@BethRags and @FluffyDinosaur:

Yeah, Beth, i guess it's just natural to project your inner experience onto the whole world. Yeah, meditation is helpful. I am too unwell to do it at the moment but when i've done it in the past when i was reading "Full Catastrophe Living" i enjoyed it. It's scary thinking of the end of the world tho. My last step off Valium will be at 0.5mg so it's not so huge and my doctor and i are mindful of the end of the taper becoming so f_ck!ing hard. He's approved my pause here at 1mg. He says a benzo taper is more of a marathon than a sprint and that i'm doing well with it, i've gotten so low in the taper i am almost done. I slept til 8:00am today -- later than i have since Winter and a lot better than the 4:30am or earlier wake-ups i was having. I've substituted in Valium for Clonazepam as the the cuts can be made so small. I started at 20mg as i was on 1mg Clonazepam and that is the equivalent. This is called "The Ashton Method" and is the gentlest way to get off benzos. Yeah, FluffyD, the math is scary. My first cut at 5% was sooooooooo easy. My last cut at 50% threw me into hysterics. Years ago, before i read of "The Ashton Method," i used Ativan prepared in a solution by a local lab to get off Ativan and it went well but the cuts were less accurate than using Valium pills as i had to pull my dose up in a syringe-like device for oral use and it was subject to human error.

Thanks for chiming in my friends!