Falling off the Benzodiazepine cliff

[cimorene]

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 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.

Comments

[laurajv]

My kids' therapists recommend cold -- an icy-cold wet washcloth to the face, holding ice against your wrist or in your fist.

[cimorene]

I've never even heard of that! Is that all there is to it? I will definitely give it a try.

[laurajv]

it's part of dialectical behavior therapy! the name for the technique as a whole is TIPP (temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, progressive muscle relaxation) to reduce distress from intense emotions. a lot of the time, tbh, all you need is the T part to get your brain to go "wait what" and refocus itself.

[cimorene]

Oh interesting, cool. Thanks, now I can read up on it more.

[1empress]

I'm so sorry about your anxiety - it absolutely sucks, it really does. Are you in 'freeze mode'? I came here to suggest putting your hands in ice water for a while, as I've heard that helps.

[cimorene]

That sounds HORRIBLE, so I guess maybe it would work? I'll try to find some specific tips about it.

[1empress]

It does sound awful 😕 But I guess it's the shock that 'wakes up' the system? 🤷🏼‍♀️ If only nice, comforting things worked.

[cimorene]

Yeah, it makes sense! If only those tips that are like "press on your thumb joint for two minutes to relieve a headache" and "stand on one foot touching your nose with a fork for thirty seconds to unclog your sinuses" actually worked...

[princessofgeeks]

I am so sorry. Hoping you both feel better soon or can get some help with meds. This is not right; you all should not have to live this way. My heart goes out to you both.

[cimorene]

🧡🧡

[isilya]

Hey! Debating once again posting this comment, but I hope over twenty years of online friendship counts:

I think you and Wax are both in crisis, and need outside help.

It's hard and tough, but there needs to be outside help, not just for one immediate situation, but for some time: you need someone to take over and you both need a lot of medical and physical assistance.

This might be Wax's family (can you reach out to her brother?) or someone local and reliable (are you still in touch with Pierydys?)--it doesn't sound like your own USA family is able to provide assistance, but this is the kind of situation where a competent family member would fly in and assist. Hell, if I weren't currently unable to leave the USA because of my green card situation, I would fly over and come help.

Living with cat piss and human excrement for months on end is traumatic and is causing emotional, mental, and physical damage that will becoming increasingly harder to amend. It's also extraordinary: I'm worried that you're so deep into this situation and we're your only audience, and we're not mirroring back to you that you're in a crisis situation.

Once the immediate physical needs are sorted out, there needs to be longterm medical and psychiatric assistance. Whether this is inpatient medication adjustment or a support worker helping while you get adjusted onto a working medication regimen with talk therapy support and practical support--you need real, practical, provided-by-another-healthy-person support.

Maybe also some big decisions about selling/renting the house and moving back into an apartment.

I'm being really brutal here, but I wish someone had told me in plain language a few years ago. It's been helpful to think of myself as someone with multiple disabilities: acknowledging that those disabilities have no moral value but rather have support requirements. Your support requirements are not likely to disappear. You and Wax unfortunately have over-lapping support requirements so you aren't able to support each other.

[cimorene]

My mom said she wished she could come, too, but they can't get coverage for the caregiver shifts that insurance would cover for my dad because there are so few people willing to do that job, which is terrible, and doesn't pay close to living wage. If she travels without him he's stuck in bed for all the times they won't come.

I'm not angry at you, I'm just overwhelmed and... I usually show messages like this to Wax, in the theory that they will reinforce what I'm saying and more strongly motivate her. But in this case I didn't give her the link, and since the post was not the most recent when you left the comment she didn't see it herself. I'm afraid she is depressed enough now that it would just send her into another fruitless tailspin.

I understand everything you're saying, although I think it's not necessarily as bad as you are saying! We are both quite depressed right now, but the cat piss is gone indoors and the human excrement is just sort of a looming threat most of the time - we have to check the pump is still going by shining a flashlight a couple of times a day, so LOOKING at it, and only have to reposition it (using long sticks and tools) most of the time. Wax has gotten so good at it that she can do it without assistance, and now even without me holding the flashlight for her. Of course the threat is still there and there's still gray water contamination on the snow and ground around the tanks; she puts on tall rainboots and we sacrificed two old pairs of lined leather winter gloves that were her mom's, one for each of us, but you shed those on the uninsulated-but-enclosed porch, so the contamination doesn't enter the house now except as a psychosomatic lingering smell.

There's still all the stress of course, and I don't deny that it has depressed both of us pretty seriously. But as per my most recent post on the subject, it looks like the plumber availability is so low that our disproportionate anxiety and panic around calling them has probably not slowed the process down much if at all, only added excess stress (and inability to eat and leave the house regularly and accomplish things etc) for us.

My social worker (for unemployment) discussed the issue with me, and my doctor, and I'm still taking psychiatric medication, so it's not TERRIBLE, although my doctor is a GP and she's retiring so I will be getting a new GP starting next month some time. There are no psychiatrists in our town, so referrals to one are rare and mostly GPs handle psychiatric medication. Anyway, I discussed how I've been trying to persuade Wax to see a doctor/GP to initiate getting help for her but she had most recently refused because she said she did not have the energy to go into Turku to see a doctor (25 minute commute), but the social worker said you can make an online booking for a video call with a doctor and I should try to persuade her to do that. Once the first ice was broken she would probably be able to take the next step in getting medical care. (I did tell Wax that if she wasn't able to discuss seriously making a dr's appointment I would ask her brothers to make her, and she flailed and babbled a lot of NO THAT'S NOT IT'S NOT THAT I REALLY IT ISN'T.) But this suggestion seemed to persuade her somewhat. She reacted with "HMMM" to the Zoom appointment idea, so I waited a few days and brought it up again as something I would like her to do as soon as possible. And then she said that she just got a work notice that they're changing healthcare providers but their new provider system is not fully online yet, so she thinks there is no point making an appointment until she gets the new information.

I had to admit this is probably true. I thought it was probably okay for her to make the appointment after Christmas, at this point.

I keep thinking I am going to cry as I go over the points in your post, though. I don't think Pierydys could spare the time to help with something this extensive, given she has a small child and a full-time job and lives over an hour away from us... but also I lost touch with her during the pandemic, it's very sad, but topic for another time.

They DO offer talk appointments with a local psychiatric nurse and I had these for some time, but I think the match with the therapist was not good... and also she has failed to contact me through two different attempts to leave a call request now, which means I have to do more work to figure out why/straighten it out with the GP. That feels like too much work at this point, especially because I don't really want to talk to her which makes doing it feel doubly difficult. I suppose I should tell a GP I want to talk to somebody else. But since I know my GP is retiring this month, I am a bit uncertain about making THAT call, too. I can't call the new one directly, I'll have to get an appointment.

I would love to sell the house and move, but we can't because we never finished remodeling it, and we don't have enough money to finish doing that all at once, and we can't get any more loans because the ones we have had were all my MIL's and we don't have enough income. We have some money, but the only way finishing is financially possible for us is if we do all the stuff ourselves that we can, probably? Also it probably would not sell; houses in our town are not selling well at all. There's a huge market for renting, but that would leave us still having to be landlords so it wouldn't solve anything.

[isilya]

Sending you so many hugs and so much love. I'm so sorry that my words made you more stressed and sad. I wish I could be there in person to make nourishing meals and help with admin.

Don't feel any pressure to reply, but:

When I had my big crisis in 2021, I literally had friends fly over to me and help me eat and pack and tidy. One even cleaned out my fridge and freezer for me. I felt useless and stupid for ages, that I couldn't even eat without help/company. They took me on holiday when I had to give up my dog so I didn't have to be in the house alone without him for those first few weeks. And then a friend moved me into her house, and it was six months of relying so so hard on everyone. I'll never stop being grateful for that help--I think it actually saved my life.

Working as an oncologist I saw how community rallies around patients with cancer, which is great and obviously needed, but I feel like sometimes other needs that are as acute are sometimes left to flounder alone. Just a warm kind presence sitting in the same room made a world of difference to me when I was at my lowest.