gift

Benzos have really been a gift to me because tapering off this thing has forced me to actually deal with and overcome my anxiety, depression and rumination. For a while, after I started to get serious about tapering (nearly 2 years ago) I started to drink as a way of dealing with how difficult the taper was. That led to a level of dependence on alcohol that was life threatening. That lasted about 6 months. Then on 15 March 2022 I went in for detox. It saved my life. 

That experience was really good as well. I will never drink again, because to drink is death. I'm not even tempted because I see it for what it is. At least for me. Other people can drink. But for me, it's death. So, yeah, that's really something good to learn. It's good to not crave drinking at all because I know what it's like to be enslaved to it...to be enslaved to it when it didn't seem like a life-threatening problem, and then to be enslaved to it when it was literally killing me, but I was totally dependent on it. To walk outside my house, to have a shower, to talk to someone on the phone, to do anything, I had to drink. I also know that there's no such thing as 1 drink for me. I made that mistake before as well. Around - I think - 10 years ago, I stopped drinking, and I lasted for a couple of years. Then, one evening, someone was encouraging me to have a drink, and I thought, I can have a few drinks....that's OK. But it wasn't. Having crossed that line, I did so again and again and I was hooked again. I didn't stop until when I stopped last year. So, I have those two lessons. I know how hellishly bad it can get, and I know that even one drink puts me on that path. 

The change in me that I'm bringing about to get through this taper and the withdrawal that will come after I take my last dose, is very much my achievement and God's achievement. Maybe I won't make it. I really don't know. But I'm trying, and it's a worthwhile endeavor. 

I've lost a lot of people in the last few years. But I think that all of those people knew the old me anyway. It's fitting that those relationships broke down or that those people stopped wanting to be friends with me or don't really care or understand me, because I don't want to be and I'm not that person any more. I believe in the new life that is growing in me. 

I like this quote that I saw on Pinterest: Level up so hard that people will have to meet you and get to know you again. 

I'm a work in progress and I feel pretty weak, but weakness is not an obstacle to strength. Weakness helps strength to grow, because if you're weak, but you keep going anyway - day after day, you achieve your daily goals, or try to - you grow. That's the only way to attain true strength. If it comes naturally or easily, that's not real strength. Like it says in the Bible: 'suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.' (Romans 5:3 - 4)