In May of 2008, I sat in a Boston hotel room, lounging on my King sized bed with its navy blue, pinstriped duvet. A bright red chair sat near the window. Everything was neat and clean and there was an unbelievable expanse of floor. I was eight months pregnant with my first child and I was at the Neiman Conference on Narrative Journalism. The world felt alive and bright and full of possibility. I was in heaven.
That first morning, I walked to what looked like a mile-long conference room. Anne Hull and Dana Priest, journalists from the Washington Post, were giving a talk about how they broke the story on the horrid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I don’t know if you remember the stories, but Hull and Priest received a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the unjust treatment of wounded Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. The men, she said were “afloat on a river of painkillers and antipsychotic drugs.” Each morning, they were expected to rise at dawn for formation, though most of them were snowed under by benzodiazepines, opiates, alcohol – anything that would push Iraq and the pain away. The work of these journalists evoked a national outcry. Light was shed and reforms were made.
Hull told us that she broke the story by standing outside Mologne House, a four-story hotel behind the hospital that became a holding tank for hundreds of wounded soldiers.
She’d hang out near the magnolia tree that was the spot for smoke breaks. All the soldiers smoked there. All day long, men came on two legs or one or none. Hull kept packs of cigarettes in her jacket and when someone came out for a smoke break, she’d offer them one.
They’d smoke.
She’d smoke.
They’d talk. It was simple.
Soon, she was inside, being shown around. After four months of getting to know many of the soldiers at Walter Reed, Hull started writing. The neglect was profound. PTSD was rampant, as were suicides and overdoses because of the abundance of medication and alcohol. Hull and Priest exposed the needless suffering of these wounded soldiers –men who could barely speak they were so fogged in with medication and despair. These journalists threw open the doors and let the light in for the world to see. They talked to the men and wrote with brutal honesty. By doing so, they changed things.
What I didn’t know at the time was that just a year later I too would be snowed under and would fight an invisible war of my own. I was a young journalist and poet and I’d never taken more than a few Ibuprofen in my life. But, after the birth of my son, I became pregnant again. A hormonal tsunami hit and I stopped sleeping. Completely. After a few weeks I was hallucinating. The world was an agony I could barely tolerate. I walked to the grocery store because I didn’t dare drive. I sobbed in the bathroom because my arms and head burned as if I was buried under steroidal bees. My worried nurse midwife put me on Ambien CR, which I took every night for the duration of my pregnancy. I began getting four to five hours of sleep a night and still, I’d often break through the pharmaceutical haze to wander the house half-cocked and ready to bolt from this world.
I cold turkeyed the Ambien CR when my daughter was born. I’d never been told that this was a bad idea. With Ambien’s close relation to benzodiazepines, I was at risk for seizure. This, I didn’t know until much later. And the withdrawal was so tinged with caring for a new baby that I simply attributed the continued insomnia, muscle spasms and despair to mama fatigue. I plowed through the snow. Three months after my daughter was born, I went to see a new doctor. I was given a new prescription, to be taken nightly for as long as I needed. By July of 2009, I was up to 6mg Ativan nightly. I was snowed under. Six months later, I’d lost twenty pounds and was falling regularly – in the kitchen, down the stairs. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t read. My children would hold their arms to be held and at times I couldn’t pick them up. It wasn’t until months later, deep in withdrawal tolerance that I realized my slide into disability was caused by the drugs.
I spent the entirety of 2012 withdrawing. It felt like being dragged into Persephone’s underworld. Muscle spasms gripped me at night like the jaws of a pit bull. I lost more weight. Electric shocks would hit, stealing my breath. Despair was a deep well and I was in it. It went like this for months and months. It seemed interminable.
And now, over a year later, I am out. The benzodiazepine death camp feels like a horrific dream. I think often of Hull and Priest and how they saved some of the men at Walter Reed from being medicated into oblivion. I think of social justice and of the innumerable people who are still snowed under. Many have written to tell me their stories and to ask if I’ve made it out, if I can hold my children. My answer is yes, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to keep these stories close and try to throw the door open to let the world see.
As soon as I could write I began Dear Little Fish, the book that is, for me, a call for social justice. I nearly lost my life to these drugs. Many still struggle. I’m writing my book to throw open the doors. Like Hull and Priest, I want to expose the profound injustice that’s a dark shadow of our medical system. These drugs are not benign. These drugs do not relieve suffering if used long term. These drugs are a Faustian bargain and we are losing a generation of people in the deal.
I am writing my book as a long arm to reach those who are still in the benzo death camp. I’m writing it for those who are outside looking in. I’m writing it for those who don’t even know it exists. In the spirit of Hull and Priest, I’m writing to say, Look, goddamnit, look at this suffering. We have to do something. We can’t turn away.
* * * * *
The Kickstarter campaign for Melissa Bond’s forthcoming book,
“Dear Little Fish,” will go live on October 28th, 2014.
Melissa thanks for writing this. I am so glad that you are free, of medication.
Your story is an inspiration, to many, who are trapped just like you were. And many more who need hope to get free.
These drugs are very dangerous medications, given out like Candy by psychiatrists and a medical and insurance system that really doesn’t care, if you live or die.
Please don’t stop writing about this, please don’t stop bringing this information to the public. You will save many lives, and many people from the hell you once experienced.
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Thanks so very much. And I don’t imagine that I can stop writing about this. It was truly a death camp and having been there makes me want to do everything I can to help those that are still there. Breaks my heart and shows me how little our medical establishment knows about what their golden drugs are actually doing to our bodies. Feels like we’re guinea pigs of a sort. Dispensable, medicated, neutralized.
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I started weeping when I read this. My FIFTH year of withdrawal (I was cold-turkey’ed) starts in October. Some days, I don’t know how to go on. I want most to heal. Second most, I want them to stop doing this to innocent unsuspecting victims. Thank you for writing a book. I just want people to care about this because it’s so, so wrong and inhumane. I look forward to reading it, as I have enjoying reading all of your blog entries here on Mad in America. Thank you for continuing to fight for those of us still in the death camp. I can only hope to join you on the other side one day.
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enjoyed*
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Five years.
That blows my mind. I think I had a year of w/d tolerance and then a year of actual w/d and the losses were heavy.
Thank you for hanging in there. Your story is as important as mine. Your life, your health.
Be as gentle to yourself as you can. This is very much like a war. It’s internal and the enemy feels invisible. Once you’re there, you’re in deep and there’s no way out but through.
You inspire. And yes, I’ll keep writing. How can I leave the death camp and not speak for those who are still there?
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*Real* hope for vets suffering from post-traumatic stress:
http://discoverandrecover.wordpress.com/military-and-veterans/
Best,
Duane
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Thank you for this; me, too…9 1/2 months out from my last little itty bit of Klonopin. Who knew?
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9 1/2 months. Amazing, amazing, amazing!!
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My son didn’t make it out.Fell victim to suicide Nov.1 2013.Thank you for what you do.I promised my son I would continue to tell his story.He hoped something could be learned from his painful and tragic death.
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Putteshoe –
My deepest condolences. There are so many who’ve been lost the same way. I’ve felt awkward using the war metaphor but it seems fitting. Only those who’ve been there know how savage it is. And the losses are tremendous and, worst of all, silent.
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I’m so so sorry, putteshoe-how many are lost? Pretty sure I would not be here if not for the internet and the support I’ve found online.
How sad it that…it is truly hell on earth. No one who hasn’t experienced it can fathom it.
If I live thru this, if I make it to the other side, I’m going to make a lot of noise.
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It reminds me of a thalidomide story…
Btw, benzos have one more hideous side effect which is inducing anterograde amnesia. You stop making new memories and turn into a functional equivalent of Henry Molaison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison
Of course the psychiatrists will tell you this can’t happen and usually they won’t even notice.
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Either that or psychiatrists will label you as paranoid for not blindly doing what your told.
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Oh mercy, anterograde amnesia!! The one and only reason I’ve been able to put my story together is because I journaled whenever I could. It was my saving grace and helped me see that I wasn’t going crazy. If not for that, 2010 and most of 2011 would have been a near white out for me! My grandmother died that year and I barely remember it. My daughter was 2, my son 3 and I have no memories of that time. Heartbreaking.
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Yeah but the head of the psychiatric unit that packed me full of benzos told me “benzodiazepines don’t cause amnesia” and when I challenged here to please go to the computer and type it in pubmed she quickly changed to “but only in very high doses which we never prescribe”. I don’t know if she’s a such a moron (I doubt) or is she only covering her ass and acting like a sociopathic keg in a machine denying any wrongdoing ever.
Btw, the place is Otto Wagner Spital in Vienna and the lovely lady in charge is Margit Wrobel and her staff. So that people know whom to avoid at all cost.
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Btw, I really feel for you. My amnesia only covered like 4 days from which I remember only short snippets here and there and it has been the worst experience of my life, even worse than what they did to me just before drugging. I can’t even imagine how it must feel to lose months and years of one’s life.
The best we can do is to spread the news and make sure that everyone who decides to take benzos knows what can happen.
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I also am a survivor of this hellish experience. Words cannot express the darkness that one endures from these drugs. This is a disgusting, horrific, and tragic thing that is happening in our world with little public awareness. We need people to be writing and speaking if things are going to change. Please let me know if i can help in any way. I would be willing to tell my story. Thank you, thank you, thank you! May you light the way for all of us and save some of our children from enduring such agony.
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Oh Healing! Yes, yes, yes – a thousand yeses! Please send me your story. And, in terms of supporting my story getting out there, please know that I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign to help me financially in the final stages of writing the book. It’s called Dear Little Fish and it’ll launch on the Kickstarter website October 28th. Send it to everyone you know.
The whole experience held more losses for me than I can count: my memory, my marriage, the movement of my career.
So yes, the more voices the better. The more I can be a voice for many the better!
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Dear Melissa,
Thank you, for not only spreading awareness on what destructive power’s these drug’s have but for also giving me hope that I can continue my flight for wellness. Almost 4 month’s off and ìts been nothing short of a living hell. Each day in purgatory for month’s is not for the faint hearted! Ironically it was my faint heart that brought me to the benzo gates of hell.
Keep shouting hun.
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Hurtsobad –
I will keep shouting. It’s incredible to me still how few people understand what a living hell benzo w/d and tolerance w/d can be.
Hang in there. Take the long view and be gentle, gentle, gentle with yourself.
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Dear Melissa,
Thank you for your post and I look forward to reading your book – I applaud you in your mission to take this issue to a wider audience. I am a medic/oncologist and I am deeply ashamed to report that I only became aware of the issue of benzodiazepine withdrawal when my mother became embroiled in a benzo detox nightmare this year. Approximately one month after a botched rapid withdrawal program supervised by an ‘addiction specialist’ (who was deeply unsympathetic to her suffering and blamed her symptoms on ‘anxiety’), she took her own life. She was not depressed – her emails to benzobuddies are testimony to to her desperate struggle to survive against the onslaught of pain and emotional lability she was battling. I am appalled that the medical community continues to dish out these drugs indiscriminately and then barely acknowledges the difficulties of withdrawal – let alone offers any support. And the aftermath is torture for a family like mine. Please continue your fight and to spread the word. Best wishes, F
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My deepest sympathy F.
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Oh, F – My heart goes out to you. I’m so very sorry for your loss.
And you are not alone in being a medical professional who is unaware of this horror. Shame will only add to your suffering. And “addiction specialist” is a flaccid term. I had one tell me that I was “obsessed” with my detox and that she’d never heard of w/d symptoms like mine. I later discovered that she took a few classes to get her “specialist” certificate.
Please also know that my long term plan is to publish the book and then speak to medical professionals about this tragedy. Send me your story if you will. I don’t know if they’ll listen, but I’m going to do everything I can to be heard.
All best to you and your family.
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I am sorry about your loss.
Most so called addiction-ologists. Know very little about drugs, especially street drugs, its sad but true. They just go by what the PDR, or Merck manual says. If its not in there, they don’t know about it.. Having worked as a director of a Detox facility, without a medical degree, I have seen first hand the difficulties that doctors have with these drugs. They don’t give enough time for withdrawal symptoms to subside. And its not unusual for users to come back, to the hospital days after they were thought to be finished, in acute withdrawal… This is something they aren’t usually aware of…
Currently there are problems with Xanax, and seizures. Even small prescriptions for this drug can be dangerous, due to what appears to be a lowering of the seizure thresh hold. Anyone remember, Halcyon? Their chemically related.
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Its my understanding that Benzodiazpenes were initially derived from Barbiturates.
Barbiturates, as a class of drugs have a unique problem with duel tolerance , in that the tolerance to the respiratory suppressant effects of the drug, develops at a different rate than the tolerance to the sedative effects of the drug. In other words. people using the drug developed a tolerance to sedative effects, while not developing a sufficient tolerance to the respiratory effects. The result was that eventually the dose that they had to take to get high was the one that killed them due to respiratory failure.
Benzodiazepines, were supposed to fix that problem… Unfortunately all Benzo’s seem to create problems with seizures, probably because of their lowering the seizure threshold. Probably by creating some sort of parasympathetic excess…
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It’s so hard to believe-I can’t believe this is happening…how to change the dream?
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If instead of drug technicians we had genuine doctors, but then beggars would be driving Mercedes. If the FDA were really what it claims to be, these pharmaceuticals would all be Schedule 1: “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
Imagine if we had medical schools where persons could learn about human bodies and what to do if they became ill . . . but then we would be imagining a world without corporations. The world is currently set up to ensure the health and well being of corporations. Just look how big and strong they are.
You would have been far better off talking LSD a few times. Or eating magic mushrooms.
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Thanks for your “attitude,” Melissa.
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Thank you Melissa!
Finally, someone who is telling it like it is. I’m ecstatic that I found your blog. I’m in the midst of tapering off this toxic poison. I knew I was losing it after two years of taking Xanax during the day and Temazepam at night. I started taking these meds for insomnia and anxiety while working 60 hours per week while taking care of my ailing sister for a year. She eventually succumbed to cancer last November at age 46. At first the pills worked great. But within 3 months I was coming apart, and I had to continue to function at a high level due to the responsibilities that I had. Force of will! I thought the symptoms I was having were due to stress (and some of them were). Following the tragic death of my sister I kept taking the meds for another 9 months while ending a marriage to an abusive psychopath who cheated on me while I was caring for my sister.
Before taking these pills I was healthy, athletic, strong, and my friends jokingly called me “Mr. Excitement” because of my passion for life, my fun personality, my career accomplishments and my determination and spirit. After 1 year and 9 months on these meds, I could barely think straight, I was having serious memory loss, I could hardly walk, my vision was blurry, and I was having horrible non-stop heartburn and acid reflux. My right foot felt like it was broken and I hadn’t done anything to break it. The sole of the same foot did and does feel like it’s burned, but it’s not. I have arthritis like feeling in my joints. I completely switched to an organic gluten free diet, I cut out chocolate, sugar, alcohol, fried food, all processed food, added $100’s of dollars of top quality vitamins to my diet, switched to alkaline water, got massage and spa treatments, started an exercise program, prayed like crazy…. and all of my symptoms GOT WORSE BECAUSE I WAS STILL TAKING THIS POISON!!
That’s when I realized it was the drugs that were making me sick. So I made the decision to taper off three months ago. My doctor would have written me scripts forever. These drugs are evil and the companies that manufacture them are evil as well. And I don’t loosely label something or someone as evil. The doctors that prescribe them long term are simply ignoramuses. The medical industry IS the disease not the cure.
Benzo’s attack your organs, muscles, and nervous system in a very serious way. You’re better off drinking and smoking weed if you can’t sleep or have anxiety. You would literally be better off regardless of how much and how often you drank or smoked. Not that I’m an advocate of heaving drinking or heavy smoking, but I’m stating a true point of fact learned though experience .
My doctor is and has been fighting me on the Ashton Method of tapering. She would not switch me to Valium (which as you know has a longer half life), even after I gave her all the education materials and a withdrawal management chart. So I just stocked up on what she was willing to prescribe and started chopping pills to taper. I’m down to 1 mg Xanax per day from having taken 4-6mg Xanax per day and 60 -80 mg per night of Temazapan depending on how sleep deprived I was. I figured it was time to taper off when the drugs were not only making me physically sick and mentally exhausted, but were also increasing my anxiety and insomnia. The last 10 days I’ve been feeling the withdrawal symptoms hardcore. I lost 25 pounds in 6 months before deciding to taper off and another 5 lbs since beginning tapering. Fortunately I’m 6’6″ and was a bit over weight at 260 lbs, so I actually look fit. But I’ve had to force myself to eat extra because the weight kept dropping. I went to the emergency room twice in the last 3 days thinking I had a blot clot in my leg, tetanus, a hiatal hernia, and a heart problem, all the while suspecting it was withdrawal symptoms from the Benzo’s. The clean bill of health that I received from the hospital today after thousands of dollars worth of tests convinced me… it’s the benzo’s. This is withdrawal and welcome to it! I’m probably tapering a little too fast, but I’m so pissed off that the anger and striving to kick benzo’s in the arse is driving me, and I WILL WIN!
Your story has allayed my fears and strengthened my resolve.
I’ll be done with these poison pills in 60 days tops, and I’m sure I’ll have symptoms for awhile. But I’m looking forward to contributing what I can to your book drive and to sounding the alarm about this menace. May you and your family be blessed.
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