Hello good humans -

Well, it’s almost a month into a nervous breakdown for me, which has seen me completely unable to work, most says unable to leave the house, and some days unable to eat anything or sleep. 

I had a bad reaction to trying an SSRI pill (Celexa 40mg, which I’d been on previously a few years ago and quit fine), which caused a massive panic attack that instead of my normal attacks (I’ve had panic disorder for my whole adult life, more than 20 years) lasted days on end, just starting and re-starting. That of course led me to take my ‘as needed’ prescribed benzo (been prescribed .5mg of Klonopin for the past month, have previously had a script for that a few years ago as well and barely ever touched it until this month) just a bit whenever it got too incredibly bad, but still, that’s got me freaked out that now my body’s hooked on that as well, as I stopped completely 4 days ago and these terrible anxiety surges haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, after a relatively ‘good’ day in all of this yesterday, I’m back hiding in a room, pacing back and forth from all the emotional and physical pain and unable to eat, shower, etc. 

So, needless to say, I’m scared. More scared of this than I’ve ever been of just about anything in my whole life, and I don’t really know where to turn or how I’m going to make it. My psychiatrist just said ‘well, just take a smaller dose’, but that sounds like ridiculously bad advice given what’s happened since last time, benzo recovery sites say I’m basically screwed and I can choose to reinstate the drug at a tiny bit to see if I stabilize but it might make me worse, and antidepressant survivor sites say stay off of everything, or again try a little bit of the AD and see, but I am horrified. 

And so here I am, unsure of anything except that my nervous system is currently scared of everything but my next breath. 

Send me some hope, y’all. Have you ever had a nervous breakdown like this? What was your low with your own struggles? It’s just hard to tell what is my preexisting terrible anxiety disorder / part-time agoraphobic fear doing this to me and what is (or may be) chemically-induced due to all the horror stories I’ve seen.

Show me I’m not alone. Advice welcomed, personal anecdotes much appreciated. Thank God I’m not suicidal and I don’t know if I’d ever be (never have been before), but I would be lying if I said there haven’t been times in the past few weeks in which I told the universe it would alright by me if I didn’t wake up. 

Thanks for your time, all. ❤️