The Recovery Will Happen - Luc's journal

[Sheila]

I wonder if people had cleaner window/wave patterns years ago. Or if only a few people ever had a clear pattern, and the rest only had an fuzzy pattern. Definitely, recovery does become more linear over time.

[Mike]

I wonder if people had cleaner window/wave patterns years ago. Or if only a few people ever had a clear pattern, and the rest only had an fuzzy pattern. Definitely, recovery does become more linear over time.

With my benzo withdrawal I had classic wave/windows. When a window came I would feel amazing for 1-3 days and then go right back to feeling awful. It was night and day. During windows almost every symptom was completely gone and there was a hint of hypomania but then I would crash and go right back to what was the status quo at the time. But just as some have described the windows became more frequent and the waves receded. I think the last 20% of healing may have been more linear. Slow and imperceptible but eventually complete healing.

This time around there has been no such pattern. About 1-3 times a year I have short periods in which I feel much much better but it's not as complete as the benzo windows. There are more lingering symptoms, the "windows" are much less frequent, shorter, and my general pattern of healing is all over the place. No discernible pattern... At least not globally. My stress tolerance does seem to be improving in a linear way, maybe other symptoms too, but overall it's hard to find any pattern.

[Luc]

Interestingly enough, and to make the WD model even more difficult to describe, our *very description* of it may change depending on whether we are in the window or not. Every time the symptoms improve for me, the pattern seems much clearer.

[Mike]

That's true Luc!

[Sheila]

Mike – thanks for writing that. Very interesting. Yeah, in this AD w/d I’ve only very rarely had the experience you describe in your benzo w/d – like half a day of normalcy every year. Mind-boggling.

Luc – That is definitely true. Also, people are notoriously bad at self-report in general. We have “reporting biases.” Is the “good” I feel today the same as the “good” I said I felt 6 months ago? Or people have a character trait of emphasizing the glass half full or the glass half empty.

But, this particular syndrome makes the general human difficulty with self-report even worse. The neuro-emotion and actual cognitive impairment and memory impairment interfere. Over the years, I have seen people completely mis-remember and contradict themselves about their own w/d progress.

We also have “state-dependent memory,” which I personally think is a very stupid design flaw in human beings. So, you tend to be able to access memories that have the same feeling tone as you are in right now. Needless to say, this is a problem when you’re currently highly anxious or depressed. Then, all you can remember is other times you were highly anxious or depressed. This makes it seem like you whole life has been a disaster. Neuro-emotion makes this bias *even* worse.

<< won't remember anything tomorrow morning....

[Luc]

Great points, Sheila. Adding to it of the whole process, we get something-very-difficult-to-describe.

[Sheila]

And add to that that it's not exactly like any other human experience than has come before it, and that makes it even harder to describe. It's funny, someone just told me that his friend had been through w/d and had said no one could possibly understand what it's like if they hadn't gone through it, and I immediately knew that this person had, indeed, gone through w/d. This sentence is one of the hallmarks of w/d.

[Luc]

It's funny, someone just told me that his friend had been through w/d and had said no one could possibly understand what it's like if they hadn't gone through it, and I immediately knew that this person had, indeed, gone through w/d. This sentence is one of the hallmarks of w/d.

That's precisely it. And, I'll add one more thing to make it totally "wheels within wheels within wheels"; when the symptoms abate, this thought comes to your mind straight away "how the heck could have I possibly had those strange thoughts in the wave?! Was it *me*?!"

It's *impossible* to describe. We try. Every day. But it would take the next James Joyce with his stream of consciousness technique to be able to describe just 10% of it. But I doubt this even...

[Needinghelp]

Hey Luc. If you had to say, how much have you improved overall? Percentage wise?

[Luc]

I'd like to be able to do this, Needinghelp, but the problem is it all varies a lot - whether the symptoms are more or less intense on a given day (even time of the day), week, or month. Whether or not I may have eaten the type of food my body is sensitive to, or I have over-taxed my system physically-wise, whether there is lots of stress involved life-wise, etc, etc. One thing is sure though; even long-term poly-druggred cold-turkeys like me get better. And you will be healing faster than that.