there is a i won't. even in my worst pain i still have to get up and go to the bathroom.

the pain i experience isn't going anywhere which leaves me accepting it but not giving in to it. why my w/d symptoms are reduced to my back and neck pain- why they seem to radiate all over my body - i don't really know. i have experienced nearly every w/d symptom before this and many times in 37 years.

my emotions have an effect on it all. if i get angry i am guaranteed a migraine. if i get loney deep depression is certain to follow. complaining gets me isolation and so forth.

the trick is keep moving, keep doing stuff, talk to people, anything or the pain wins everything.

aren't a lot of us doing the impossible? day after day facing the impossible and yet making small steps toward freedom?

overwhelming pain took over 60% of my total vocabulary and 99% of my thoughts. that won't do. what kind of life is that?

i just got sick of it. when i made the change over from ativan to valium every negative memory in my life came up and made me feel ashamed and guilty. these ghosts had so much credibilty. my pain intensified.

the ghosts said things like- "this is your spine - i need drugs!" . my past, which i thought was pretty much resolved, raised itself from where ever and begin to torment my present. everything they said seemed to real.

i have had to realize that - wait! that is not who i am. it is not real.

when ortho pod surgeron said i should consider surgery i quickly returned to couch to stay. death by diagnosis. my pain became more real, worrisome and overwhelming. i just firgured out i had better get a second opinion or i was done.

saw my regular doc today and he told me never go see a surgeon for a medical condition. he also said that with my particular problems surgery only offered a limited chance at helping it. he suggested i learn to deal with pain.

he was right. since i started seeing my doctor a year ago i have had so many illnesses, medications and tests only to discover it was the medication issues to begin with. (hospitalized seven times).

he can't believe i am on one medication - 15mg of valium per day. he can't believe i am so much healthier emotionally i am than when i began to see him.

i can't believe how much i have suffered, (opiate w/d, benzo w/d, psycy meds w/d, anti-biotics, steriod meds and more), over that last year - more than any i have all my life - and i have suffered many years. i also can't believe he is some what taking credit for my being a better person than i was a year ago.

that's okay though. i am a different person than i was a year ago. my doc pointed out the many phases i have gone through. i have wanted to fire him many times because i don't really like the guy but he believes in slow benzo tapers and will give any test at any time.

having burnt out every benzo and pain receptor in my body and now being chemically sensitive to any medications, (like air and water) - i do have to learn to live with pain somehow.

i have since come to realize in the long silences, (that used to be filled with the ranting and raving about how i couldn't stand the pain), have given me long pause to think about all the past me's that keep yelling about all their horrible w/d experiences - that in fact has not been the horrible life i thought it was tormenting me. they, (all the me's) are like exactly like many generations of rats put through a maize and while i am making all these twists and turns in w/d and never seeing the solution and eventual freedom. they did somehow and they are reminding me that all those w/d''s had an end. that colors were bright and beautiful and life was wonderful until the next time it all started over with medications.

so this time i am the great grandmother of all rats and i am remembering that they are prompting me to recall that i do know this maize. not rationally, not logically but intuitively, not in my concept of time but how to get through this. that i will eventually recover to experience the world again. older but wiser. there is wisdom in the cells of my body, not in my thoughts.

going through benzo w/d is like a long dark winding tunnel with a light somewhere near the end of it and though it is a painful birth into a scary new world. don't you agree it is worth it?

gather up your hindermost and plody, plody forward.

luv to all

christi

*w/d=withdrawl