My Protracted Journey of Withdrawals

My Protracted Journey of Withdrawals

I was dependent on meds for nearly a decade.
I knew I needed them,
I just didn’t quite know that
I also believed I couldn’t live without them.

Not until my doctor said, “This can’t go on.”
I felt my blood get hot and my heart began to race
But nowhere near as fast as my mind.
“I can’t sleep without Ambien.”
“My sternum aches intolerably without Colonapin.”
“My anxiety is crippling without an occasional Xanax.”

She listened to me, nodding her head.
“I hear you, but listen to me,”, staring right through me.
“We already know the effects of Benzo’s on memory loss,
It’s likely you already have the brain of a 60 year old.”
She paused to let that sink in.

“You already said you are having lapses in your recall, right?”
I agreed, “But what choice do I have?”
“If I have a tight chest, I can’t sleep.”
“If I can’t sleep, I have debilitating anxiety.”
“If I have anxiety, I have a tight chest.”
And so on and so forth.
I was trying to tell her that if you remove one,
The house of cards caves in.

She appeared unfeeling at the time.
Shaking her head she sighed,
“I don’t know what else to tell you. This can’t go on.
We have to wean you from these addictive substances.”
I felt like I was getting nauseous with panic at the very thought
Of attempting this impossible suggestion.

I remember trying to buy some time.
“Ok. But this isn’t a good time for me.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic
And leading a church right now is
Like threading a needle in a tailspin.
Can we wait until after the new year?”

I kid you not, she looked at me
And her eyes said loud and clear,
“Cry me a river.”
Mind you, she didn’t actually say that.
What she did say was almost as brutal,
“There’s never a good time to stop Benzo’s.
There will always be an excuse to delay
And try and wait for the perfect time.
There is never going to be a perfect time, Jason.”
Something about her using my name
At the end of that sentence stunned me.

I remember being so angry with her
I wanted to walk out of the doctor’s office
And talk to another doctor about her rude bedside manners,
How I wanted to switch doctors.
Find one who was patient and personal.
Loving and compassionate.
I wanted someone to rub my back
And tell me everything was going to be ok.

But this woman just kept after me.
“So let’s talk about a plan of action.
How about we taper back each medication.
You didn’t get into this overnight
And you’re not getting out of it overnight.
This is a journey and you can do it.
You need to believe that you can do it.”

I didn’t believe that.
But my loss of memory scared me enough to try.
She was right, “This couldn’t go on.”
Deep down I knew I had to change.
And change was going to be hard.

So I tapered back. 
I cut all my meds in half at first.
She told me that getting off
Ambien, Colonopin, and Xanax
Was going to have side-effects,
Withdrawals, as they are called in the drug world.
And because I had been on them for a solid ten years,
She warned me that they would be protracted.
A fancy word for “drawn out longer”.

I felt the effects immediately.
Lying in bed at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm
Knowing all I had to do was go downstairs,
Find my meds in the bathroom drawer,
And I’d be asleep in less than 15 minutes.
It was torture to stay in the room wide awake.

My mind was yelling at me, cursing me.
Evil thoughts, Scary thoughts, Depressing thoughts
Circling like dementors in the dark.
(Everything feels darker in the dark.)
Nights felt eternal as my brain convulsed.
It’s chemistry was screaming for those chemicals.
My neuropathways confused at the disruption.

I decided to not sleep in our bedroom.
It was partly not wanting Heidi to see me like this
And partly wanting her, at least, to get some sleep.
So I went up to Kami’s room
Since she was away at college.
I hated being alone in the watches of the night
But it felt like something I had to fight alone
At the same time.

It feels like no one would believe you
If you told them what was really happening
Cause the experiences are so bizarre
And the feelings so berserk.
It feels every bit like you belong
On Shutter Island locked up
In an insane asylum with crazy people.

I remember crying out to God on that first night
I couldn’t sleep and my mind was scourging me,
“God, how did I get here?”
“How is this happening to me?”
“I need you to help me or I’m dead.”
Silence. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I felt something else.
Presence. Faint, but there.
I sensed that God was going to stay up with me.

I finally feel asleep at 4 something
And got up to go to work at 7:30am.
I was tired, but I figured that the next night
I was going to sleep like a log.
Do you know what it’s like to be dead tired
And still be unable to fall asleep?
Insomnia.
That’s the scientific name for it and it’s hell on earth.

Night after night after night.
Scraps of sleep catapulting you into a day of work
Where you feel like you’re trippy,
Like an out of body experience of sorts.
Everyone else carrying on like normal
While I’m seeing double,
Hearing voices talking to me in a tunnel.
But the sleeplessness was just part of the journey I was on.
The tapering off the anxiety meds
Led to a whole ‘notha level of madness.
If the delirium of sleeplessness wasn’t psychotic enough,
The withdrawal symptoms of weaning off the Benzo’s,
Well, I thought I was clinically unhinged. Not joking.

I began hearing things in the night.
Sounds from the closet. Screams and thuds.
People shouting my name, “Jason! Pastor Jason!”
I would turn my head at first fully expecting
To see a person holding a machete in the bathroom
But no one was there. Just voices.

But the sounds I would hear would do something else.
They would reverb and magnify
Picking up musical tones and feedback
Like a mic ringing in a monitor
Except there was no way to hit the kill switch on the soundboard.
Clanging cymbals and resounding gongs as Paul called them,
Throughout the night, but also in the day time hours.

And the dizziness and fogginess. 
I would lay in bed and the room would spin like a fair ride
Making me nauseous like I was sea sick.
I would run to the bathroom at home or work
And lean over the toilet to find relief,
But only a couple times did I actually hurl.
It was kind of like the insomnia…
Always tired never sleeping.
But it was nausea…
Always sick never puking.

I would close my eyes and felt like I was falling
Forward in one moment, backwards the next
Vertigo when I would tilt my head back
Colors pixilating when my eyes would look back and forth
Almost like my brain didn’t have the Ram
To record the data being downloaded.
Constantly glitching.

One time I got in the shower after one of those nights
And as I tipped my head back
to rinse the shampoo out of my hair,
I passed out cold.
Fell forward like a sack of potatoes and smashed my face
Against the plastic floor of the tub.
Heidi came in the bathroom hurriedly and asked if I was ok.
I honestly didn’t know where I was until she asked again.
It was then I realized that for the first time in my life,
I fainted.

I got on my knees naked as a newborn
And as I braced my arm to stand up,
I collapsed in a fainting spell again
Cutting open my eyebrow on the spigot.
Heidi got to see it that time, helplessly looking on
I remember asking her to text my friends from college
Who I was going to meet for a Zoom call
And tell them I wouldn’t be able to make it.
Ya think?

But probably one of the hardest things
Was the scary malfunctioning of my memory.
People would talk at work and I couldn’t concentrate
They would look at me for a response at times
And I would try and make something up
With the scant details I picked up.
Fake it so they weren’t weirded out,
But I could tell they could tell.

They’d ask me if I was alright sometimes
And I would just say, “Yeah, it’s just weird.”
Sometimes I would just go home by 11am
Because the noise and commotion got to me.

A couple times I was at home and had severe memory loss.
Like I’m talking about not remembering 2 seconds ago
And not remembering anything 2 seconds into the future.
I would start a sentence and not know how to finish it
Because I literally didn’t remember what I was saying
And where I was even going with it in the first place.

Heidi would stand next to the bed
And just let me try to talk, try to explain what was happening
I know I sounded nuts, but just her being with me
Was all I needed while I was trapped in the present.
It’s funny how when you’re preoccupied
You’re trying constantly to be present.
But when you can’t be in the past or the future,
The present is a prison, no frame of reference,
No ability to see in the future to get to your goal.
I would just let my brain glitch out for hours
Until little pieces of memory started to be sewn
Together like patchwork reintroducing my semi-myself.

That was the scariest moment in this whole withdrawal
Cause I kept thinking in 2 second intervals.
I remember thinking in one of these episodes,
“If this is what life is going to be like,
I’d be completely disabled.”
I won’t be able to be or do anything.
I would be an invalid.
Taken care of by my wife and kids
Like I was a dementia patient in a nursing home.
It was humbling. It was petrifying.

But as I talked to doctors and others who had walked this road,
They kept telling me that it was part of the process.
The painstaking process of breaking free from
Ambien, Clonopin, and Xanax.
The triple threat as one doctor called it.

But here I sit pecking away at this keyboard
Seeing hope on the horizon.
After seven months, I’m completely off Ambien
Sleeping with a mixture of Melatonin and Magnesium.
I’ve also broken free from Xanax, the hardest of all,
With the most violent reactions to the break up.
I still take a quarter of the Clonopin I was before,
And I anticipate phasing out completely in the next 3 months.
It’s hard to believe, but I actually believe I can do this now.

I’ve had to fight the phycological side-effects as well,
But between verbally processing via writing,
Talking to trusted friends about the ebbs and flows,
Eating more life-giving food
Taking vitamin supplements
Going to a Max Living chiropractor in our church
Exercising each day to get a release of natural drugs
Seeking God for his affirmation and encouragement
And being “kind to my mind”,
I’m pretty confident that I’ll reach 
the summit of this emotional Everest.

I just met with my doctor last week to talk about my progress.
It felt good to hear her say, “You really are doing well, Jason.”
Her encouragement after her admonishment several months back
Reminded me a lot of loving discipline.
Sometimes you need someone to fight you for you.
You don’t need tender love, you need tough love.
The kind of love that fights for your health and healing
Instead of letting you stay in your brokenness and bondage.
But it always feels cruddy when they first press in,
Like they are your enemies of something.

But the Bible says, “The wounds of a friend are faithful.”
And I, for one, am grateful for the wounding words
That began a journey toward freedom.

I felt the need to write this out to acknowledge
What happened along the way that few people actually saw.
I remember preaching on weekends when I lost my memory
And I pretty much just stumbled my way forward.
I recall a baby crying in the worship space
And the sound of it reverberating in my head
To the point of making me sick while I was talking.
I vividly recollect having such piqued senses
That I could feel the part of the stage under my feet
Were it would sound different because of the concrete
Being poured over sand in one part and over 2x10’s in another.
I would be preaching and fight off little feelings like that
Clawing my way to the finish line.

But as time has gone on, I’m regaining lots of function.
My brain is healing little by little
My heart is sensing light at the end of the tunnel
And my body is regulating into homeostasis again.
I don’t know what unadulterated normal is,
But I’m feeling more of it by the week.
It’s a mix of God’s grace, my grit, and others’ love.

Just wanted to encouragement myself today
And anyone else that needs a boost out there.

(Please consult your doctor or counselor before making any med decisions.)