Projecting My Own Inner Experience Onto The World

In my worries about the coming of the end of the world, i am mindful of my world-view when i was in Vancouver in 1999 and so poor and sick. I worried then that the quality-of-life had declined EVERY WHERE. But when my disability benefits came in and i moved back East and rejoined the middle-class, i saw that the quality-of-life had just declined for ME in Vancouver. The rest of the world was unfolding as it should.

So i am mindful of that experience in my current worries. Perhaps for a few days there after my last cut in my benzo taper which was so brutal, it was looking like the end-of-days for ME not all of HUMANITY.

I think i'm going to pause my taper here at 1mg for a few weeks. I can't face another episode of feelings of doom and hysteria so soon. I'll take a few weeks to get some perspective and gather some strength and then tackle the next cut which will be down to 0.5mg as per my doctor's instructions.

Boy, the end of a narcotics taper is sure harder than the beginning!

Has anyone else had this experience of projecting your inner experience onto the world at large?

I think all people project our inner experience onto the world. It seems to me that one of the goals of, say, meditation is to learn to be more objective.

As for the 1mg. of benzo - in my experience, everything goes pretty well with a benzo taper - until the last tiny bit. The step between 1mg. and none is HUGE. It's the big challenge.

Agreed. I don't think I was ever full-on addicted to benzos, but during the most severe parts of my last episode I used them a lot more than I would have liked. At some point the insomnia was so bad and had such a negative effect on my stability that my treatment team told me to just take lorazepam for sleep as long as I needed and not worry about withdrawal for now.

I still limited it to 2mg once a day (with the occasional 4mg), in the evening only, for about 6 weeks. But even then it was hard to stop. If I recall correctly, going from 2mg to 1.5mg and then to 1mg was okay-ish. The step from 1mg to 0.5mg was very hard for me, so I decided to step down in increments of 0.25mg instead. From 1mg to 0.75mg for one or two weeks, then 0.5mg for another one or two weeks, then 0.25mg, and then nothing. That was manageable for me. It was just a major pain trying to cut the pills so precisely. I believe there is a lorazepam solution on the market, which would be easier to dose than pills, but I don't know how easily available it is. There are also 0.5mg pills. It should be easier to cut those in half than it is to cut 1mg pills into quarters.

Keep in mind that if you keep the absolute step size constant (let's say a 0.5mg decrement every time), then percentage-wise the step size increases every time. For example, 0.5mg is only 25% of a 2mg dose, but it's 50% of a 1mg dose.

@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!

You're so fortunate to have a pdoc that is willing to use the Ashton Method. I don't know why it isn't the standard for benzo withdrawal.

What's indicating to you that the end of the world is coming? I don't think it's any more imminent than it ever has been.

@BethRags and all:

I don't see a psychiatrist. I just see a medical doctor. Here in Canada it's common after you've been in the psychiatric system for a while to be referred back into the care of your medical doctor. I prefer this. Medical doctors are more collaborative. He was supportive of my request to use The Ashton Method. Medical doctors are pretty co-operative up here.

I won't go into why i think the world is ending soon. I don't want to scare anyone or fear-monger. I'm scared and sad about it but i'm 55 and i don't have a pension and don't want to live past 65 as i will be impoverished then.

I just want to outlive my dog and she's nine. We'll either die together when the world ends or i will die AFTER she does. She's hopelessly attached to me. I didn't socialize her when she was a puppy and she doesn't care for other people, just adores me. She'd suffer if i left her alone and i couldn't bear that.

Silly to live for a dog, but there it is.

Jane, I hope you can try to just live in the moment a bit more. Doing so may help manage feelings that you won't succeed with a complete benzo cessation. Just don't think of the struggle, constantly. Only sometimes. Mindfulness might also help put the stressors of the world aside a bit, though I know well how difficult that is. I can't stop watching news...or caring...but sometimes I take a break from it.

My sister sometimes seems blissfully ignorant of what is going on in the world. She seems not to care. Oblivious. For better or for worse, she's not the only one like that. The US could become an autocracy led by the devil and she would casually say "Oh, that doesn't seem that good." Or "Are you sure?" OR, "I didn't know that." While my brother is scarily too far right (and angy/upset) to my more upset liberal progressive. So, we are not all feeling and thinking the same thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whatever2013 @BethRags and all: I don't see a psychiatrist. I just see a medical doctor. Here in Canada it's common after you've been in the psychiatric system for a while to be referred back into the care of your medical doctor. I prefer this. Medical doctors are more collaborative. He was supportive of my request to use The Ashton Method. Medical doctors are pretty co-operative up here. I won't go into why i think the world is ending soon. I don't want to scare anyone or fear-monger. I'm scared and sad about it but i'm 55 and i don't have a pension and don't want to live past 65 as i will be impoverished then. I just want to outlive my dog and she's nine. We'll either die together when the world ends or i will die AFTER she does. She's hopelessly attached to me. I didn't socialize her when she was a puppy and she doesn't care for other people, just adores me. She'd suffer if i left her alone and i couldn't bear that. Silly to live for a dog, but there it is.

It's not silly to live for a dog

@Soupe du jour and all:

That's hilarious, about an "autocracy run by the devil"!!! Very creative and original and funny! I'm pretty oblivious too as i don't consume news regularly. I've switched to our national public radio station here in Canada and it's soooooooo excellent, lots of entertaining, fun or poignant educational material but it's all so stimulating tho of course less so than TV news because it's just audio and there's just a sprinkling of news every half hour.

So that's better.

But for the past few days i've just been watching "INSIDE," the new comedy special by Bo Burnham on Netflix about his experience in lockdown. It's fun and deep and a bit disturbing as he deteriorates over his year+ of isolation working in his guest-house. He does a spoof of "White Woman's Instagram" and i must admit i was offended the first time thru but subsequent times i've grown fond of it. It's a bit insulting, but mostly just affectionately and amusingly observational and in the final analysis, i think it's accurate. I know i've posted pictures of flowers on Facebook and i like fuzzy comfy socks. As far as i know Bo is het (his partner is female) so i don't think it's misogynistic, just poking fun at us white women and he says our Instagram's are Heaven, so he recognizes our essence.

Yeah, i'll try not to get overwrought about the likely failure of my benzo taper, stopping at 2mg Valium. That's still 90% less than what i was taking and i can have feelings on it again, compassion, joy, hilarity, euphoria, love. It's just that if i go below 2mg, i feel fear. Well, it's such a small dose, i'm not gonna worry about it. Disappointed to be an addict for life but it'll keep me humble.

@BethRags, how do you feel when you're coming off a benzo, particularly after the 1mg dosage?

do you take it at night to help you sleep?

@bizi and all:

I assume you mean the benzo? I take it just because i am addicted to it. Benzos don't have any use after taking them steadily for two weeks for anxiety. Then they are no longer effective for anxiety and i'm just left with the addiction. I feel i was also getting sedation from them as it's usual for me to sleep til 2:00pm at the height of Summer and this year it didn't happen -- YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by imaginethat @BethRags, how do you feel when you're coming off a benzo, particularly after the 1mg dosage?

The last time I tried to come off a benzo (Klonopin) I did it way too fast. I ended up terribly unwell, it was (literally) hard to walk because my legs were so weak. I felt achy and just awful all over. I tried to hang with it, but finally gave up and went back on the K-pin. This time I'm going reallly slowly. It may take me 2 years (or more) to get to .5/day. After that, who knows whether I'll be able to completely stop or if I'll have to stay with the .5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whatever2013 @bizi and all: I assume you mean the benzo? I take it just because i am addicted to it. Benzos don't have any use after taking them steadily for two weeks for anxiety. Then they are no longer effective for anxiety and i'm just left with the addiction. I feel i was also getting sedation from them as it's usual for me to sleep til 2:00pm at the height of Summer and this year it didn't happen -- YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Klonopin helped my anxiety for about 2 years. After that, without a rise in dose, it was useless.