☼ Martina23: Lyrica

[Pugknows]

Oh Martina! I just want to give you a hug! I had the horror picture snapshots too. And the utter despair. Every day last year I begged God to take me. I kept saying to myself, "I can't live like this anymore. But it eventually lifted. The intensity of feeling I wanted to die and the snapshots of my past and future stopped. Claire Weekes' books and CDs helped. So did Bliss Johns' books. One day, Martina, you will be up walking around in your house and realize you haven't had an ugly picture pop into your head. It will happen just like that where you suddenly realize the horror picture snapshots are just gone! It will happen soon. Your journey through this hell will be shorter than most others who are coming off multiple drugs, or are still battling the effects of meds they are still on. You are going to be okay soon. Google this: Lyrica recovery stories. They will make you feel better. (((Hugs)))

[Pugknows]

I'm not healed yet, but we will all recover and it is NOT going to take years.

[ten0275]

Martina, hey.

 

Just a quick check-in to say "hello" and to wish you comfort and healing. You are such a force of nature on this site. You have great optimism and you truly extend your heart to help others. I am sorry you are suffering. If your life is a house of cards that has fallen, then your healing will be a path to shuffling the deck and reconstructing. Pugknows is right - we will all recover. Time........

 

You have been through so very much in a very short time. It will take time for things to come around. Hang in there. Beam that optimism you have displayed so often in your own direction as well. You are patient, compassionate, and kind to everyone you talk to on this site. Show this same patient compassion to your most deserving self.

 

You'll do this. I know you will.

 

Dave

[Pugknows]

Dave, well said. Why is it so much easier to be kinder to others than to ourselves? It says a lot about a person's character (good and, at the same time unfortunate) that we take care of ourselves last.

[Martina23]

Please could someone answer me? I have a question. I continue taking 1/2 of the original dosis of Lyrica already for two months (original dose is the dose which was prescribed for the pain 1,5 year ago and which I always took). And I have the feeling that nothing changed. I do not want to updose. Is it possibile that the body does not heal anything until the drug is totally away, I mean until I am on 0,-- Lyrica and dont take any drug. Or is it healing and I should just wait and at its own time the symptoms would get less and then I can go again down with the dosis? How is it? Thank you for the answer in advance.

[btdt]

It is hard to say... 

I don't know that much about lyrica but there is a page on here some place that shows the brain has a saturation point for Ad drugs even the dose is double the brain will only take in a certain amount... when that is the case larger cuts could cause no effect at all.. I am not if that is what is happening with Lyrica or not ... 

 

and I don't know where that page is about Ads either but I know it is on here some place.  It could be that nobody knows and that is why there is not a response yet.. or maybe the person with the real answer has not showed up yet... I can't be sure ... there may be others. I don't know how long it takes lyrica to cause a reaction some research may be out there I just have not seen it. 

this is just one possibility 

peace

[Martina23]

Hello everybody,

 

Some time passed so I wanted to update on my (missing) progress.

 

Actually when I look back at these days, they are for me worse than ever. Actually the only one thing which went better is that I do not have clogged ears anymore.  The emotional symptoms I had are actually present, maybe worse than ever.

 

I try to keep at 50 mg per day, but there is so much anger in me, and each morning I am checking if it is less, and it is always only more. It is really quite a beast. I am fighting against more reinstatement, but I do not know how long more I will endure it. There are people who stopped Lyrica and got only flu and everything was ok. And I get almost life threatening problems.

 

I would rip off the head to the doctors which prescribed me it.

 

Today in the work I was so much thinking about it.

 

When I was in the Hospital, at one point I saw my children and I wanted to go home so much! And there was some stupid doctor whom I asked to let me go home at once, that I am in the hospital voluntarily. And he totally was not able to manage the situation, he refused (it was on the beginning of my stay) and when I wanted to go even in that case, they bound me there and I did not want to take their medicines, so they gave me there so many injections with something, I dont know what.

 

I am now so much afraid that something with this withdrawal goes wrong and I will get again to some hospital where they just pump me with all their medicines. I pray to god that is all is already over, it is like a bad dream.

 

Benny, my son, cries here and want to be carressed.

 

I hope everybody is ok

 

Martina

[ten0275]

martina, hey.

i saw your update. i am really sorry you are still in the thick of it. i really wish you weren't.

you have been through so much. your hospitalization must have been an intense experience for you, not only emotionally, but physically in terms of the drugs that were administered to you. in light of this, it seems that there is reason to believe that what you are feeling - intensification of symptoms to levels you perceive as worse than before - is to be some what expected, right?

i know the fear of a second hospitalization is very real. i feared it too. and i voluntarily went in a second time. it was just more of the same.

i wish i had more advice to give you, something that would help more resolutely. i think trying to take things a step at a time as much as possible is the very best you can do. a step at a time means giving young benny those hugs when he cries for them. a step at a time means labeling those terrible thoughts as terrible thoughts and refuting their power over you. when i was where you are now, it was very much a patched-together job. to live out the days, being cognizant of my wounds, and trying my best to keep from falling further. incrementally, things improved. as they will for you.

 

thank you for the update.

hang in there.

dave

[Martina23]

Dave, do you still think it goes away? Also this OCD harm stuff?

[ten0275]

martina, hey.

 

absolutely i think it will still go away. absolutely. if you didn't have the harm ocd prior to withdrawal, it is a symptom - which means that it will go.

 

the same thing happened to me during my two hospital stays as what happened to you. i was given more drugs, higher doses, all of that. and my symptoms actually got worse in the hospital. i remember walking past other patients in there and having the sensation/urge to move towards them and strike them. i literally used to walk with my hands dug deep into my pockets for fear i would act on those thoughts. i never did.

 

the harm ocd stuff started to fade the lower i got on the drugs. it started to occupy less and less of my time. now, it barely ever makes a presence. occasionally, i will read something terrible in the news and think to myself, "oh i hope this doesn't trigger an ocd thought!" but it doesn't. it's kind of a post-traumatic stress response. but even this is almost never occuring.

 

absolutely i think it will go. you just need to hang in there as best as you can. as difficult as it is, you need to try and separate what is a true risk and what is not. your brain is giving you mixed messages. mine did the same. sometime, i would percieve that i was a danger to myself or others. but as i feared this, i was able to discern that i was not. people who cause true harm have justification, where as those of us the suffer the ocd are horrified by the thoughts. it's tricky, i know.

 

i'll give you one last word here for now. i had a psychiatrist tell me this - and this was actually a psychiatrist who was somewhat benzo/AD wise and helped me actually get off the drugs after the hospital disaster. the psychiatrist said this - "lyrica (remeron in my case) (or any other antidepressant) would not cover up those thoughts if you were a risk. if you were crazy as crazy could be and out to hurt someone, lyrica would do nothing to cover that. the fact that you started feeling these withdrawal symptoms only after you had been on the lyrica and tried to quit tells you from where these thoughts are coming."

 

i found a lot of comfort in this when i was explained this.

 

hang in there, martina.

 

dave

[Pugknows]

Martina, you are going to turn a corner soon. Have you tried reducing the Lyrica a little? Just as an experiment to see if the amount you are taking now is too much for you? Just a thought. It could make you feel worse, but you never know.

[Pugknows]

My problem is I always feel the same: lousy. But when I look at my original symptoms list, I've gone from 16 symptoms to 5, and the 5 I still have are all related to one WD Symptom: Anxiety. That's how I try to look at this process and not get myself entrenched in it.

[Pugknows]

(((Hugs))) Hang in there. Try something different to shake the cycle. Or just hold on and wait for time to heal your nerves.

[Pugknows]

I have heart palps, whooshing in my head in synch with the heart palps. I'm going to form a rock band called the Heart Palps if I can be the drummer. Want to join my band?

[Martina23]

Hi Pug, your message is funny. I imagined you as a drummer. You are almost so funny as Indigoearthling when she was worrying about contaminated towels. She did not write in the last time, I am wondering what is with her. I was thinking about how Dave meant I should learn to realize which things are risky and which not. This is so hard to say if I am dangerous or not. I would not intentionally hurt anyone. But I know that somethimes there are come such waves of all these negative energys and the only one which holds them is this rational mind. And if the turn does not come soon I am only worrying if this negative energy once would not be more like this rational mind. I will try to continue, in the worst case someone has to be here always with me for a while for example my mother, even when she is not very easy.

PS. I had it also in the hospital, these kind of thoughts towards other people, but mine were even more brutal ...

[Pugknows]

After reading what happened to you in the hospital, those people were lucky you were just having Wd thoughts. They deserved much worse. You are saner and kinder than they deserved. That's how I know this is all WD related. It's not your nature to do something bad. Have you considered dropping your dose a little bit to see what happens? If not, you are still healing every day and the Lyrica is not preventing your recovery. It is working with your body/brain to find a new "normal."

[Martina23]

I will still continue in this dose until end of the package and than I will drop. How much should I drop? 10 percent.

[Martina23]

?

[ten0275]

Martina, hey.

 

I personally think your dosing question would be best answered by a moderator. 5 to 10% does seem to be the standard operating procedure. It is hard to advise because you are suffering hard on it, but you were suffering hard off it. Whatever you choose, the community here will offer support, I know you know. Just be cautious in any changes you choose to make.

 

Wish I could better answer your question. Hang in there.

 

Dave

[Martina23]

Oh my God, the whole my head burns like if I had a lime in it. Now I went for dinner and by this stand where I wanted to buy baked cheese I got so terrible thoughts, I mean, I dont know what would be with me. We split with my au-pair, so I will be with my children alone. Sometimes I feel, I should go to arrest myself and wait there until is everything over. I think I dont have the power to handle this. But I also dont have the power to give up. God give me mercy.

[Pugknows]

So sorry you are suffering like this, Martina. ((hugs)) You are anxious, and rightly so, but it's the anxiety that's ramping up your symptoms. Try to sit quietly for awhile, maybe take an Epsom Salts bath, if you can. I know you have your children and that may be difficult. Can anyone come over and stay with you? You're going to be okay. Just breathe deeply. The anxiety will pass.

[Martina23]

Hi Pug, that was so nice that you wrote me!!! You cannot imagine the horror of what I am going through! Everywhere either really brutal ideas pop into my head or I am afraid of such ideas and the rest of the time I am praying that I wouldnot do anything stupid. I am afraid that this will stay until the rest of my life like this. I do not know, I would the most like to move somewhere to the desert where there are no people at all. But I can not do this with the children. It would be in one way irresponsible because most probably I would not get there work and I am sure also that everybody would start to shout that these are not conditions for the children. I feel so trapped! I mean I love my children but this is something what is hard to endure and I do not know how it will end. And my mother, for some time she would take care, if I give her enough money also for someone who would help her, but she is the type who would immediately start to criticize me that I the "adult people have already to know how to solve their problems." And that I am old enough. Sorry that I wrote it everything to you, but this situation is for me very difficult to manage.

[Pugknows]

I completely understand. I'm going through the same emotions that you are now. Every day is exactly the same. Luckily, around 6pm I get some relief. Do your symptoms follow a daily pattern? Are there symptoms that have decreased in intensity, or gone away? I review my original symptoms list when I feel like this will never end and look at how much improved I am from 3 months ago. Can you walk to the park with your children and just sit and watch them play? I know this is so hard.

[Martina23]

After my work I think we will go to the park. Symptoms which decreased in intensity: mhmm .... What decreased is that I am not worrying anymore that I go schizophrenic or that I will get psychotic. This is over. But these negative emotions they go only more and more.  I mean, how can they give you such medicaments which makes so much harm. I want to be happy like before and go with children for holidays for example to Tunesia or Italy, but now I can not consider it possible. I do not have so much patience now, they are both 2 years old (twins) and both want attention, mostly start to quarell with each other and now I get so early angry, I am afraid I would not be able to stay cool and enjoy the holiday. But at the same time I dont want to take other medicine to fight withdrawal symptoms as then I would never be able to go down from these poisons. And by you which symptoms went already away? Do you also have this feeling that you are almost in rage all the time? Or it is only be me? As inner tension.

[Pugknows]

My children are grown with families of their own. It's understandable that rage is your dominant symptom because looking after twin 2 year olds is challenging for any mother, let alone one whose nerves are sensitized. The symptoms that were intense during acute wd, but are now either gone or rare for me: nausea, brain fog, plugged ears, back pain, breathlessness, no appetite, drunk/drugged feeling, unsteady gait, constipation, dizziness, gastro distress. What I'm still left with: Fatigue, anxiety, depression,insomnia, off circadian cycle and head whooshing that's in synch with my heartbeat.

[Martina23]

Hallo everyone,

 

as always, I have one question.

 

I try to go forward with the steady amount of Lyrica (always these 50 % of my previous dose). Sometimes I had the feeling I am already reaching turning point, and then I am hit with the same symptoms, which I already thought they disappeared. Can it be that with all other antidepressants the people heal at a time and Lyrica is the only one which makes irreversible damage? I also want to ask, every morning when I get up, it is not like before. I have always such a feeling of darkness, that something does not fit, something like there is no need to go on. Just to give it up. Is this feeling of darkness normal or only I have it. Does it ever go away or I will stay like this forever? I am not feeling like me at all.

 

I am sorry, I wanted already to write something positive, but whenever I think I am going out of it, it turns again and I have a feeling that it is worse thatn before.

 

Please, please, someone answer me

[Pugknows]

((((Martina)))) I'm in WD after CT off one drug that's the same as yours. Look how much better you have felt lately. You thought you may have turned a corner! That's HUGE! Okay, so the darkness may have returned a bit. That's okay. You are healing! I'll bet, if you think about it, the darkness isn't as intense as it used to be. You do NOT have irreversible damage. You will recover. You thought you were almost healed. Hold onto that. Your WD hell is almost over!

[Pugknows]

Even people who have never taken a psych drug have bad mood days. It's just part of normal life. Our experiences with bad days are more pronounced because our nerves have been sensitized.

[Pugknows]

Do your best to observe how you feel, rather than feed into it with anxiety. It just makes you feel worse.

[Pugknows]

Take a look at your symptoms and their severity right now. Try to remember how bad you used to feel. You had to go to the ER! See how much better you are doing? Now post how much better it is than it used to be.

[Martina23]

Hi Pug, you are wonderful. But you do not understand. On the beginning I had homicidal urges and I thought they were already over. And today I got them again. And the darkness is there from the beginning. Maybe I could already sing in your band: Hello darkness, my friend... But it is not funny. It is actually very sad. I do not feel like me at all. I do not know if this will lift, I hope so, because in other case, it would be a very sad life.

[Pugknows]

I've been feeling the EXACT same way you are. I'm full of despair and sick and tired of this daily relentless fight. I'm at the end of my rope. Full of anxiety and depression. Thinking I should maybe take meds to have some quality of life. But what? There is no magic pill! I'm 61 years old and just want the years I have left on this earth to be peaceful. I understand how you feel, Martina. I really do.

[Martina23]

Pug, so then what will we do? There is always a pill, it is just I want to believe that we can live happily also without. When these homicidal thoughts/urges come, it is killing me, I come me as a monster. Maybe someone who went already through it, should tell us if it comes back like before or if it stays "brrrr". Now on the other way. There is a ZOO shop near my work and they have there such little pet rabbits. I am thinking to buy two for my 2 year old children, but I do not know if it is a good idea, I dont want that the children are torturing them, but they look so cute. And now I would like to have more life in the apartment, maybe then I would forget my own troubles. What do you think? Is it a stupid idea?

[Pugknows]

I probably would wait on the pet rabbit. Too much added stress. Adding some pretty things to the house is a good idea.

[Martina23]

Today I went to a psychiatrist whom I got recommended from the hospital. I do not trust her,  but I chose to go to show  my will to treatment, because than I know they will "let me be" and I do not need to worry that they would take me children away.

 

I always come from these psychiatrists so unsure what is right. This one asked me what do I think is a problem by me and I said that I think this is a withdrawal from Lyrica and that there are so many people to have problem to come down from antidepressants and benzodiazepins. She then said this is not the same, because the Lyrica is antiepilepticum and there are no such withdrawals. But what I read everywhere there are similar withdrawals from Lyrica or Gabapentin like from benzodiazepins or antidepressants. I got again confused as I really before I was ok in my head and I really think this everything came after I quit Lyrica and this can not be coincidence. I am so confused. My children are for one week by my mother, so I am alone at home tidying up.

 

I really really pray that this goes away and that we are again so happy with the children like before. I told myself when I am healthy we will also go with the children to New York. Even if I think this would bring something (memories) only to me, for the children they are still too young. I think, I will even stay in the same hotel  like before. I think this would tear me apart. There were such nice houses there with these stairs outside. Such houses I have never seen in Europe. It would interest me if they are really used. I think maybe it is not good to think about so much about if my problems get better, it is better to dream about something nice what might come in the future. I think now when I was thinking about New York, I am going to watch Breakfast at Tiffanies, maybe I will feel better. 

[ten0275]

Martina,

 

Your symptoms came with the cessation of the medication. And you didn't experience them prior to the medication. It is withdrawal. And it will go.

 

Breathe in: "If it came with withdrawal,"

Breathe out: "It will go with withdrawal."

Breathe in: "If it came with withdrawal,"

Breathe out: "It will go with withdrawal."

Breathe in: "If it came with withdrawal,"

Breathe out: "It will go with withdrawal."

 

Breakfast at Tiffany's - GREAT choice

 

Hang in there...

 

Dave