It's always surreal to me when I remember who I became addicted to benzodiazepines because it's the kind of thing you wouldn't think could happen, at least not to a kid you grew up well off in suburbia like I did. I've posted about my struggles with mental illness but I don't think I've properly chronicled how I stuck on anti-anxiety drugs. In short, I was made a drug addict by an incompetent GP.
It was 1992 and I was having crushing anxiety issues at college. Internal things were happening I didn't understand and external factors included my parents recent separation and the emotional trauma of a mentally ill mother calling me up from out of state making me feel even more horrible and depressed than I had been. Turns out a lot of the anxiety was clinical OCD combined with growing up with social anxiety and avoidant habits (which I feel grew into Avoidant Personality Disorder) but I was completely clueless to psychiatry at that time because the American school system refuses to teach it. I guess it would be too "offensive" to American crazies, of which there are millions, to actually try to teach young people about mental health. ANYWAY, I went to a doctor for anxiety and depression, not knowing yet I had bipolar disorder. I started taking Klonopin for anxiety. Just a little. I can't even remember why? I had ZERO clue about benozs and that they were narcotics. I also started taking some Prozac and somehow the narrative that the Prozac and the benzos were the same thing got blasted into my mind. The GP and others in this practice were telling me all these wonderful things about medication. I started taking the meds, fully intending to not take them forever. At some point, I got diagnosed by this GP as having either depression or whatever that would need meds forever. So here I am, 19 years old, being told I had to take drugs forever. By then, the Prozac would trigger the mania I didn't know I had. The incompetent GP didn't notice the symptoms when I told him the drugs were making me jump out of my skin. Any competent doctor would immediately see the drugs were triggering mania but he wasn't competent. I'll never forget his response. "It's you, not the drugs." By then, I just wanted to get off all the shit but the doctor said I couldn't or I'd have a seizure. He meant the benzos. I had no clue what he meant. It was further reinforced that I could never get off the drugs. They meant the Prozac. Combine all this with a crazy, guilt ridden mother who was also taking psyche meds and I had it further drilled into my head that my problems were a chemical imbalance. I feel that was my mother's way of trying to absolve herself of any parenting guilt. "I didn't do anything! It's all a chemical imbalance!" but that's just speculation. So, if the drugs were the way to solve my problems, I'd need more was my reasoning. This is when I got the "right combination" and "cocktail" talk the psychiatric profession uses. So, I concluded drugs, including an increasing amount of benzos, would solve my problems. That is a TEXTBOOK thought process which leads to and perpetuates addiction. So now I'm trapped in hell. I'm addicted to benzos but the doctors, thinking I'm trying to "get off my meds," won't phase me down. I was also not informed of ANY side effects. This was in 1992 when doctors essentially lied to patients they were experimenting on. All I got was "wonder drug" and "magic bullet" and all that. Looking back at it, I think the people who said these things were trying to be helpful and positive but they were negligent not telling me about the side effects of benzos, which are well known. I had that stoned look and feel, that haunted quality benzos induce and began to have MAJOR memory problems. I still have those problems to this day. Doctor didn't tell me anything about any of this. I had to suffer along the way. This is what cracks in the medical system are all about. If you get a bad doctor, you're fucked. That my incompetent mother proposed him to me isn't surprising at all and I'm just coming to grips that had incompetence FORCED ON ME. I did what I was told because I didn't know any better by people who were guessing. It took my own determination to get me off benzos. I made it happen. No one was interested in helping after my Dad's first few impotent tries. Then again, I think Dad wanted me off the Prozac. When I said a few years later I was having memory problems, he said, "You look all right to me." This is what I was dealing with. So I eventually got off the benzos 100% by my own initiative and I have still have trauma and nightmares from those days from 1992-1996. I'm now 100% against forced drugging because the idiots who do it don't care about patients. They want to "protect society" or something. They make way too many mistakes. I do find it funny I was apparently a test subject with anti-depressants. I thought I was a human being trying to live a life and be happy. Now there are a billion side effects mentioned about anti-depressants. Nice to know my lonely suffering and trauma helped with that, medical system!! Yes, this was rambling. No, I don't care.
