The Bottom of the Well

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I am writing a little story and hope that you can appreciate where I a coming from.

I am 53 and am a product of the hippy generation. I never took drugs that were not subscribed to me, but I did try pot and I did inhale. It just was not for me. But I feel the little story I am to tell you kind of tells the who story of why I started this website and why I have a great need to help and advise women possible. I hope you enjoy this little journey down a part of my past that I suppose had to happen.

Valium and Her Best Friend Xanax

After I had my surgical hysterectomy which was preceded by 10 surgeries for endometriosis the time came to remove all that was causing me problems. After I left the hospital and got well, I went back to work and one day while walking down the hall, I felt like I was two people. I freaked. I went home that night and was going out on a date and this weirdness came over me again but this time with a vengeance. I took a drink and just passed it off as nerves. My mind was racing and I felt really uneasy but I went on the date anyway. I cut it short saying I was not feeling well and when I got home the world seemed to END. At least the one I knew. I was shaking and crying and did not know what was going on. I kept drinking to calm myself down. The next thing that happened is that I found myself looking at the butcher knives on the kitchen counter and they terrified me horrible thoughts went through my mind. I ran out of the house and drove into my parent’s home to be safe from myself. Little did I know that was the first PANIC ATTACK that I had?

I called my doctor the next day and explained to him what happened and he told me I was depressed and should seek counseling and gave me the name of a friend SHRINK. Since they were good friends he actually got me in there that day. The doctor listened to me and then subscribed Elivil and Valiums for me. He said you will feel better in a couple of weeks and you’ll be back to your old self. Here is were I want you to really understand and read since the rest of the story is not as important at this time as the part about the Valiums

I learned to cope and I did not need anti-depressants and threw them out but kept going back to the doctor just for the Valiums. My love affair with them started. For the next 13 years they were my life. But I will add if I did not have them I may have done something really terrible to myself or someone else. In those years I never stopped seeking an answer to the insanity but most of the roads ended in despair.

I loved them, I make love while taking them, I danced with them, I worked with them, and I was the Queen of Sheba on them. Val was my best friend. I traveled all over the world with her and never did she forsake me or leave me alone not like the doctors. I was so in love with her that she was the most important thing in my life. I could and would not go anywhere without her. I never hide the fact of our close relationship to anyone in fact it was me and if someone wanted to know me they had to be friends with Val too. She kept me going. Some days I would take 5mg. on another day maybe 50mg. I suppose it depended on how fast I burnt them out of my system. At times I would mentally crash since they made me depressed but I would not give them up because they were my lifeline to the outside world and living. At least that is how I felt. At one of my visits I tested the SHRINK (who I might add was sleeping through half of my visit) I told him that I could not sleep well at night and then he prescribed Xanax to me also. I was in heaven. Now I had two friends, if one did not work I would take the other. Boy did we all have fun. I worked will taking these things and it did not seem to affect anything but other people saw it. But no one knew the hell I went through when I was not on them and since they were not in my mind or body they had no right to have opinions on my well being. Many times I used the scripts up and then I would go doctor shopping since I had to have them because if I was not on them my world would crash. I did not know what came first the chicken or the egg. But I did know that I could not exist without them. I had to find out the cause to this insanity. I was so terrified of the Panic Attacks you cannot imagine. I just told you about one instance. There were hundreds, too many to tell in this short story. So no one was going to bring me back to the Bottom of the Well unless I sanctioned it.

I went to every hospital in New York and did not tell them the real reason but just said that I did not feel well and given my complex medical history doctors tested me left and right to no avail. But Val and Xanax were always there when the negative results came in and I would take them because I was so frustrated. All I knew was that all this insanity started after my hysterectomy but it seemed no one gave credence to that. So life continued with me and my best two friends.

Finally I was put in the hospital and had brain Cat Scans done and they doctors told me that they believed that I had a brain tumor. I was so happy because now I had a reason for all this nuttiness that was going on. I told my parents this could not be better news.

I brought the x-rays up to a major hospital in New York to have them evaluated. That day just happened to be the Blizzard of 78’. My mother and brother Tommy took me there I had to find out. When I say the neurosurgeon, he just laughed and my brother and mother looked at the doctor as I had been doing and could not understand his delight.

He told me you do not have a brain tumor, your pituitary gland is swollen to try and compensate for the lack of estrogen in your body. You need to be put on hormonal therapy. We were all shocked. HORMONAL THERAPY why had no one done that before? Well I did go on it but I had so many monkeys on my back that I could not just go off the Valiums…

I continued taking them until 1984. I was in Korea with my brother Richie and I finally made the decision that I did not want to live like this anymore and poured all of them down the drain. I was 15,000 mile away from home and I poured them down the toilet bowl. I must have been nuts but I remember saying to God I cannot do this anymore there has to be a reason and I have to take control back of my life.

The detox was terrible. It started while flying home; I spend the next 6 weeks in my apartment kicking the habit I acquired from all the years of taking valiums and xanax. My brother kept checking on me. I was determined. It was just brutal. Every muscle, bone you name it in my body was in pain. That is not counting the insanity that went through my head. I had to do it. Finally after 6 weeks I felt better had anxiety but learned how to shut it down in my mind and a new life began for me. The moral to the story, don’t ever stop believing in yourself and if your body is telling you something believe it and don’t just take the doctors word for it. If my doctor had put me on hormonal therapy right after my surgery I lay you 10 to 1 odds, my longtime relationship with Valium and Xanax would never had started.

If you want to read a good book about Valiums and their affect there is a book called:

I Am Dancing As Fast As I Can the author is Barbara Gordon. It is out of print but you can get in on E-Bay or Amazon.com. If her story doesn’t wake you up nothing will.

Be happy,