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Thread: Sheila’s path through the dark, terrifying, magical, magnificent woods

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    Sheila’s path through the dark, terrifying, magical, magnificent woods

    “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita.”
    -- Dante

    Inferno


    I was 33 in 1996 and life was going pretty well. I had a good job, was running my own small business, and was just starting a new relationship. I was in a good psychotherapy where I was growing by leaps and bounds. I was dancing socially every week.

    In the middle of this decent path through life, I came across a temporary situation that caused me a lot of anxiety, and I was unfamiliar with anxiety, being a person from a depressive family.

    I had always been against psych meds. I believed them to be iatrogenic, and I thought most mental distress would respond to good psychotherapy (although it might have to be intensive and inpatient for some people).

    But, I had recently become more blasé about psych meds because I was working in an underfunded community mental health clinic in a big city where people in severe and chronic distress were offered medication and a teeny bit of psychotherapy. Period. It seemed better to give them meds than to do nothing. This contributed to inuring me to psych meds.

    I decided that, in the current stressful moment, it would be the self-loving thing to do to ask for and accept some extra, temporary help, and to not be so fanatically psychological in my approach. So I went to see a nice psychiatrist, who was very respectful, and I started Paxil.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    The Vestibule of Hell

    It’s hard to say whether it did anything, because the stressful situation resolved almost immediately anyway. I would say the Paxil was an upper – I got some extra energy and I had moderate side effects that one would associate with an upper, including restless legs and dizziness.

    A few months later, I tapered myself off because there was no need for it. I then spiraled into the worst depression I had ever had in my life – nearly vegetative. This didn’t make any sense, given my years of therapy and my age and my history. But, I over-psychologized, and assumed that I must have more repressed trauma in my childhood than I had realized. To her credit, my psychologist did not assume this. She admitted she was completely dumbfounded by my disintegration.

    I went back to the nice psychiatrist and started Zoloft. I got better, but neither my psychologist nor my psychiatrist nor I realized that I had just medicated Paxil withdrawal.

    Over the next three years, I gained weight, started smoking for the first time in my life, retreated from a social life, was diligent about my work, but exhausted by it. I lost my ambition. I only wanted to read novels.

    I tried to get off the Zoloft in 2001, but quickly got back on the Paxil, still not realizing that I was addicted to the meds and that they were making my life extremely difficult to manage.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    The Upper Rings of Hell

    In the Fall of 2003, at 40, I started getting severe occipital headaches, which I had never had before, and which made me miss work. I intuited (my first little epiphany) that this was the Paxil and that I had to get off. I started to taper, and this caused such intense muscle tightening in my head, neck, back, and legs, that I took the then-current suggestion of adding Prozac to help the Paxil taper.

    Somewhere in there, my psychiatrist and I added Buspar. In February 2004, I was on Paxil, Prozac, Buspar, and Dextromethorphan for what, in retrospect, was probably w/d “flu” and not a real viral infection. So, I started to sweat, stagger around, look at the clock and see the same time I had just seen a few minutes ago, sleep in 15 minute increments for a total of three hours a day, and generally have a psychedelic / psychotic / psychic experience.

    It was a moderate serotonin syndrome episode, for which I did not need to be hospitalized. My mental health professional best friend Barbara monitored me closely. And we Googled like mad – first finding out thanks to a friend that Dextromethorphan is a drug of abuse (who knew?) and then finding out that people were having trouble with Paxil w/d.

    I got off the Dextromethorphan and Buspar quickly and continued to taper the Paxil. It took me 20 months to taper off the Paxil, going as fast as I could tolerate, working full time, waking up with my head tilted fully back and unable to touch my chin to my chest. This can be thought of as l’Hermitte’s sign, an indication of neurological problems, as well as a spontaneous Kundalini yoga kriya (fish pose), indicating that new energy was trying to find a balance in me.

    The taper was miserable. I was emotionally labile, in extreme muscular pain, and exhausted. In May 2005 I took my last Paxil, and in June 2005 I took my last Prozac (which I “tapered” in only two steps). I thought I was done.

    In July, I rented a beautiful new office in a place I very much wanted to be and proceeded to become astronomically anxious. Again, I looked for psychological explanations. I got worse – severe anxiety, and, once again, the kind of depression I had only had one other time in my life -- the other time I stopped taking Paxil.

    I started to Google again. I had thought my w/d from Paxil was done. What was going on? I discovered that the taper is not the end of the recovery from Paxil; that people were having symptoms for years after their last dose; and that they were eventually recovering.

    The day before Thanksgiving 2005, the penny dropped. I realized I had been in w/d from Paxil in 1997, and in w/d from Zoloft in 2001 -- that this was, in fact, my third w/d. This was my main epiphany.

    I found an online support community, paxilprogress, where my username was Healing, and learned a ton there, and found w/d buddies, especially someone named Light.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    The Lowest Rings of Hell

    The end of 2005 / beginning of 2006 was the very worst part of my post-taper, the infamous 5-9 months out period, when I was so depressed, I was not sure if I would be able to survive. I promised myself I could commit suicide if I had to, but I really, really didn’t want to. That depression ended and has never returned. However, 2006 was the worst year of my life, I was so sick from w/d. My physical symptoms were many, but the anxiety was the worst torture – anxiety that made the original 1996 anxiety seem like a cakewalk. 2007 was better.

    Then, 2008 was worse! I had a setback that lasted an entire year, which was devastating.

    It would take several pages just to list all my bizarre and mundane physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms. Just one paragraph-worth – Unable to sleep more than four hours a night for a year, then five for several years, etc.; skin not healing; difficulty finding words; constant, severe sinus problems; incapacitating headaches; muscle injury if you so much as looked at me cross-eyed; hair loss in one spot; constant pain around adrenals; OCD which I had never had one iota of before; jaw snapping shut in sleep so often that tongue could not heal; sudden, extreme rage triggered by anything, including someone handling paper towel; extremely irrational paranoid thoughts; and relentless terror day and night for several years, to a degree that I would never have thought anyone could survive.

    Another one of my w/d buddies Altostrata wrote: “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Divine comedy?



    “In the middle of the path of our life I found myself in a dark wood for the direct way was lost.” -- Dante
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    Purgatorio

    From 2009 to date, I have seen steady improvement – too slow, after too long, but thank goodness it’s happening.

    I have researched and experimented with countless remedies and treatments – therapies and healing techniques, supplements and herbs, meditation and prayer. And, I’ve cobbled together a regimen of exercise, meditation, supplements, research, and consultation that have carried me, more or less, through the storm.

    What has helped me the most to get through this unimaginably long and brutal ordeal has been looking at it as a toxin-induced Kundalini awakening or shamanic initiatory illness. Although I have undeniably been recovering from neurological damage caused by Paxil et al., I also see this as cosmically orchestrated. The path I was on before starting meds was a decent one, but the Tao had other ideas. That path came to a dead end. I almost immediately got a glimpse of a new trail, but I suffered terror and horror in making the shift from one path to the other.

    My spiritual / existential / psychic beliefs have changed profoundly since this began. I was already a socially and politically radical person, but now I am even more so. I was a secular humanist, and am now a believer in many mystical, psychic things.

    My daily life is still very difficult. And I have battle fatigue. But the terrible terror only occurs rarely. I can do more. I see that I am healing. I get flashes of feeling good.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    Paradiso

    From as early as March 04, I have gotten brief, tantalizing glimpses of a joyful life up ahead.

    My reading suggests that shamanic initiatory illnesses are long, grueling, and come to an end, leaving the initiate once again able to function in the normal ways, but also happier and more powerful than before s/he went into the transformative ordeal.

    Since approximately the beginning of 2010, I am having more and more synchronicities, precognition, flow, or alignment within myself, and between myself and the Tao. Things occasionally happen very easily and magically. It’s still sporadic, but there is a trend.

    I hope to be able to experience that magnificent alignment, more and more of the time, when you are being your true self, speaking your truth, where you’re supposed to be, doing what you’re supposed to be doing, with the people you’re supposed to be with, knowing what you need to know.

    And then, I will be able to say with Dante, at the end of his travels, when he gets his first taste of personal synchronization with the cosmos: "But already my desire and my will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars."

    And, ideally, I hope to be able to say it in Italian! ;) “Ma già volgeva il mio disio e 'l velle, sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”
    Last edited by Sheila; 08-30-2011 at 02:38 AM.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    These are such moving words, Sheila. Thanks for sharing your story with us. Every single word of it rings so true and is so familiar. Been there, done that. Every time I'm trying to explain what SSRIs/benzo WD really is to those that I trust I'm lacking words. It's beyond any human language to describe what your mind feels, especially in the early phase of going off of meds. No layperson, no matter how compassionate and empathic, will ever be able to grasp the very concept.

    It's a rough rough process this healing of ours, but I have no doubt whatsoever that at some point the "tantalizing glimpses of a joyful life", as you put it, will drop the "glimpses" there. :)

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    Heck, *we* can’t even grasp what happened, and we were there!

    We’re all going to get to that joyful life. This is like a slo-mo Near Death Experience. It kills you, but then you are resurrected, and, after you’ve had some time to recover and integrate the experience, you have a much more profound grasp on what the good life is about.
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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    I re-read this,

    Now I know you better, I wish you recover soon to be happy as you have been.
    12 years paxil(9 years only 10 mg) - cold turkey(1,5 month) and switch celexa tapered 1 year 20 mg
    62 years old - for GAD - 4 years 3 months meds free [since april 2009]

    vegetables soup - orange (vit C) - curcuma - some meat or fish

  10. #10
    Founder Sheila's Avatar
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    Thank you, mon chéri.

    @--->------
    Meds free since June 2005.

    "An initiation into shamanic healing means a devaluation of all values, an overturning of the profane world, a peeling away of inveterate handed-down notions of the world, liberation from everything preconceived. For that reason, shamanism is closely connected with suffering. One must suffer the disintegration of one's own system of thought in order to perceive a new world in the higher space."
    -- Holger Kalweit

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