Ever Had a Seizure? Please Share Your Experience.

[TeknoFunk]

My seizures.

Awhile back now I had an experience with seizures due to withdrawals, this is one of the few times I have shared this apart from with close family and doctors who helped me, so sorry for its long windedness but its how I express .

My background that led to it:
When i was very very young (11) I was diagnosed with adhd and aspergers disorder, due to behavioural issues in school and difficulty communicating with people. This led to me prescribed a stupidly high dose of ritalin and later concerta, along with a nighttime dose of catapres(clonidine). As I was prescribed these from such a young age I never developed the sleep hygiene habits that most people do, And I still struggle with my sleeping.

After spending my whole childhood and young adulthood dealing with my sleeping problems unsuccessfully I went to a doctor around 5 years ago for help. He diagnosed me with severe chronic insomnia and Restless Leg Syndrome.

From this I was prescribed diazepam, but wasnt informed about its addictive nature, and i didnt have much experience with benzos and the troubles that come from them.

After a year of being prescribed this I had developed a physical and mental addiction and was taking huge doses and repeated doses frequently, I realised what had happened and decided to quit. Beinh very ignorant I went cold turkey. I moved back into my mother's house as she is a highly trained nurse and said she would keep an eye on me.

After a week I started experiencing extreme rebound insomnia, and after about 4 nights and days without sleeping I started to have severe paranoia and started to experience a form of delirium, which for me were extremely realistic hallucinations that I was unable to see for what they were at the time.

The night I started having the delirium my muscles and body were feeling extremely tight and tense, and I was having intense headaches and couldnt calm myself down at all.

When I had the first seizure I had no idea what was happening, and luckily my mother did, she had the foresight of expecting this might happen, and had retrieved the diazepam I had thrown away without telling me. She gave me a few 5s sublingual and within 10minutes my body had started to calm down.

I was stubborn and insisted on continuing the cold turkey, but after the second seizure a day and a half later I gave in and went to the doctor and began a tapering regime.

Nowadays I have been through so many different meds to combat The insomnia, and have made incredible progress in changing my sleep hygiene.

I have made an effort to become highly educated on benzos, sedatives, tranquilisers, pharmacology metabolites, pharmacodynamics etc etc. And although I am prescribed benzos again, i make sure to only take very short acting ones, with no active metabolites to prevent build up, and I only take them when absolutely necessary to make sure I dont become dependant, and I only have them when I have reached my second or third night of sleeplessness, mainly because the side effects of lack of sleep scare the crappers out of me. Such as: disembodied whispering and voices, shadow people, random bursts of smoke with a hissing sound etc.

So thats my story, I was uneducated and ignorant. I went through hell. But the silver lining was ending up dedicated to understanding everything about the nature of addiction, insomnia, sleep hygiene and all things related.

Wow thank you for sharing your story. Even though the meds may be different,  insomnia meds have created a similar effect when stopping and the buzzing body and whispers and all the rest you have stated, rings home for sure. I am glad you have found a balance and are educated on the pharmacology of all these different types of medication. GABA inhibitors seem to be the only thing that helps with this problem as far as I know and magnesium and calcium channels are other parts of the brain to focus on for this problem as well. Thanks again for sharing!