Hi my name is andrew and I have reached the end of the road, yesterday I was released from hospital from an overnite stay due to alcohol shakes and I never want to experience that again. I stopped drinking at the start of dec and attended AA meetings and was prescribed valium on a low dose to help along with lustral as a long term medication. I was able to remain sober for over a month and wean myself off the valium but in all this time the anxiety I feel never fully subsided and I was left with the most awful feeling of being 'stoned' (I have never used illegal drugs) through taking the lustral. Slowly but surely the drinking resumed on a low level to begin with (as it is the only substance that has ever alleviated the anxiety and feelings of depersonaliation) culminating in a 3 day binge of 8 cans of normal strength lager on friday past and a visit to hospital on sat with extreme anxiety and release on sunday and waking today with exactly the same feelings I have experienced all my adult life.
HI part 2 of many parts - As of today I am trying to make a fresh start - taking st johns wort omega 3 fish oil vit b complex vit c and gingo biloba and a prescribed dose of propanalol ( a beta blocker for nerves) I am going to atttempt to eliminate caffeine from my diet and god help me try to do the same with cigarettes and adjust my diet to include complex carbs and fresh fruit and fresh veg and reduce processed simple carbs. I am a member of a gym and I intend to try to go there tho my work out will be limited by a small niggling knee injury I had when I 1st when I joined on jan 2 (test results pending from an x ray as it has not fully healed) and I am a member of a yoga class and will start to reattend there too as I sustained a strained back 3 wks ago I am also going to try to stay busy in my life and get the million and one jobs I never got round to, to get myself ready to return to work when my health allows - all the usual things really relaxation excercises/physical excercises/diet/herbal supplements/anti depressant in st johns wort and that concludes present day.
hi I am 37 yrs of age now and have been on and off anti depressants now all my life I was originally on them (the true reason) I was small when I was a child and had no family support and I grew up with other ppl bullying me and myself trying to fit in with them and their ideas so I was always nervos and I always felt as tho I was not me, in the past few yrs for personal reasons those feelings have disipated and basically I have matured and I accept life on lifes terms, the main reason I went for anti depressants I was suffering from depersonaliation, basically I felt as though I was detached from reality and I thought deep down I had either died and was in some sort of coma and dreaming life and that I was observing myself from somewhere detached or that I was suffering from some unspeakably bad mental illness and I thought I was the only person in the world who felt like this. So I went to the doctor and 1st it was dothipen then paxil then prozac then lustral then back to prozac and finally one last attempt at lustral in december. I tried lustral again one last time and totally free of alcohol for the 1st time cos once over it did work but this time nothing but the feeling of being stoned 24 hrs a day which is worse than anything I have ever known and after 2 months on it that feeling was just driving me proper looney so it had to stop. The one thing that did seem to help was the st johns wort but still I had the feeling of dissasocation (I was not aware at this time of the fact that dissasociation was felt by other ppl so I was still convinced deep down I must be mad) and the anxiety (tho at a less level) and once again the only thing that alleviated it was alcohol and in sept (after some personal problems )I left my job with the idea to sort myself out once and for all and I went into a deep downward spiral of nearly daily drinking to try to alleviate the dissa' and this resulted in an overnite stay in hospital and reaching rock bottom.
It is now
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