[lynnR]

Hello my name is lynn and Im really feeling lost. i hope you dont mind listening to my story because ive had alot of things complicating my health situation.

About 9 months ago i had a drug overdose and started to have panic attacks which is something i never had before. One month after my overdose, I was in a accident on a bus where the driver slammed on the breaks and I was thrown about ten feet into a metal bar. Luckily I had no visible damage and my catscan and MRI were clear. However after the accident i started to get severe headaches, intense muscle tension around my head and panic attacks triggered by the pain.

For the first time in my life i sought out psychiatric help which is something i have always disliked because i dont like pharmacuticals. I took robaxin for the head pain and alot of motrin. that helped. I then started on zoloft and propanoal to calm my anxiety but had horrible experiences of feeling to hyper and dizzy with those medicines. I then switched to gabapentin but that too also made me feel dizzy and out of it. At this point my anxiety started to become so intense- i would wake up with morning anxiety and started having racing thoughts along with all the head pain.

It got so bad my doctor put me on Geodin. that stopped 99 percent of the problem however it made me very tired and very out of it. I stayed on Geodin for a month and half and then couldnt stand it anymore so i asked my doctor to taper me off. As she took me off I had horrible dizzines and vertigo that got so bad i could barely get up and walk . my doctor then tried a sample of lexapro for a few days as substitute but that failed (same hyper feeling) and as I was getting of the Geodon she added ativan to the mix of drugs. I stayed just on ativan at a low dose for 2 months.
my mornings were horrible- very lightheaded when i got up, bad morning anxiety, nauseous and then feeling out of it all day.

the scary thing is i started to have moments when on ativan where my head felt slowed down and sluggish like i was going to faint and i would have these massive headrushes. I also started to get faint and weak on the ativan. i got really scared because i didnt know if these symptoms were post concussion or part of the effects of the meds. Every med i took i seeemed to have alot of side effects and was very med sensitive.


so after 2 months on ativan i switched to klonopoin and for a week that stuff was a miracle. No more morning anxiety- no more weird faint sluggish head feeling and i felt alot better but then i started to get way way to cloudy and brain fogy and i couldnt think straight. so after a month on klonopin i tapered entirely off all benzos. my total time on benzos with the taper was
2 months on ativan, 2 months on klonopin with the taper. As i tapered off, i had HUGE problems- severe dizziness, intense brain fog and depersonalization, panic attacks i never had before in my life, heart fluttering (constantly speedinup and slowing down), muscle spasms, weird traveling nerve sensations, feeling like my head was so buzzy and fuzzy i couldnt think straight. these things all came in intense waves.

Here is my question after all this-- I am currently 70 days off benzos- i am still having a roller coaster of problems that sometimes seem almost as intense as when i first came off the drugs. When i wake up i have morning anxiety and then as i get up and move around i become increasingly foggy,dizzy and out of it feeling. throughout the day this feeling morphs into differnt things that mimic either benzo withdrawal or post concussion or anxiety disorder- i get extremely dizzy and get pressure in the back of my head and throughout my body when i walk around and then sometimes that changes into a overpowering buzzing head sensation where i can barely think straight . i get piercing headaches that arent as crushing as the ones were when i first got hurt but pretty bad. the SCARIEST sensation i get is a feeling like that sluggish slow feeling i had when i was still on ativan. i start to feel like the blood is rushing out of my head and i feel far away and faint.
usually if i drink water i feel better. im always afraid im going to faint.

ive been to a cardiologist and have had my heart checked and its fine. I do not seem to have any visibile orthostatic hypotension or POTS. I also am 10 months sober and do not drink or use drugs nor do i drink caffeine. I am in trauma therapy and my psychiatrist and neurologist seem to thnk this is combination of post concussion syndrome and benzo withdrawal.

I feel really lost because sometimes i dont know what im caught up in. I get such intense head sensations they scare me. When i get that slow sluggish feeling i get scared i will fall and hit my head again. I also dont like how the head symptoms seem to be getting more intense lately. i was getting slightly better for awhile but it seems to have gotten bad again. Sometimes when i get up and move around i feel so almost immediately out of it and the back of my head feels heavy and i wonder what is going on in my brain.
When i was on meds i could exercise pretty good. but off meds if i exercise i get faint and weak several hours later and it kicks my symptoms up worse. somtimes i can just be getting up in the morning and ill get random bouts of faintness throughout the day and that scares me too.

I just want to know what im battling. I keep hoping its benzo withdrawal because some of my symptoms seem to really match it and ive talked to alot of people on the benzo support site who have these symptoms but then i also recognize that alot of my symptoms could be post concussion and im wondering if this what im going thru even tho i didnt have most of these symptoms on the meds. I wonder if maybe they were protecting me from them.

in any event i feel horribly at the mercy of my condition and am very depressed and have huge fluctuating changing head conditions throughout the day that scare me half to death. i am in constant communication with my doctors and my psychiatrist really wants me to ride it out without drugs to see what happens and to see if it clears up or if is post concussion. its something i wanted to do to. I had been hoping that most of my problems were caused by med sensitivity but i dont know anymore.

all i know is feel broken and scared about all the crazy things happening in my head. i hope someone here can shed a light on all this. i feel worse then i did 8 months ago and not knowing if my symptoms are a bad come off of benzos or if this in fact what im left with after the benzos and maybe this is such an intense state of anxiety its effecting my head so badly and these symptoms are the post concussion. its hard to tell. i know sometimes i feel so scared from everything ive been thru and some of these head sensations worry me.

thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate any advice, thoughts and comments.

have a nice morning
Lynn