detox

“I hope I can stay clean,” he said.

“But the thing about me – is I’ve got this built in forgetter.”

I’ll never forget when a guy called James said this in one of my first meetings at NA.

(FYI: James looks zero percent this.
But supplemental pop culture visuals are one hundred percent fun.)

It resonated ’cause it’s so true. When the cravings become strong enough, the memories of all the awful parts prior to parting ways with our choice poison are simple to misremember. It happens to the best of us. Why can’t I use? Why shouldn’t I? Was it really that bad? Would it be better this time? Can I manage it?

For me though, my reminder doesn’t come in the form of how bad using was.

Don’t get me wrong. I was whoever it is satan fears during active addiction. But as far as keep-clean motivators go, all my bad decisions and pain inflicted upon others pales in comparison to my breakup with a bottle of those little green discs dubbed “Valium”. No. It wasn’t about using. It was about the nightmare of quitting. See, for some, it’s necessary to take an ex-dependency one day at a time. And, like those folk, I do that with a heap of other things. Not with benzos. If I’m ever having doubts about remaining free of those pharmaceuticals – there’s literally zero better deterrent than recalling detox. Mentally revisiting even for a moment just how awful the wean from benzodiazepines was, is simultaneously the most horrifying and beautiful alarm to jar my fixated brain away from the craving. The anxiety was exponentially worse than the anxiety inspiring my initial clinic visit in the first place.

(Fitting that these pills have a V that looks like a heart shaped hole.
’cause a heart shaped hole’s exactly all I had left in my chest for months while detoxing.)

And that’s precisely what came to mind last night as I was sifting through my Facebook feed and found one of Vice’s valium articles. Though the author was anonymous, I couldn’t help but nod along while reading all the symptoms he described about the pain of withdrawing from this drug. I also couldn’t help but ultimately comment-contribute my own two cents about the nonsense that is this over prescription epidemic with benzos. Having been on it for the better part of half a decade myself, I can vouch for at least two things. The first? While you’re actually taking Valium – yes – it’s transcendent, full body beauty and relief from the grief your brain gives you by the minute. Especially if nonstop anxiety is your default setting, as it was mine. Nothing can compare. Likewise, however, nothing can compare to the eviscerating, thoroughgoing torture from your flesh to your soul that you’re in for when you inevitably have to nix your pharmaceutical fix. As I shared with Vice earlier:

Valium detox is a chronic, protracted, somatic and psychological excursion into hell’s Stygian cellar. Sweats and breathlessness. Hypersensitive skin. Tremors. Perpetual panic. Delusions and hallucinations. The thought that your thoughts can be detected by others. The sense you’ve been disembodied – disconnected from friends, family, the world. Strangers seem terrifying. Everyone is here to hurt you – you’re sure of it. The world takes on a cold and distant filter. And then, just when you think you’re doing better, that rebound drop comes for you, punting you off a mental precipice and into an abyss of absolute, abject hopelessness.

I regret very few choices in my life.

Accepting a benzo script from my doctor is among them.

In the end, however, regret serves nothing unless it inspires permanently changed behavior. And that’s exactly why I’m actually thankful Valium detox was such extensive hell. That sounds like hippie lip service, but it’s actually the opposite. Because, with opiate withdrawal (which I also endured), the experience – while terrible – lasts briefly enough to let that “built in forgetter” James talked about in my first meeting kick in. Kicking an addiction that takes months (versus a week or so) of marrow deep torture to detox from, though?

You never forget that shiz.

Trust me, loves.

The world of hurt the follows benzo dependency is not worth the fleeting reprieve it imparts.