And It gets worse

I now have constant anxiety, have to force myself to eat, which today included a glass of Ovaltine, 2 cheese sticks, 8 crackers, and water. I can't even describe what my stomach is doing. Its tight, its aggitated, it thinks we're about to bungie jump off a cliff. I tried a relaxation exercise, laid down for an hour, and shivered and twitched throughout the whole thing. It has to be the Ativan doing it. I want to drive to the emergency room right now and beg for something to calm me down. My blood pressure this afternoon was 160/100! My usual is 130/80. Tomorrow I see my doctor again. I'm going to ask for Valium. There is a method prescribed to be many that switches Ativan (or any benzo user) over to Valium slowly because it is easier (less withdrawl symptoms) to taper off of. And who knows, maybe I'll find I like the Valium and just stay on it. If it keeps me from feeling like this, I might just do it. I am so very very miserable right now. It's like I've been on a caffeine high for 2 days straight. At 6 a.m. I woke up with a near panic attack - heart rate 134, cold sweats. I'm not strong enough to do this. It's too hard. Haven't I been through enough already? There can not possibly be a God in heaven to let this continue on like this. I begged for help today and got nothing. I can't do this. I don't know how to continue in this state of terror. Yet there is no way out. I must simply experience the horror of it, knowing that there is nothing more I can do besides put myself out of my misery, but I can't do that without putting the rest of my family through worse misery for the rest of their lives. So I am trapped. I don't know where to go from here. The thought of suffering through another night is overwhelming. I'm considering driving over to the emergency room and sleeping in my car so I'm close by...just in case. Hell. Sheer, utter, hell. My blessing on anyone who has to deal with this.

Still Struggling

Why's it gotta be so hard? That's all I want to know. I've tapered down to 1.625mg (down from 2mg) of Ativan a day and I'm anxious as hell most of the time. Is it withdrawl, or is it just the anxiety? I don't know, but it sucks. Usually work will calm me down, but the anxiety lasted throughout the whole day. And night time is usually a better time for me, but tonight I'm, you guessed it, ANXIOUS. I have shortened my taper schedule to have me done by the first week of November. I just hope this works and I'm not too terribly anxious by the end. I must learn some new coping skills to handle this anxiety without drugs. Hell. Real, live, hell. Right now. And for who knows how much longer. I hate this!!!!

My thoughts of hope may have been premature

So...I had some good days, then my days started getting worse and worse. The depression, the lack of motivation, the exhaustion, weakness. It appears that the Ativan is not working and is, in fact, making me worse. So now, after 4 weeks on this drug, my body is dependent and I am having to go through withdrawl. Ativan is a nasty drug. It is one of the strongest benzodiazapines - for example, half a mg of Ativan is the same as 10 mg of valium! It has to be tapered off of very very slowly. The recommended method is to add valium to the mix. For me, my schedule of tapering should be (now that I've tapered myself to 2mg per day down from 3mg in a very short time):
Weeks 1 & 2: Morning - .5mg Ativan, midday - .5mg Ativan, betime - .5mg Ativan + 5 mg Valium
Weeks 3 & 4: Morning - 5mg Valium, stop Ativan, midday - .5mg Ativan, bedtime - .5mg Ativan + 5mg Valium
Weeks 5 & 6: Morning - 10mg Valium, midday - stop Ativan, bedtime - .5mg Ativan + 5mg Valium
Weeks 7 & 8: Morning - 10mg Valium, bedtime - 10mg Valium, stop Ativan
So that would get me off Ativan but onto Valium! All I want to do is be drug free and I don't want to go through 8 more weeks to get there! But I also don't want to suffer the agony of withdrawing too quickly or not the right way. I cry all the time, I have delusions of non-existance, all I can think about is the damned pill and how to get off of it. How ironic, the drug phobic is now dependent on a drug and forced to detox from it! I'm so very depressed. I may not have the patience to do it the long way. I have gotten to the point where I barely eat anything because I have no apetite, I don't leave the house much because of the agoraphobia, I couldn't even shower this morning - I just washed off in the sink and shampooed my hair in the kitchen sink. I don't know what I'm going to do for work this week. If I can't leave the house, how will I go to work? God, I just feel like I've gone so far downhill that I may not be able to make it back up again. I was watching a show on PBS - a violinist playing in Vienne. I couldn't help crying from thinking about all that I've lost. I used to play the violin in the church choir, I used to teach it, play in an orchestra. Now I'm too afraid to do any of those things. I will never travel overseas. I may never travel out of state. I feel like my life is over. What is the point? I have so many periods during the day where I lose hope completely. My life is in the very deepest realm of hell. The way out seems so far off I don't know that I can make it.

The sound of tears

I'm a silent crier, sometimes there is a gasp to replenish my oxygen, but for the most part, silence. I learned it as a child. It wasn't acceptable to cry in my house, or at least that was the vibe I got. So my crying was done alone in my bedroom. This morning I'm again crying alone in my bedroom, silently of course. I'm crying because I don't want to have to struggle through another day of anxiety. It's just not fun. As I cry, the tears roll quietly down my cheek then drop to the pillow, the only sound being the little plunk as they hit the pillowcase. I had a decent day yesterday. I went to the grocery, spent an hour shopping without much anxiety, walked through another store for a few minutes, went to work, came home exhausted but went back out to another grocery for milk and bread, then later went with my daughter to look at tv's. I cried only once yesterday, as I got ready for work. And it was just a brief cry. Its a little after 10 this morning and I'm still in bed. I don't want to get up and face the day. But I know I have to. There are dogs to be let out to potty, there is my job at 2:00, and its not good for me to lay around and ruminate on my plight. So I will drag my anxious body out of bed and into the shower and hope like hell that I don't get more anxious while I'm showering. Then the usual routine - get dressed, put on makeup, choke down some breakfast, wait until work time, wait until work is done, and then come home and just sit and rock and watch tv. What a full life I have. Hell, that's what it is.