by Jennifer Leigh | Feb 5, 2020 | Coping Skills |
It is not advised to abruptly stop your benzo. Doing so can result in life-threatening symptoms such as seizures. It can also result in some of the more cruel benzo withdrawal symptoms such as auditory, olfactory, and visual hallucinations, extreme terror, paranoia,... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Jan 21, 2020 | Coping Skills |
People who are still tapering often ask me what they can expect once they step off their benzo. They ask me what my experience was like. Mine wasn’t typical because I jumped from .625 mgs of Clonazepam. Don’t cold turkey! Unless there is an urgent medical... by Jennifer Leigh | Jan 20, 2020 | Coping Skills |
There have been a few life-changing realizations in my life. One of them—perhaps the most life-changing—was the realization that I was either for myself of against myself. I had the choice to decide how I wanted to respond to my thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Jan 12, 2020 | Coping Skills |
Fear is a common benzo withdrawal emotion. It can come out of the blue, settling over us like a heavy wet blanket. Sometimes we don’t have any idea why we are fearful or what we are fearful about; we only know that we are very much afraid. And, that the fear is... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Jan 7, 2020 | Coping Skills |
When the wheels of my wagon began to spin crazily in benzo withdrawal, threatening to come off at any moment, my best friend reminded me to “work my program.” No stranger to suffering herself, she had firsthand knowledge of what it took to weather the... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Dec 28, 2019 | Recovery |
When the wheels of the wagon started coming off, so to speak, when I was tapering, all I wanted was for the withdrawal symptoms to go away. I’d have made a deal with the devil, if I could have, to be free from the suffering of benzo withdrawal. Thankfully, deals... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Dec 15, 2019 | Recovery |
We may be tempted to listen to binaural beats or other sound or tone therapies. They seem innocuous enough, so why not give them a try? They might reduce some of our benzo withdrawal symptoms, right? Wrong, unfortunately. A few of our benzo buddies have tried them... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Dec 8, 2019 | Recovery |
If social media has shown us anything, it has shown us that everyone has an opinion, even if that opinion isn’t based on truth, on facts. Post about your experience of benzo withdrawal (or tell someone about it) and you’ll probably trigger a landslide of... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Dec 1, 2019 | Coping Skills |
No one prepared me for the hell that engulfed my life once I started tapering off the benzo I’d taken (for wayyyyyy too many years) as prescribed. My doctor told me I could cut out a quarter of the dose every week and be done with it. What did he know? Not much.... 
by Jennifer Leigh | Oct 23, 2019 | Coping Skills |
It Sucks. There is no polite way to describe the feeling of being misunderstood. It sucks. It’s uncomfortable. It’s demoralizing. It triggers our nervous system into a fight, flight, or freeze response even though there is no physical danger. Any type of...