What Do All Withdrawals Have in Common?

To date I’ve worked one-on-one in Healing & Wellness coaching sessions with individuals from all over the world - the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zeeland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Nigeria, Italy, and Israel, to name a few locations.

The personal stories of prescription drug withdrawal and wellness rebuilding that I encounter are at once heart-wrenching and inspiring, just as mine was when I quit Paxil and Xanax years ago after more than twelve years of taking the medications to “help” anxiety. (You might note the sarcasm in those quotation marks.)

The situations I encounter in my coaching are unique, each of them. Some people were on one medication, and some on many. Some people were on the medications for a relatively short amount of time, and some took them for decades. Some people that come to me are in their twenties, and some in their seventies. Many are somewhere in-between.

There is no one professional situation that defines the people with whom I’ve worked. There have been doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, school teachers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, IT professionals, finance experts, creatives, truck drivers, homemakers, retirees, students, and those still finding their own best professional fit.

Some people are dealing with high pressure, high profile jobs, and others might be on some sort of leave from work. Some have much in the way of material comforts, and others have little.

There is no one particular race, ethnic, or cultural situation that finds themselves needing support because of medication use and discontinuation. My clients have been white, black, Indian, Asian, Arabic, Hispanic, and I’m sure “other.”

There is no one sexual orientation or family situation that finds themselves going through the wringer of antidepressant withdrawal and/or benzodiazepine withdrawal. My clients have been gay and straight. They’ve been married, divorced, dating, and single. They’ve been empty-nesters, new parents, and those for whom children might never be in the cards.

They’ve been dog people and cat lovers. They’ve been extroverts and introverts.

The withdrawal and healing stories I’ve encountered are as diverse and unique as the flowers that bloom across this great earth of ours in their respective seasons.

But they do all have one thing in common: Fear.

Everyone who has ever experienced, or is currently experiencing, a withdrawal situation knows exactly what I’m talking about.

There are many symptoms that a person might experience when they hit tolerance withdrawal to a medication or begin reducing their dosage, and these symptoms might be a little different for everyone. Some people might have head pressure and nerve pain, others might have terrible depression or agitation, and still others might have all of these things and more (I know I did).

But everyone, to a person, has increased fear that they are dealing with. Fear of the past, fear of the present, fear of the future. Fear of the symptoms, and fear AS a symptom.

The roots of this increased fear might be part physiological, part psychological, and part environmental, but persistent or overwhelming fear is a hallmark and often dominant symptom of prescription drug withdrawal, and if a person can learn to tame and overcome this increased fear, then they are well on their way to finding important measures of healing.

Taming fear—managing it, chipping away at it, dispelling it, replacing it—is one of the things I work with people on in my coaching sessions, and it is really one of the one of the biggest challenges in life for all of us at any stage of the game, isn’t it?

Fear can sneak up on us in times of stress or struggle, and if we aren’t careful, it can slither its way into our daily life before we are even aware of it.

Fear is a dirty scoundrel. It is usually a liar. It does not value truth.

Fear is lazy. It doesn’t value goals or want to see improvement.

Fear is lonely. It lives in isolation and darkness and wants to bring you down to those places.

Fear is a simpleton. It is not inspired. It has no imagination. It does not value creativity or solutions.

Fear is not your friend. It wants to see the worst for you and your family and your future.

Fear is that kid in high school who had no talent, discipline, or intelligence, and so he tried to get those people who were on the right track to fail, because that is what made him feel better about himself.

Seeing people fail is what makes fear happy. Peer pressuring others into making the worst choices for themselves when faced with adversity is what fear gets off on.

Maybe your parents always told you to be careful the company you keep. Well, this is the same thing here. I will tell you right now to be careful about keeping consistent company with fear. Fear is a loser, and if you consistently hang out with fear, then you will be dragged down to its miserable level.

So what sorts of things help to manage fear? How are we able to conquer it?

Well, faith is one important part of overcoming fear—I would argue the most important part—and that will be addressed in an upcoming post of its own. Another is lifestyle.

Another is mindset, which can include the rewiring of negative neural pathways that have been dug like the Grand Canyon through years of stress, illness, poor experiences, or fear-based thinking.

And gratitude and positive emotional experiences are a couple of great ways to crowd fear out of your picture, too. When you are listing what you are thankful for in life, then you are forced to admit that you have enough “daily bread” to survive the day, so to speak. You then know that you’ll be okay. And when you are with people or settings that encourage and calm you, or even make you laugh—positive emotional experiences—then fear is so out of place that it begins to slink away.