FeralCatman: recovering from Seroquel

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

My Betaine HCl supplement for raising my stomach acid levels showed up in the mail today. The dosage that I bought is pretty high so my nutritionist said I could take half so tonight I took a quarter to see what would happen and so far so good. I'm going to stick with a quarter of the dose for a day or two and then move up to what she recommended has being half of the dose that I bought and then go with that for a while and see if it makes a difference and as long as I'm taking that okay then probably next week I will start the other enzymes and see if I can start eating a little more normally in the next month or two. I also made bone broth today with chicken thighs and fresh oregano and fresh Rosemary and some lemon juice for the acid and a little bit of sea salt as well some chopped up carrots and turnips from my garden. I cooked all of that and reduced it over 6 hours and the minimum time recommended is 4 hours so it is a weak bone broth but I figured I would start with that and had a cup of it and it was really good and at least is not causing any problems. So so far so good and the other good thing is that bone broth is not a low histamine food and yet it didn't cause me problems so I think I'm making a lot of progress in beating down the histamine intolerance and in fact it may not be an issue anymore. As with everything else I'm going to take it very slow because as I've said many times slower is faster and I don't feel like backsliding again. Relapsing into acute withdrawal really sucks and I highly recommend taking it slow so you don't do that to yourself. 😉✌️😺😺

[Catina7]

21 minutes ago, FeralCatman said:

UPDATE

 

My Betaine HCl supplement for raising my stomach acid levels showed up in the mail today. The dosage that I bought is pretty high so my nutritionist said I could take half so tonight I took a quarter to see what would happen and so far so good. I'm going to stick with a quarter of the dose for a day or two and then move up to what she recommended has being half of the dose that I bought and then go with that for a while and see if it makes a difference and as long as I'm taking that okay then probably next week I will start the other enzymes and see if I can start eating a little more normally in the next month or two. I also made bone broth today with chicken thighs and fresh oregano and fresh Rosemary and some lemon juice for the acid and a little bit of sea salt as well some chopped up carrots and turnips from my garden. I cooked all of that and reduced it over 6 hours and the minimum time recommended is 4 hours so it is a weak bone broth but I figured I would start with that and had a cup of it and it was really good and at least is not causing any problems. So so far so good and the other good thing is that bone broth is not a low histamine food and yet it didn't cause me problems so I think I'm making a lot of progress in beating down the histamine intolerance and in fact it may not be an issue anymore. As with everything else I'm going to take it very slow because as I've said many times slower is faster and I don't feel like backsliding again. Relapsing into acute withdrawal really sucks and I highly recommend taking it slow so you don't do that to yourself. 😉✌️😺😺

 

Thanks for the update.  Homemade bone broth is so healing, so I'm glad you're doing that.  It has tons of health benefits.  We look forward to hearing how you're doing on your new supplement.  You're right, slower is better! 👍

[FeralCatman]

I sent the summary I posted about low stomach acid and its effects on digestion to one of the other coaches that I only talk to once. I got a reply this morning that said thank you for sending it along and that this is in fact a common problem that they have seen many times. So I certainly have plenty of evidence that going down this road is most likely the correct way to go.

[FeralCatman]

I should also say that with respect to food sensitivities my nutritionist told me something interesting. I discussed food sensitivity testing with her and she revealed two things one of which I already kind of knew. The first one is at most food sensitivity testing is based on using immunoglobulin G. The science behind this is not well proven and many of the studies showed that this does not show a sensitivity it just shows an exposure and tells you very little about whether or not you will actually react to the food that has a high number. The only way to really accurately figure out what your sensitive to is to do an Elimination Diet. The second thing that she revealed that does in fact make sense is that as your gut heals up your immune system and your metabolism both will change and as your immune system changes your immune response to different foods changes which would explain why people encounter different and varying levels of sensitivity throughout their withdrawal recovery and that is because of this factor. This is another good explanation as to why things morph and change over time because as you recover your immune system and your metabolism and your nervous system are all changing the way that you interact with your environment.

[FeralCatman]

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

A friend of mine who is not on this website but who has gone through this forwarded me a link from the " Inner Compass Initiative" website. They are another excellent resource for drug tapering and withdrawal information and advice. They are having an event in October that you can attend live in New York City or attend via live stream. The event is titled "The Science and Art of Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs - With Anders Sorenson and Laura Delano". The event is 3 hours long and tickets for a live stream viewing are $15 US. If you live or will be in the New York City area you can attend live. There's also the option to purchase a $30 ticket for which half the cost will go to cover someone else who cannot afford to attend. If you cannot afford to go to this you can apply for a free ticket.

 

I will be attending the live stream and I will be forwarding this on to everybody that I know that might possibly be interested including my doctors and a couple of family members who I know will be interested. Knowledge about how much harm these drugs do is spreading and it's not going to be much longer before things will have to change because enough people are finding out now that they are going to demand it. The wave is building and change is coming 😉✌️😺😺

 

Here is a link to the event

 

https://us13.forward-to-friend.com/forward/show?u=1e5084b5065fc8cdda0dbe47d&id=4db4d8bdb4

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

This recent wave has finally passed. My last bad day was on 08/01. After that things started to improve.

 

Here are some stats on what that big project I did on June 15th cost me.

 

The warning shot across the bow that told me I was pushing too hard was on May 31, June 1 with 2 nights of adrenaline surges.

 

The beginning of a consistent wave started on June 15th.

 

Following that it took 55 days (7 weeks 6 days or about 1.95 months) to see consistent recovery.

 

During that time I had 19 nights of severe adrenaline surges resulting in minimal sleep.

 

2 episodes of hyponatremia and 2 visits to the ER to check on it

 

Outside of the severe days sleep amounts were all over the place.

 

22 days of at least mild to moderate depression

 

26 days of moderate to severe anxiety

 

Emotional lability. Missed appointments. Put a home health aide on standby.

 

Fluctuations in body pain.

 

Decrease in gut function which is now getting better.

 

Here are some stats from last years big wave when all of this hit me really hard the first time.

 

I wasn't recording everything early on so this is from memory.

 

Severe symptoms started in the last half of December 2021

 

I fell into and out of this over the next few months. I didn't get my first normal day until May of 2022 so about 5 months of severe symptoms on most days.

 

I didn't see consistent recovery until September 24 2022 when I hit a turning point and things got much better for awhile.

 

Until the end of April I was getting 0-4 hours sleep on most nights. There were some good night scattered in there but the bad nights outnumbered the good ones.

 

Comparison of last year and this year.

 

Last year it took almost 9 months to get to consistent recovery where I am now

 

This year it took about 2 months to get consistent recovery.

 

I used a percent difference calculator on line and found out the percent difference is 127.27% in the recovery time so there is a number that compares this years recovery to last year.

 

BIG BIG improvement. Resilience is building and recovery time from a major upset is drastically reduced.

 

Also, none of the really crazy symptoms came back. Mostly just adrenaline surges, emotional lability, depression, anxiety, and disturbes sleep.

 

Moving Forward

 

From this point on the focus is on gut healing and getting back to walking and getting my back stretched out. No upper body stuff for awhile. I have people doing property maintenance at least through next summer so I won't have to over do it again and I can focus on healing. Once my guts are normalized and I can get back to my full walks and get my back stretched out I can think about expanding that. Once I get these supplements going and verified that they are not hurting things I will start moving forward with tapering the Tegretol.

 

 

[Catina7]

I'm so happy you're making progress @FeralCatman!  Have a wonderful day!  😻

[FeralCatman]

@Catina7 Thank you. It's always nice to get to a point where you can crunch some numbers and realize how far you've come. Always encouraging.

 

Have a good day as well 😉✌️😺😺

[BigCat]

4 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

@Catina7 Thank you. It's always nice to get to a point where you can crunch some numbers and realize how far you've come. Always encouraging.

 

Have a good day as well 😉✌️😺😺

I am learning that number crunching can be very reassuring. 

G'on yerself!  (Scottish words of encouragement)

[FeralCatman]

4 hours ago, BigCat said:

I am learning that number crunching can be very reassuring. 

G'on yerself!  (Scottish words of encouragement)

Any words of encouragement are always welcome so thank you 😉✌️😺😺

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

I am finally mastering the art of slowing down and not being stressed from it but actually enjoying it maybe for the first time in my life. Saturday I went out for a drive and went down the dirt road past my favorite local hiking trail and decided to say the hell with it and stopped. By my SmartWatch I know on average I do 8,000 to 12,000 steps a day just doing stuff around the house and on my own property. My average pace is 2.5 ft per step. That works out to about 3.7 to 6.8 MI per day just doing my normal daily stuff. Since I hadn't done much that day I went out and started walking up the trail but I did it differently than I ever have. Instead of barreling up the trail like a man on a mission setting out the conquer the trail and the mountain I did the opposite. I just strolled up the trail like I was strolling through Central Park on a Sunday afternoon after church dressed in my Sunday finest. I was able to just take time to listen and I mean really listen probably for the first time ever to all the things going on around me and then slowly looked around as I walked and took stock of it all. Even though I've done that many times at a much higher pace I never realized how much I was missing  by always moving through life like a man on a mission.  That slow mindful walk through the woods was probably the most enjoyable Woods walk I've ever had in my entire life. I was having a little bit of that pain in my legs that day too that still comes and goes and as I stepped up on the rocks and walked up an incline I realized that that pain wasn't doing anything different than it does while sitting on my couch. That tells me it has nothing to do with muscles or joints or ligaments or tendons it's simple nerve pain and of course in withdrawal you're nervous system will create Phantom pains just like it creates Phantom anxiety and Phantom depression and Phantom everything else that really sucks. So now I know that the low level physical activity isn't a problem it's just the hardcore heavy duty activity that over stresses my nervous system and that the slow gentle walks up the trail are just fine. So I went back yesterday and did it again and I slept just fine again tonight. I'm going to go back today and do it again and take another stroll and enjoy the hell out of it because I've earned it.

 

What all of this recent nastiness that I've been through combined with these last couple of days has taught me is that getting back to the physical activity is going to be a reverse taper. You have to start out with really small percentage changes in your activity and very slowly build up and much slower than you would expect at least in my case which is fine now that I know how to get out and go slow and enjoy the hell out of it that's what I'm going to do because at least I am out there and I've realized that's all that really matters. I don't need to be wearing a 35 lb pack and climbing up several thousand feet to have the hike be worth it. It's not the destination that matters it really is the journey.

[FeralCatman]

I forgot to add something to the above post and that is my reaction to people and other hikers has also calmed way down. For many years when encountering other hikers I always felt that there was some sort of threat there and at the very least just kind of felt annoyed at being disturbed. These last couple of days on a relatively crowded long weekend I ran into a number of other people and didn't feel that way. I wasn't glad to see them but I also wasn't unhappy I actually could have cared less one way or the other and could just be friendly in passing and then leave it be and move on and didn't have a care in the world. It's a strangely unfamiliar feeling for me but extremely welcome. It tells me just how badly these medications were affecting me and twisting my head around. It also tells me that despite all of the extreme suffering that I have endured that going through this process is worth it. It also tells me in a way that I can now actually believe that what the coaches told me about my best days still being ahead of me may in fact be the truth. Now that I've experienced this I don't feel a need to run back to where I was a few years ago. I am finding that this slowing down thing works really well and I'd rather hang on to that because it's far more enjoyable and less stressful and makes me realize I don't want to go back I want to see what's ahead. All this really makes me wonder what the hell I've been trying to run to my whole life when everything I needed was probably right there all along but I was too heavily medicated and obsessed with achievement and destination that I just couldn't see it. I think part of it might be that whole destination addiction thing that we all get pushed on us as part of modern society. It makes us more profitable consumers. Onward and upward.

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

I figured out last night why this summer was so much worse than last as far as my ability to do physical work. Last summer of course I was still overall having a lot more symptoms and was still having trouble with driving and such however it was a very dry summer and not every day was scorching hot. We had quite a few days that were in the seventies  and temperatures were not consistently excessive. This year I was recovering fairly quickly from any upset right through until the beginning of June. That's when the heat went way up and stayed up and it was raining constantly and so the humidity went way up. So that has been a double stressor of heat and humidity causing physical stress and pouring rain causing psychological stress since I haven't been able to go outside much at all because it's been pouring buckets almost everyday. I am really dependent these days on being outdoors and so not being able to do it is extremely hard on me. I am not someone who can just lay around the house all day tapping away on a computer and reading books it just doesn't provide me with what I need. It's been like this until a little over a week ago when everything cleared out and the temperature went down to normal and actually a little bit lower than average for this time of year. Very quickly I felt a lot better. 2 days ago the heat and humidity came back and now I feel worse again and my body is very stressed. It is obviously a correlation not causation but it would be an awful huge coincidence for these things to be happening at the same time. I am very rigid in the way I live my life right now and I am conducting everything as a controlled experiment so the only thing that has changed is the weather.

 

So now I have an even more complete picture. My body is stressed from withdrawal and Recovery. On its own it does seem to be recovering. The withdrawal stress is impairing my digestion so any changes in diet cause physical stress. Add in too much physical activity and it raises my stress level even more and I start to get some symptoms but I had been recovering fairly quickly. Add in environmental stress from heat and humidity and it is too much for my body to handle and I start getting worse. The weather is going to clear out on Saturday which is only 3 days away and if I start to feel better after that then I'll definitely have my answer. I have read in multiple places on this website that people have trouble with heat and humidity while recovering so it's not terribly surprising it was just a surprise that last summer I could do the mowing and my other chores and make it but this year I couldn't but there is a huge difference in the weather between this year and last year. Thankfully this weather will be gone soon.

 

All of this tells me that I am in fact doing the right things for myself by backing down from the physical labor and getting other people to do it for a while and trying to treat the digestive stress with the enzymes and acid supplement. If these supplements work and they certainly don't seem to be hurting then in time they should do quite a lot to reduce my digestive stress while my body heals up and laying off the physical stress should do the same thing. Environmental and nervous system factors are of course out of my control and they are going to do their own thing in their own time but the other two issues I have some control over.

[StayHopeful]

I just read this story the other day about SSRIs and antipsychotics, and heat intolerance. 

 

Heat Intolerance and Psychiatric Medications | Psychology Today

 

[FeralCatman]

11 minutes ago, StayHopeful said:

I just read this story the other day about SSRIs and antipsychotics, and heat intolerance. 

 

Heat Intolerance and Psychiatric Medications | Psychology Today

 

@StayHopeful Thank you for posting that it's a good article that explains the problem fairly well. That is an additional stressor I'm dealing with is that as I'm still on two medications that can cause problems like this. I've always had issues with the heat but never like this and this is also a known problem in protracted withdrawal even if you are off all of your medications.

 

If you haven't already you should post this article under 'In the media'.

[StayHopeful]

 

I plugged it in search to see if there was a topic on it and found one in "Symptoms and Self Care" that Mamma P posted in 2017... However, the link to the page on breggin.com, doesn't come up for me.

 

https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/search/?q=Heat exhaustion and psychiatric drugs&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=8#:~:text=SORT BY-,Heat,mammaP posted a topic in Symptoms and self-care,-Reports show that

 

I'll post the article there.👍

 

[Catina7]

6 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

UPDATE

 

I figured out last night why this summer was so much worse than last as far as my ability to do physical work. Last summer of course I was still overall having a lot more symptoms and was still having trouble with driving and such however it was a very dry summer and not every day was scorching hot. We had quite a few days that were in the seventies  and temperatures were not consistently excessive. This year I was recovering fairly quickly from any upset right through until the beginning of June. That's when the heat went way up and stayed up and it was raining constantly and so the humidity went way up. So that has been a double stressor of heat and humidity causing physical stress and pouring rain causing psychological stress since I haven't been able to go outside much at all because it's been pouring buckets almost everyday. I am really dependent these days on being outdoors and so not being able to do it is extremely hard on me. I am not someone who can just lay around the house all day tapping away on a computer and reading books it just doesn't provide me with what I need. It's been like this until a little over a week ago when everything cleared out and the temperature went down to normal and actually a little bit lower than average for this time of year. Very quickly I felt a lot better. 2 days ago the heat and humidity came back and now I feel worse again and my body is very stressed. It is obviously a correlation not causation but it would be an awful huge coincidence for these things to be happening at the same time. I am very rigid in the way I live my life right now and I am conducting everything as a controlled experiment so the only thing that has changed is the weather.

 

So now I have an even more complete picture. My body is stressed from withdrawal and Recovery. On its own it does seem to be recovering. The withdrawal stress is impairing my digestion so any changes in diet cause physical stress. Add in too much physical activity and it raises my stress level even more and I start to get some symptoms but I had been recovering fairly quickly. Add in environmental stress from heat and humidity and it is too much for my body to handle and I start getting worse. The weather is going to clear out on Saturday which is only 3 days away and if I start to feel better after that then I'll definitely have my answer. I have read in multiple places on this website that people have trouble with heat and humidity while recovering so it's not terribly surprising it was just a surprise that last summer I could do the mowing and my other chores and make it but this year I couldn't but there is a huge difference in the weather between this year and last year. Thankfully this weather will be gone soon.

 

All of this tells me that I am in fact doing the right things for myself by backing down from the physical labor and getting other people to do it for a while and trying to treat the digestive stress with the enzymes and acid supplement. If these supplements work and they certainly don't seem to be hurting then in time they should do quite a lot to reduce my digestive stress while my body heals up and laying off the physical stress should do the same thing. Environmental and nervous system factors are of course out of my control and they are going to do their own thing in their own time but the other two issues I have some control over.

 

Makes sense FCM.  

[Heath]

@FeralCatman @StayHopeful

The heat. 
 

yes I’ve read and heard about it last summer here on SA that heat is an issue in withdrawal from antidepressants. I’m glad y’all brought up this topic. Last summer like you said was not hot day after day. But when I was in the sun and it was hot. I felt weak and dizzy and more anxiety. 
 

And this year 100 degrees f and high humidity day after day. And the blood thinner I’m on makes you feel hot and the Lipitor I was on made me feel hot. Temp has dropped some to about 90f feel some what better but still bad. I’m with you FCM the yard hasn’t been mowed much this year, just the way it is. 
 

Stayhopeful I’m glad you posted that because when I first changed over to lexapro about 7 months we were at a car show in July and I all but passed out and dizziness. It’s happened a few other times too. Wow now I know. So we get it from the med and we get when we taper.

 

I think this year has a lot to do with new meds. But I definitely could tell the difference when the weather got hot

Edited September 6, 2023 by Heath

[tsranga]

12 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

everything as a controlled experiment so the only thing that has changed is the weather.

 

As I mentioned to you before, weather/pressure changes continues to be my primary trigger in my 5th year of withdrawal. 

 

Fortunately, my body has better temperature tolerance and faster recovery each year, so I hope that will continue.

 

Unfortunately my gut is most affected by pressure changes and it prevents me from resting and being present when awake. This too has been improving every year and gets stuck for lesser duration each day. 

[FeralCatman]

I increased the betaine hydrochloride again today to 3/4 of the full dose and still no issues and it is definitely helping my digestion and to help my guts move things through. As it turns out the major issue I have gut wise is that I can't digest fat because my enzyme levels are too low which is partially caused by the low acid. The acid supplement should partially take care of the fat digestion and the enzyme supplement that I'll be starting in a week or so I should take care of the rest of it. I'm getting more confidence that gut wise I found the problem and now have a solution because if things are already starting to get better just by raising stomach acid levels then I'm on track and can finally feel good about things moving forward. I inadvertently tested the fat theory 3 days ago by eating a bag a vegetable chips. I know the veggies are okay however they are cooked in oil. I went back and reread the label and realized that the bag was not one serving but five which means that one bag gave me 80% of my us RDA for fat that day and that's what bound up my guts and started causing symptoms. When that blockage finally cleared out this morning all the symptoms went away and I feel fine now except for the heat problem. And looking back at my notes I realize I had unknowingly done this multiple times and yet had blamed it on other things but now that I have all this current information I can look back and know that this has been a problem for quite a while and then I have done this to myself multiple times. OOPS!!! Learning the hard way once again.

[StayHopeful]

On 9/6/2023 at 5:25 AM, FeralCatman said:

I've always had issues with the heat but never like this and this is also a known problem in protracted withdrawal even if you are off all of your medications.

Connecting the dots... around late spring 2016 I started getting really bad prickly heat anytime it got really warm out. I talked to my Dr at the time, and he said that it wasn't a big deal and that sometimes people just develop it as they age. Evidently, another side effect, that wasn't connected, no surprise🙄. Then while tapering off, for about 3 months, I was constantly drenched with sweat, no matter the temperature.  I haven't experienced either symptom since tapering, hopefully they don't come back. Makes a lot of sense now.

 

18 hours ago, Heath said:

when I first changed over to lexapro about 7 months we were at a car show in July and I all but passed out and dizziness. It’s happened a few other times too. Wow now I know. So we get it from the med and we get when we taper.

I'm glad you haven't! Due to the prickly heat, I carried a chamois, would soak it in ice water and place it around my neck when I was out in the heat. There's so much to learn and consider on this journey, it's mind boggling. Ugh 🙄

 

 

 

 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

So today it's hot as hell out so I'm cleaning house and earlier worked on a refinishing project stripping an old dresser while it was still cool enough to work outside. While the stripper was soaking in loosening the finish I went inside and worked on something else and just set a timer. When the timer went off I stopped what I was doing and went back to the dresser.   I put on another coat of stripper and set the timer and went back inside and started working on something else then when the timer went off I stopped what I was doing and went back to the dresser. It took me half the day to realize something today as I'm doing different things around the house. I can do more than one thing at a time and not get stressed all of a sudden. It feels perfectly normal and I haven't been able to do that in years without feeling stress and anxiety. So it seems my ability to multitask on a limited basis is starting to come back which is another good sign. Hopefully this continues but at this point I think it will. This is something I thought was gone for good but apparently it's not and it makes me wonder what else is going to come back.

[Catina7]

1 hour ago, FeralCatman said:

It feels perfectly normal and I haven't been able to do that in years without feeling stress and anxiety.

 

How wonderful!  It gives me hope that I can heal too.  I've felt nothing but stress and anxiety for two years straight.  

[FeralCatman]

Here are two articles I read this morning that are demonstrating an increasing understanding of the relationship between the health of your microbiome and your guts and mood and anxiety. It is being found there is a direct link and highlights the importance of your diet. This just hardens the idea in my mind that a big portion of my remaining issues have to do with diet and digestion and the health of my microbiome. As I get that working more normally everything else should follow.

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/201908/gut-bacteria-can-influence-your-mood-thoughts-and-brain

 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/gut-health-and-anxiety

[tsranga]

1 hour ago, FeralCatman said:

This just hardens the idea in my mind that a big portion of my remaining issues have to do with diet and digestion and the health of my microbiome. As I get that working more normally everything else should follow.

I would not put too much into this. While it is important to keep the gut healthy, in my experience with withdrawal, gut motility is a  much bigger issue that can affect digestion. 

 

For me, gut motility is affected by  temperature and pressure changes. I have to keep my upper abdomen/ diapghram cool either by sweating, showers or exposure to cool air. 

 

Anything you can do to keep the gut moving (peristalsis) will eventually take care of diet and digestion.  The gut brain axis starts working overtime when gut motility is poor. 

 

 

[FeralCatman]

As with everything there are multiple variables in this equation. There isn't much I can do as far as nervous system healing goes that is something that time will take care of. However having too little stomach acid which has been shown by two different tests now, one done at home and one in a lab, affects the rest of the digestive process and disrupts the signaling at a local level. Most of the digestive process is actually run locally not centrally and the first trigger is an increase of stomach acid when you eat but if the pH doesn't drop low enough it fails to trigger the rest of the process  which includes the release of digestive enzymes from your liver and your pancreas and the gut lining itself.  That's why the first step in this process is getting the stomach pH correct when I eat by taking that supplement. Tomorrow I'll be up to the full dose and the next step will then be to add the digestive enzymes so that I can start digesting fats correctly. This change in signaling locally will change the signaling in the gut brain axis closer to where it should be and will help take some of the stress out of my gut. I am already noticing a huge change in digestion as I am not getting undigested food coming through anymore. I'm also less constipated and more regular which doesn't completely solve the problem but certainly makes it easier on my system and reduces the stress level in the gut. There is no Panacea to these problems but there are certainly things that you can do to make things more comfortable while you're nervous system figures things out and reducing digestive stress is certainly one of them.

 

In my reading I have come across people who have found doing this to be incredibly helpful and then there are some people who found that it did nothing and there are also people who found that it made them worse. In my case it seems to be very helpful so far.

[FeralCatman]

The other thing for everybody to remember is that our bodies are all vastly different which is why the withdrawal experience is so varied and unpredictable. These medications all affect everybody differently and are unpredictable and the after effects are therefore also unpredictable and widely varied. What helps one person can hurt another and what hurts one person can be very helpful to another so experimentation and sometimes failure is necessary. I have experimented extensively and conduct my entire life as a controlled experiment right now so the conclusions I've come to are based on all of this experimentation and note taking. My conclusions only apply to my own body not anybody else's so some people may find what I'm doing helpful but other people may find what I'm doing to be hurtful and there really isn't any way to know until you try. So far this recent experiments with the betaine supplement is making a phenomenal positive difference so we'll see what happens with the enzyme.

[FeralCatman]

This article explains the relationship between stomach acid levels and gut motility. Reduced stomach acid levels cause a slowing down of gut motility and the experiment was conducted using acid lowering drugs and regardless of the drug used the results were pretty consistent. Lower levels of stomach acid were found to decrease gut motility.

 

https://gut.bmj.com/content/42/2/243

 

It is the stress of withdrawal that causes a shutdown of the release of stomach acid or digestion. Chronic stress is one of the primary causes of low stomach acid also known as Hypochlorhydria. Another known cause is the aging process and I am no spring chicken. Here's a link that describes this condition and its causes.

 

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23392-hypochlorhydria

 

It is the sympathetic dominance that many people in withdrawal are experiencing that causes the increased levels of stress which is the nervous system issue that will have to recover on its own but these supplements can assist the digestive process and make things more comfortable and help to heal the lining of the gut as well as ensure that I'm absorbing nutrition properly including the fat which is necessary for nervous system healing.

[FeralCatman]

I just found the following article which does a good job of describing the entire digestive process in the effects of low stomach acid on the entire process. It goes on to recommend a whole bunch of supplements to deal with different issues and I can't recommend any of those. The point of posting this isn't to recommend a treatment it's just this is a good description of what happens when you eat and digest food.

 

https://dralexrinehart.com/articles/the-domino-effect-of-stomach-acid-on-digestion-and-the-gut-microbiome/

 

 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

So I have one new symptom that has been going on for a few weeks which started towards the tail end of the worst of that last wave. I am dreaming a lot now and It's not quite like what I described before about cognitive memories of people and places flashing before my eyes. That has changed. The sudden popping up of memories from my life has almost stopped. The dreams I'm having are an odd mishmash of some people that I know but many that are complete strangers but these dreams are extremely emotional and are waking me up periodically through the night similar to a night terror but not anywhere near as bad. Years ago while on the Seroquel I had severe night terrors that were completely disconnected from anything you could possibly see in reality and were very freaky. I had described those dreams to my therapist and even drew a couple of crude pictures for her and though she is not easily shaken, even she was freaked out by those dreams. Sometimes components of those dreams would linger throughout the day. The dreams I've had lately are not freaky and disconnected from reality just very very emotional. From what I've read most of our unconscious emotions are stored in the amygdala where a lot of emotional processing takes place unconsciously. This is where anxiety can build because your amygdala can make associations emotionally with things that don't make any sense. An example of this would be going through a traumatic event in a room that had a filing cabinet in it or a teddy bear and after that event you suddenly develop a fear of filing cabinets or teddy bears which doesn't make any sense but you're amygdyla made an emotional association with those objects and they become threatening. If this is correct then what I theorize is happening now is that my amygdala is sorting through all sorts of incomplete and unresolved emotions from the last 18 years of my life and trying to put things in their place and perhaps even resolve it. It is this and my GI issues that seem to be my defining issues right now. If the amygdala is stressed trying to do all of this and has been stressed by being full of all this unresolved emotion that may in fact be the stressor that is creating issues with my guts. Since this stuff seems to be sorting itself out in my dreams this makes me feel like I really am in the last leg of this particular part of the journey and once my unconscious mind is done sorting all this crap out my body will unlock and this actually seems to be happening already. Since the worst of this last wave of symptoms subsided more and more often I am able to feel completely relaxed and content. Less and less am I feeling the urge to chase things that are external to help calm myself but instead the peace and calm seems to be transitioning to be more of an internal source of peace and calm rather than external even though the external stuff is still very helpful and in fact as this continues the external stuff is becoming even more helpful in ways that it never has been. Many long held things that created anger and anxiety seem to be melting away and now I think about those things and wonder what the hell I was doing because I realize now some of it didn't make any sense or matter. All these years I thought that I was just getting worse but now that this is happening I realize it was the drug. So much of the pain both physical and mental of the last 18 years was the drug. So assuming I'm correct about all this I actually kind of welcome this experience and even though it is still breaking up my sleep I am now consistently getting at least 7 hours per night and sometimes 8 and one night even 9 hours of sleep. One of the coaches told me that one of the best ways you can gauge your healing is by how much sleep you're able to get every night and since my sleep is still very slowly improving then that would be the best indication of my moving forward and healing above everything else. I'm very curious to see where this goes and it really does seem like this might be the last thing that my brain has to do before it really settles down so I'm very glad I did this long hold after getting off the Seroquel because if I had not done this I would have had no way to know what was being caused by the withdrawal from another drug and what was part of the healing process.

[FeralCatman]

On 9/8/2023 at 9:39 AM, tsranga said:

I would not put too much into this. While it is important to keep the gut healthy, in my experience with withdrawal, gut motility is a  much bigger issue that can affect digestion. 

 

For me, gut motility is affected by  temperature and pressure changes. I have to keep my upper abdomen/ diapghram cool either by sweating, showers or exposure to cool air. 

 

Anything you can do to keep the gut moving (peristalsis) will eventually take care of diet and digestion.  The gut brain axis starts working overtime when gut motility is poor. 

 

 

@tsranga Have you posted all of the methods you use to encourage gut motility? If not you should post them.

[BigCat]

4 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

@tsranga Have you posted all of the methods you use to encourage gut motility? If not you should post them.

Beans. 

[FeralCatman]

@BigCat Well perhaps that should be first on the list. So my only questions then would be with pork or without and out of the can or homemade? What is the  best brand? Which ones will induce motility with the least amount of flatulence or at least flatulence that doesn't smell like something dead 😋

[Heath]

@FeralCatman If you haven’t already tried.
I started using Metamucil . This years new meds caused some constipation . I had to play with amount. But it definitely solved the problem . Start low. I use the no added sugar kind and put it in Hint water every morning. 

[FeralCatman]

@Heath Thank you for the input. I already have a teaspoon and a half of psyllium fiber husk which is essentially Metamucil added to my diet daily and most of the time I'm okay but whenever I go through one of these episodes in my body gets stressed it doesn't seem to matter things just lock right up. Whenever I add too much protein or fat to my diet it seems to cause problems which is why I'm trying the betaine supplement and after that the digestive enzymes to help make it a bit easier to digest those two things and hopefully take some of the stress out of my guts while the rest of my body does its thing.

[FeralCatman]

On 9/8/2023 at 10:08 AM, FeralCatman said:

The other thing for everybody to remember is that our bodies are all vastly different which is why the withdrawal experience is so varied and unpredictable. These medications all affect everybody differently and are unpredictable and the after effects are therefore also unpredictable and widely varied. What helps one person can hurt another and what hurts one person can be very helpful to another so experimentation and sometimes failure is necessary. I have experimented extensively and conduct my entire life as a controlled experiment right now so the conclusions I've come to are based on all of this experimentation and note taking. My conclusions only apply to my own body not anybody else's so some people may find what I'm doing helpful but other people may find what I'm doing to be hurtful and there really isn't any way to know until you try. So far this recent experiments with the betaine supplement is making a phenomenal positive difference so we'll see what happens with the enzyme.

This morning I thought of something that I feel needed to be added to this statement. I think I might have posted something along these lines a while ago but it's worth repeating.

 

My immunologist is a professor and a researcher at a major medical school. He's a very honest guy and isn't afraid to say the words 'I don't know' and he doesn't discount anything. One time while talking to him I told him that I had been reading a lot of studies and that it seems like for every study that goes one direction there's a conflicting study going the other direction and it's about 50/50 so the net result ends up being nothing. It ends up being more about which study you you choose to believe. I then went on to tell him that if you ask a physicist or cosmologist how much of the universe they actually understand they will tell you about 5%, which is the amount of the universe that we can detect and measure and we see it as matter and energy. The other 95% is still theoretical. I told them that modern medicine doesn't seem any better off and that it only seems to understand about 5% of the human body and the rest is just one big guess. He laughed and said 'if that'. He also said it was a good comparison. He then went on to tell me that they are learning new things every day about all the cross talk that goes on between the nervous system and immune system and that they are so buried in data that it's going to take many years to start sorting it all out and make any sense out of it. Even things like acupuncture and other ancient forms of medicine that have been around thousands of years are based solely on observations at the macro level but there is still no real fundamental understanding of what goes on underneath. The difference is they have several thousand years of observations and trial and error to back up that what they do actually works and it certainly seems to be less harmful then modern medicine. I think modern medicine would probably do much better if they would start heavily researching these ancient methods in trying to find the basis of why what they do works and then translate that into some of the more modern treatments. So, when doing anything we really only have about 5% hard data and the other 95% is more of an educated guess based on the best information we have at the time and that part of the equation is always subject to change as new information is brought to light.

 

The reason I'm posting that is for people to understand that when I post something and I have posted quite a lot it mostly falls into the 95% best guess category. It is not to contradict anything anyone else posts here because much of the other stuff that gets posted is equally as valid and I could just as well be wrong by going with something that I post.  I choose what seems to make the most sense for what is happening in my own body and it is just my best guess based on the information I have collected about myself. There is no way I could ever really tell anybody else what to do for sure because I'm not wearing your body just as you can't tell me for sure what to do with mine because you're not wearing my body which is why we are all kind of having to figure this out on our own by taking our best guess. It kind of sucks to know that and for someone like me that has a hard time operating on faith and belief and likes to know the right answer it's a bit scary but it is also reality which on its own tends to be a bit scary so it's just learning how to deal with that and the better you're able to deal with that unknown the better you'll be able to navigate through this. Unfortunately sometimes your body will let you know you got it wrong and to try again. On the flip side as long as you're willing to take the occasional hit and keep trying eventually your body will give you the signals to tell you ' you got it right this time, good job.' So as we each find new bits of information it's good to post it because the more information we have access to, the more likely we can make the right best guess for our body and get past this craziness.