To start something... you need to eventually start it. I've been thinking of writing my journal from time immemorial - here's still a shamingly rough draft thereof, but it's, at least, some starting point. The more strength I will be gathering, the more I'll be adding to it. So, here's the extremely condensed version of my SSRIs and benzo journey. I was on SSRIs and then benzodiazepnes for around 8 years, between 2001-2008. I went off of benzo (Xanax - 1 mg) in June 2008, and then off of Paxil (40 mg) in December 2008 - both cold turkey. The number and utter bizarrness of symptoms I've experienced since then escapes any words. For the reasons I may explain some time later on I had to work throughout all that time. Now, being 2 years and 8 months off of Paxil, I just shudder at the very thought of the indescribable hell I was living every single second in the earlier WD - having no choice but to pretend I'm a healthy professional in my job. And even though, as of late, I've been experiencing quite a nasty and prolonged wave, I still full-well realize that, on average, it's improved, and that at-some-point complete recovery will happen.

Though my dream of dreams is to just feel what most of SSRIs-not-wrought-havoc-upon people take for granted, that is normalcy, and I crave for being able to feel the feeling of "cannot-waitedness", when you have no anhedonia, and you're impatiently waiting for the pleasure of going for a walk, of meeting friends, of eating your favourite dish, of the coming of a new day, and of so many others, I still need to be patient, like are my friends here. The good news is that nature abhors vacuum - action vs reaction - after fighting WD tooth and nail and reclaiming our lives, we'll have learnt things we'd have most likely never learnt, hadn't it been for our... fighting WD tooth and nail. It's all laws of physics.

Thank you, Barbara, Sheila and Stan (in alphabetical order), for doing such an incredible work, for launching this site. It'll help so many folks.