But I perused my MIL's liquor stash (most of the liquor we have is inherited. The only things there we've replenished ourselves were the amaretto and cointreau, both for baking) and she has no brandy. I poured a shotglass half full of Southern Comfort, which smelled worse than the other whiskey, but my hopes aren't that high.
