ALL FALL DOWN – ORDER IS BEING RESTORED IN THE MAD UNIVERSE!

Everyone in the madman world are finally having to pay the piper and I suspect it is going to get a whole lot worse if everyone gets what is coming to them, Unfortunately I have a feeling that hell may not reign down on the worst offenders as much as the lesser ones will probably have to pay. I am pretty sure it is Don’s fault that Harry doesn’t know that Don agreed to drop Sunkist, although Don would never admit that, when he calls Don at home and tells him that Sunkist is willing to spend some real advertising dollars with their firm. Pete is so transparent in his volunteering to take to Chevy account from Ken, but that is right in character. So then when Ted finds out that Sunkist is going to pay way more than the Ocean Spray account, the account that Don told Ted in the previous episode he would defer to him on, obviously an untruth, and in the words of Gomer Pyle “surprise, surprise, surprise” not! But of course in the end money talks and you know what walks! As for the Bob developments I find them highly inventive and amusing. Pete wanted to get rid of Bob because he came on to him and now everyone wants to keep him, a Machiavellian twist to say the least. Pete is already experienced in people not being what they appear to be through Don so he isn’t as floored by Bob’s unreal identity as a “normal” person might react but it is a conundrum to say the least. Ted and Peggy are way too happy for them to be able to continue on this way. Ted is obviously feeling guilty or he wouldn’t tolerate Don’s accusation that his feelings towards Peggy aren’t just because she is “that good”. Don seems to be drifting into the darkness he so richly deserves, his daughter doesn’t want to see him after she saw him literally with his pants down, and if he had talked to her more than to just try to secure form her not to rat on him that scenario might have played out differently but because Don seems to only be looking out for Don he didn’t have the foresight to see that maybe he should have reached out and told Sally he regretted what he did that she saw him do with Silvia.   I guess that would mean he would have had to admit he did something wrong and he isn’t very forthcoming in making those kinds of confessions. The figures I see as good in this show are Joan, Stan, Ginsberg and Ken, and maybe Peggy though she is a less innocent than she used to be. I don’t recall any of these figures trying to screw their fellow workers over in any major way, will the good win out in the end here? Peggy is kind of in the middle and Ted and Roger are each a little closer to Don than they are to anyone else. Roger would be as sneaky as Don if he were that smart but he is not and in this case I would have to say smarter is not necessarily a virtue. Wouldn’t that make a nice ending episode for the best people to come out ahead? I didn’t say they were all that good but there are several that are a lot better than the rest. I see something very dark happening in the final episode for this season, perhaps a much deserved fall from grace for several of the cast? I was very amazed that I was able to recognize that the song they played at the end of the episode was by the Monkees from the movies “Head”, maybe I lived through the 60’s and still have my brain! And as for foreshadowing the Head intro had a man tumbling off of a building just like in the Madman introduction. Coincidence, I think not!

IS ANYONE REALLY SURPRISED BY WHAT EDWARD SNOWDEN IS SAYING?

I am almost surprised that this former government employee is getting so much attention for what I have assumed our government has been doing for some time, and I never really thought it was a big secret. I just always felt it fell under the same banner our government has operated under, the basic “don’t ask what we do and we won’t tell you” policy that they have been using for many years.  I haven’t heard one piece of “new” news in all of the articles I have read about him, and unless he is leaking more information than I have read about on the internet there is nothing very precise or potentially harmful in any of the stuff I have read about his “telling” the world. When this supposed scandal broke I was expecting to read about how the government broke into people’s houses or something a little more serious than listening in to what all people should know is public information available on the internet from all the hacking that has gone on by private criminals and other countries spy organizations. His statement that “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under” just says to me that he is an idiot if her ever thought that you can use public communication forums like cell phones and the internet without anyone listening in you. It has always been this way, nothing has changed other than almost everybody uses some of technologies these days. I have a hard time believing that I do anything the government has any interest in listening in on because I think they would get very bored in a very short time. I believe that the old rule of thumb that if you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about it pretty accurate. Given that the government is on somewhat legally shaky grounds on their public surveillance I am pretty confident that before our government acts on the information it gets by spying on us has to be pretty bad and pretty concrete before they are going to act on it. When I was a kid and telephones were land lines only, we had a party line, we were supposed to hang up the phone and not listen to someone else’s conversation when we picked up the phone and noticed someone was already on there but we didn’t always do that. I remember my girlfriend and I listening in to some very boring conversations that had our neighbors had with other neighbors and I have a feeling that is mostly what the government gets to listen to as well. There is nothing I say on the phone or the internet that anyone shouldn’t listen to other than the fact that what I put out there isn’t all that interesting! 

I Really Want To Know? What Would You Do?

I wrote a post called "Who Is Ichabod?" It was a true story and want to know what would you do if this had happened to you? Really I want to know.

As they say on the television series, what would you do? I suppose this story could actually cause the man in Illinois to murder me in order to stop me from ruining the new life he has created for himself halfway across the United States away from the state of Oregon where he grew up in his very dysfunctional family. Now I have a lot of sympathy for him for having grown up in a family where his parents were alcoholics, with his older brother being a rapist and a pedophile who raped and molested two of his younger brothers and raped his sister. How could you not be angry, but how could he take it out on two of the very few friends that he had. I don’t understand and I probably will never understand the horrible things he went through with his family but that didn’t give him the right to screw with mine! He should be tracked down like the dog he is because I can’t forgive him for taking out his problems on me and my family. He always used to tell me than his mother was crazy, she wouldn’t ever turn left when she was driving so she would take three right turns to go left, which brings to mind the saying – two wrongs don’t make a right but three rights make a left! May you live in peace Steve because if I had my way you wouldn’t have your comfortable life in Illinois with your wife and adopted daughter who I bet know nothing of your horrific past, of course that is if you are not still doing horrible crimes which I am not sure that you are capable of quitting given your tragic past. What do you say Steve, are you still a monster? Can a monster like you be cured I wonder? And people who read this, what would you do if you were me? I really want to know as this case still haunts me twenty years after if happened.

WHO IS ICHABOD?

In December of 1991 I lived through the absolutely weirdest experience of my life, so far at least, and if I hadn’t actually lived through it I might have trouble believing what occurred. At that time I lived a roommate who had been my boyfriend when I was 17 years old for about two years until I was 19, which was from the summer of 1974 to 1976 and after we quit going out together as boyfriend and girlfriend we continued to be best friends and still are friends to this day. Through the years we have been platonic roommates several times as well as becoming partners in buying each of our first house’s together as in 1992. We were living together as roommates in 1991 when the strangest experience I have ever had occur in my entire life unfolded. I have known Aaron since the year after he graduated from high school when he was working in his first full time job when I met him which was during the summer after my Junior year in High School.  Aaron was living with one of his lifelong good friends, he had known Scotty since he was in grade school and had always lived in the same neighborhood together, in an apartment and so they had a lot of buddies, ones that they had been friends with throughout school, who came by their apartment to visit and party with them.  I met all of these friends of theirs and began some lifelong friendships with many of them as well. There was a group of us that spent the most time together, Aaron, his good friend Scotty (who was the roommate), Robin who had been friends with the two of them since Junior High and had worked with Scott at the local cannery for a couple summers, Steve who had also gone to grade school through high school with Scott and Aaron, Scott F. who had also gone to school with Aaron, Scott W. and Steve who he had lived two houses away from when they were growing up. There were several other friends also, there was Steve’s brother John who was the guy who introduced me to Aaron in the first place (the eventual story about this person has the making of a horror film which I will go into later), there were a couple other buddies of Aaron and Scott’s that they went to school with also and a friend they made working at the local cannery named Derek. They all came over to the apartment that Aaron and Scott lived in, it was composed of a downstairs with a kitchen and living room and a small patio/yard outside of that ground floor and the upstairs was where the bedrooms and the bathroom was. This was the “happening place” for everyone to come to. Most of these guys who had known each since grade school or junior high were still living at home so Aaron and Scott had the “cool place” to party at because they were both working and were renting their own apartment. Most of us became friends for life and did lots of things together through the years no matter who we were dating or living with, we were the “three musketeers” plus a few more. I still have one of them for a best friend, who was my first real boyfriend when I was 16, and I remained in contact with almost all of the rest of these guys. One of these friends was both my friend and my ex-boyfriend who eventually became my roommate for many years, and after he joined the army he would come visit us on leave whenever he had it.  When he finally got out of the army and started to attend college, which was the main reason he joined the army as his family couldn’t afford to send him to it. My ex-boyfriend roommate and I allowed him to be our roommate when he got out of the army and came home. We were renting a three bedroom house so there was an extra bedroom. I knew he came from a very dysfunctional family and through the years he had told me a lot of the bad things that had happened in his family. Things that he needed to talk to someone about and I understood that having come from my own dysfunctional family. He had a really cool jet boat and the three of us roommates and my sister used to go to various lakes nearby in the summer and would barbeque shrimp and other delights on a smoky joe barbeque we would set up on a board on the bough of the boat in the middle of the water. We got a lot of funny looks until people got close enough to see what we were doing and then we got jealous looks. There were several nights through the years Steve told me some strange stories. I really had no reason to doubt that they were true but they also were so bizarre they seemed kind of unbelievable. When he was home on leave one time he told me a story about one time he let his temper get in control of him and it really scared him. He said he was in Oakland, Ca one time and was walking down the street and as he was walking a black guy, maybe it was an Hispanic guy as I really didn’t believe the story at the time I didn’t pay that much attention to the race of the person other than I know it wasn’t a white guy by the way he was talking, was also walking down the same sidewalk from the opposite direction. He said for some reason he decided that the black man should yield the sidewalk to him and when they approached each other the black man didn’t yield so he attacked him and beat him so bad that he wasn’t sure the man lived. He told me he felt bad about the incident and didn’t understand what had caused him to do it really. I kind of took the story with a grain of salt, I mean who would kill someone just because they wouldn’t yield the sidewalk? I figured that the story was somewhat exaggerated and maybe not really true, that he somehow thought he was impressing me with how he had bared his soul to me with this tale of this awful deed he had done. It didn’t seem to me that it could really be true but by the same token I never forgot hearing the story. We had a lot of fun with Steve, me and my Aaron and I really thought he was a good friend. After Steve had been our roommate for a while he eventually moved out and moved in with a friend of ours, a new friend, and they began a very tempestuous roommate relationship. Then on another visit with me one evening when Steve came by and Aaron wasn’t home Steve told me a story about when he was in the army and stationed in Germany. He told me he was waiting at a train station while he was on leave and a man came up while he was playing his guitar waiting for the train and grabbed his guitar away from him and broke one of the strings. He told me he really freaked himself out and just snapped. He said he went crazy and tossed the man onto the tracks just as a train was coming through and though he didn’t stay to find out what happened he thought he had killed the man. He had been drinking beer so I also thought this was a highly fictionalized story meant to impress me with how much he was baring his soul to me. I knew he really liked me but he also knew I had a boyfriend so he wasn’t going to risk getting his feelings hurt by asking me out. Once again I took this story with a grain of salt. During the time Bob and Steve lived together Steve’s younger brother Brad committed suicide. No one knew at the time why it had occurred but given that both of the parents in the house were life-long alcoholics it was a given that all of the kids had suffered because of that. But that wasn’t all of the story. The oldest son in the family, John, had raped and molested his only sister  and the youngest brother, the one who killed himself because of being sodomized by his oldest brother. Steve was apparently the only one in the family that John had not molested. Steve had given Bob a BB gun that had belonged to his younger brother a couple of years before, before they were roommates and before Steve’s brother killed himself.  Steve decided he really wanted the BB gun back after his brother committed suicide and Bob had given it away a long time before as he wasn’t given the impression that Steve ever wanted it. Steve flipped out and threatened Bob and even wrote a letter to Bob’s employer telling him that Bob was unstable and crazy. It ended in Steve being told to stay away from Bob by a court. A couple years after that the friend, Aaron that I was still roommates with and I were working at two different places but they were right across the street from each other. We still occasionally saw Steve as he had moved into his parents’ house after he and Bob had their falling out and that house was pretty close and so to get out of the house he would bring beer and pizza by and visit. He would do that with whoever was home, Aaron or me or Aaron and me. We still occasionally went boating or camping together. One afternoon two guys who looked like insurance agents came by the office I worked at and asked if they could have a word with me. Of course I said yes and they came in my office at the business I worked at and shut the door. One of them handed me a piece of paper and told to read it. As I started to read it I realized the letter was about Aaron and mentioned that he had a wolf dog and a whole bunch of guns that he had said he could take out all the kids in the school yard by his house with. I was flabbergasted, it was total BS, and Aaron had the guns for deer hunting and shooting beer cans and in no way would ever shoot a kid. The men then introduced themselves and told me they were detectives and wanted to know what I thought about the letter. I told them it was a total fabrication and there was no way Aaron was dangerous. They then asked if I had any idea who might have sent it to them, they said it had been signed with a one word name of which they told me was “Ichabod”.  I said I had no idea who would use that nickname of our friends and we had no feuds going on with anyone. They asked me how Aaron would react when they go and show him the letter. I told them he would have the same reaction as I did. They then said they were going to go see Aaron so as soon as they left I called Aaron to tell him what to expect since I figured there was no reason for him to be as blindsided by this like I was. Aaron called me about twenty minutes later and told me they were going to come by our house at lunch, which was in about an hour, so they could look at his guns to verify there was nothing going on. I knew that Aaron always left his pipe out on the table, as we had many fights about his doing so, and kept a small amount of marijuana in his top dresser drawer which we had fights about for the very reason it was now going to be a problem. So I took a chance that the police were not watching us and drove home and hid his pipe and pot so they wouldn’t be an issue when they came to look at his guns. I then went back to work and went home at lunch which I had at pretty much the same time as Aaron did. When I got to the house the detectives and Aaron were already there and looking at the guns Aaron brought out of the room to show them. They had already been happily greeted by our “vicious” wolf jumping all over them so they knew the vicious part was untrue though they did recognize that she was part wolf. While one of the detectives was looking at the guns and writing the serial numbers down the other asked if it would be alright if he looked in the bedrooms, he said he wouldn’t touch anything. Like it was a really a choice, so of course we said yes. That detective found a couple more guns that were under Aaron’s bed that he had been asked to keep by a friend that he had forgotten were there but they didn’t make a big deal about it. While talking to them and their telling us that these kinds of things usually are done by friends with a grudge I remembered that Bob had gone off the deep end recently and was taking Prozac though I did say I really couldn’t believe he would do something like this. They took his name and where he worked and left. I called Steve and told him what had happened and told him that the police might be contacting him to corroborate Bob being unstable. That evening, it was about two weeks before Christmas and my sister and I had planned to go shopping that evening, when I got home from work my sister showed up at the same time and when we walked in the house Aaron was already there and Steve was there also. The air was palpable with tension when we walked into it. Steve was cordial but there was definitely something wrong with the situation. I quickly got ready and Annette I left to go shopping. We did very little shopping and went to the Mexican bar at the shopping center we always went to after we were done shopping and I told her about the day’s events and she and I came to the conclusion based on the way Steve had been acting that he was the guilty one and not Bob. Aaron showed up at the bar not long after we got there, he knew what we did on our shopping trips and that we would end up at the bar. He felt the same way about Steve being the guilty party but we all didn’t have a clue why. The next morning Bob called me up at work and was really freaked out, he said two detectives came in and showed him a letter that at first he thought was another one about him like when Steve wigged out over the BB gun. That was when the detectives asked him if he thought Steve wrote the letter and he said yes. I didn’t tell him that I had at first suspected him I just said I had mentioned the incident between him and Steve. I then got the creepy feeling that Steve was the perpetrator and I called the lead detective. He told me that as far as they were concerned Steve had written the letter for reasons they didn’t care about and the case was closed for them, all they had wanted to know is whether or not Aaron was a real threat to the school kids. They did tell me that they didn’t think it would be wise to retaliate and that we should just cease being friends with Steve. I then called up Steve and told him that the police would not be contacting him. He sounded disappointed, and asked why not. I said “The police seem to think that you are the one who wrote the letter.” Steve then said “What do you think?” I said that as much as I can’t believe you would do this to Aaron and I it is the only explanation that makes sense. He said “You’re right, I did.” I said “Why, we have been your best and frequently your only friends for years?” He said “I didn’t mention your name.” I said “But I live in the same house, how did you think this would not affect me? The police could have broken in shooting if they had believed you.” He said “Aaron burned me with a cigarette when we were in grade school. He isn’t as smart as me so why does he deserve to have a good job?” I just said “You are so screwed up I don’t see that there is any point in saying anything more. I don’t want to ever see you again and I cannot believe you treated the two people who have been your best friends this way. Goodbye forever.” And that is the last time I ever talked to him. Later on I heard that his younger brother who had committed suicide did it because he had been molested by Steve’s older brother. That older brother died shortly after that. So I guess my opinion is that dysfunctional families take a toll on not only their own family but also on the other people who have the misfortune to come in contact with them. So after Steve did the things he did to Aaron and Bob I have to wonder if the stories he told me about the two guys he thought he might have killed were true. What do I do?  This man is now a successful business man, should he get away with the two murders that he told me he did? And how do I know that a man who was willing to commit two murders hasn’t committed any more since then? What are the odds that someone who has committed two murders of this kind would not be willing to commit more? Is seems to me that if a person is willing to murder for the stupid reasons that he did these first two for that it will be way more likely that he will not have a problem committing a murder for a reason more significant in his life than the first two were. If you would murder a person you don’t know for not stepping aside on the sidewalk, or breaking the strings on your guitar, what would you do if they threatened you personally or someone that you love? I have to wonder.

After this incident happened and Steve became persona non gratis in the city of Eugene, Oregon he moved to Corvallis, Oregon for a while and he was tracked down by one of my good friend's he had also threatened during his "wig out" period but they decided to do nothing in revenge as they realized it wasn't worth risking jail time to get even with someone who was so clearly unbalanced. The only thing that still bothers me is did Steve quit his violent behavior? How many unsolved violent crimes are there in the town of Burlington, Illinois that I have tracked him down in? He seems to have created himself a nice little life on the other side of the country, he has a business restoring old cars that he has several for sale at about $16,000 each, as well as a wife and an adopted daughter. I always wonder if he feels any guilt for almost getting two of what used to be his best friends almost killed because of his being a gilt edged nut case, probably not because he has never sent either Aaron or I an apology and we aren't that hard to find.
As the guy says in the TV series, What would you do?

The Best Altered Reality: Pot Or Booze: Smiling Or Crying?

ALCOHOL OR MARIJUANA

I use alcohol and marijuana for the same reason, to alter reality. The differences in their effects are as follows: I was really depressed and scared about my future and A) I drank some alcohol to try and divert my mind from the depressed course it was on. It didn’t make me less depressed but it made me get more emotional and then I cried and it did make me feel better. And B) I smoked marijuana also to try and divert my mind from the same depressed course. It didn’t make me cry, it made me hungry so I got a little smile on my face and went into the kitchen and got some homemade buttered croutons I made the night before and ate them with a great deal of pleasurable feelings. Which of these two experiences would you pick to have if you were trying to alter your reality? I know B is my choice because why wouldn’t you pick to laugh and eat as a good answer to depression? Cry or Smile? I choose to smile!

Looking For The Aliens!

I awoke to the one sound that never fails to wake me up, the sound of the silence that follows when the timer on my television turns it off at 3 am in the morning. Most people need noise to wake them up but not me, my brain fills with loud disquieting thoughts when there are no background noises for it to focus on. I look out the window and the dark sky is filled with bright and shiny shimmering objects. There is a planet in view as well as a couple very bright stars that I presume are man made satellites, I notice that one of them seems to be slowly moving in my direction. My black cat Mojo appears out of the darkness of the room and sits down next to me and stares out the window with me although I doubted that he was looking at the stars. I said “wouldn’t it be cool if we saw aliens” to him since there was no one else in the house to talk to. He just looked at me with his beautiful green eyes and then he looked back out the window and so did I. Then I noticed that one of the stars that I thought was a satellite seemed like it was getting a little larger like it was moving in my direction. I went to the refrigerator and got something to drink and sat back down on the couch and looked out at the stars again. It still seemed like one of them was coming towards me, maybe it was a plane and not a satellite that was turning around in the sky getting ready to land. I was visited by aliens in my bedroom many years ago and I told them at that time I was not ready to meet them but I felt that it was an open ended invitation so after many years and after many things have happened to me I rethought my decision not to meet them so I went out eagerly seeking to find them after the many years passed and I began to realize my place in my friends and family’s lives is not as precious as I once thought it was, in fact I have found that I have no place in their lives anymore at all. Things change sometimes. With that my current journey begins. I walk out of my house to where I see the light coming from. My mind descends into the abyss of the murky fog that surrounds it, I am looking for the light but it seems to be evading my best efforts to locate it. I keep searching, surely what I want has got to be here somewhere, yet it still eludes me. Where are you I keep asking myself? My self does not answer me, so I keep on looking for a sign of why I was brought here to this place. Why did you take me if you won’t tell me why you want me? Still, no answer and it is very quiet here in this place that I do not know. I am surrounded by darkness but I still feel that I am not alone. Who is here watching me? They do not answer but I still know that I am not alone because after all I am the one who summoned them in the first place. Where are they? They brought me here, at my request perhaps, but they still brought me. Why aren’t they answering me? What is the purpose of bringing me here if they won’t talk to me? I do not understand. I walk on a little farther in the darkness and I see a dim light up ahead so I pursue it. When they first offered me the invitation to go with them I was not free to take them up on it but I am now totally unencumbered by anyone’s expectations now so why don’t they show themselves? I know who they are but I don’t know where they came from or what they want. They only offered to take me away from where I was when they came to me that one time a long time ago, they didn’t tell me what they were offering to take me to and now I want to know where that was. I keep walking and the light is still dim and far away and I wonder if I am going to make it to where the light is. My body feels heavy, as if something has a hold of it and is dragging it down but I am determined to make it to the light even if it is the last thing I do. I am almost there and I see figures standing in the darkness of the dim light I have been struggling to get to. Finally I am here. No, this can’t be, it makes no sense. I am looking at the faces of my dead boyfriend, my mother and my grandfather. Obviously I am in a dream. I asked the aliens to take me away and I guess I fell asleep and oh hell, I was just dreaming, at least I think I was dreaming. I saw the aliens then the aliens is me! But why should that surprise anyone?

The Living Nightmare of Benzopines!

I took diazepam, prescribed by my doctors, for about 25 years for the pain caused double scoliosis of my spine that first occurred when I was about 13 years old which was a side effect of the hereditary neuropathic disease that I was born with called Charcot Marie Tooth disease . No doctor ever told me that taking these would be something I would become so physically dependent on that when it quit working and I quit taking it that it would ruin my life and slowly kill me but that is what has been happening for the past year. I want to warn other people who are using benzopines in ignorance like I was that they will kill you. There appears to be almost no way to safely quit using them without the lack of taking them destroying your life. Here is a description of what is called Benzopine Withdrawal and it is worse than quitting Heroin, because it only takes a week or two to quit it.  This is from Wikepedia:

Benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome (updated 6-13/13)

Benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome—often abbreviated to benzo withdrawal—is the cluster of symptoms that emerge when a person who has taken benzodiazepines has developed a physical dependence and undergoes dosage reduction or discontinuation. It is characterized by often severe sleep disturbance, irritability, increased tension and anxiety, panic attacks, hand tremor, sweating, difficulty in concentration, confusion and cognitive difficulty, memory problems, dry retching and nausea, weight loss, palpitations, headache, muscular pain and stiffness, a host of perceptual changes, hallucinations, seizures, psychosis,^[1]and suicide^[2] (see "Signs and Symptoms" section below for full list). Further, these symptoms are notable for the manner in which they wax and wane and vary in severity from day to day or week by week instead of steadily decreasing in a straightforward linear manner.^[3]

It is a potentially serious condition, and is complex and often protracted in time course.[4][5] Not every long-term user will experience symptoms upon discontinuation, but the proportion of those who will has been variably estimated to be between 15% and 44%.^[6] Long-term use, defined as daily use for at least three months,^[7] is not desirable because of the associated increased risk of dependence,^[8] dose escalation, loss of efficacy, increased risk of accidents and falls, particularly for the elderly,^[9] as well as cognitive,^[10]neurological, and intellectual impairments.^[11] Use of short-acting hypnotics, while being effective at initiating sleep, worsen the second half of sleep due to withdrawal effects.^[12]Nevertheless, long-term users of benzodiazepines should not be forced to withdraw against their will.^[4]

Benzodiazepine withdrawal is similar to alcohol and barbiturate withdrawal syndromes.^[13] It can be severe and provoke life-threatening withdrawal symptoms, such as seizures,^[14]particularly with abrupt or over-rapid dosage reduction from high doses or long time users.^[4] A severe withdrawal response can nevertheless occur despite gradual dose reduction, or from relatively low doses in short time users,^[15] even after a single large dose in animal models.^[16][17] A minority of individuals will experience a protracted withdrawal syndrome whose symptoms may persist at a sub-acute level for months, or years after cessation of benzodiazepines. The likelihood of developing a protracted withdrawal syndrome can be minimized by a slow, gradual reduction in dosage.^[18]

Chronic exposure to benzodiazepines causes neural adaptations that counteract the drug's effects, leading to tolerance and dependence.^[19] Despite taking a constant therapeutic dose, long-term use of benzodiazepines may lead to the emergence of withdrawal-like symptoms, particularly between doses.^[20] When the drug is discontinued or the dosage reduced,withdrawal symptoms may appear and remain until the body reverses the physiological adaptations.^[21] These rebound symptoms may be identical to the symptoms for which the drug was initially taken, or may be part of discontinuation symptoms.^[22] In severe cases, the withdrawal reaction may exacerbate or resemble serious psychiatric and medical conditions, such as mania, schizophrenia, and, especially at high doses, seizure disorders.^[23] Failure to recognize discontinuation symptoms can lead to false evidence for the need to take benzodiazepines, which in turn leads to withdrawal failure and reinstatement of benzodiazepines, often to higher doses.^[23]

Awareness of the withdrawal reactions, individualized taper strategies according to withdrawal severity, the addition of alternative strategies such as reassurance and referral to benzodiazepine withdrawal support groups, all increase the success rate of withdrawal.

IF THAT ISN’T ENOUGH TO SCARE YOU TO DEATH IT SHOULD!!!!!!!!!!!

 I am so scared, I can’t function any more, I do not want to die but I can’t see this ending any other way right now.  There is no way I could ever have imagined this nightmarish life I am now trying to survive in my wildest dreams ever happening to me. I spent my whole life working from the age of 18 until I was forced to retire because the hereditary disease that I was born with forced me to six years ago and I took the early retirement of Social Security Disability, but I did work for over 30 years so it is just enough to squeak by on. Unfortunately that was not the worst that could happen to me, the valium withdrawals are what is killing me slowing and I am just trying to survive one hour at a time, I am not living because if I were living I would have fun and there is nothing fun in forcing yourself to survive. As tough as this is I still do not want to die, I have never contemplated suicide no matter how bad things have been but nothing in my life prepared me for how to deal with the brain damage caused by benzopine withdrawal and there is no way you could ever be prepared for it. Imagine your worst fears about not being able to walk, talk, sleep, eat and multiply them by three and you might be close to the reality. Imagine standing up and having your legs feel like rubber and then try to move your rubber legs, they bend just like rubber and you are filled with fear. What if they stay like rubber? That means I can’t even go to the store to get groceries. This brings panic as well it should! What do I do? I live alone and there is no one to take care of me or my pets and for good reasons I am freaking out. I guess if I was rich I could pay someone to take care of me and the animals but I am not rich and I don’t know how to hire someone to take care of us even if I was rich. I have never been more scared of anything in my whole life but I do really want to survive, there has got to be a way if there is a will, doesn’t there? I want my life back, I didn’t do anything wrong and I deserve this. What kind of a god would punish me for things that I didn’t do? I do not understand but I am not ready to quit trying to survive. There has got to be a way I can make it, there has to be because I never did anything wrong, I being punished for sins that were committed by my parents and how is that fair? I will survive, I have to, all of my pets are depending on me. I do not know what to do. If anyone reading this has survived this please let me know how you did it? Thank you.

 UPDATE: JULY 3, 2013

It has now been a year since I quit taking diazepam and for the last several weeks I am finally feeling somewhat stabilized. I don’t know how much I have lost as far as my muscles go that I can’t build back but at least I can start going forward. This is the most bizarre and scary thing I have ever gone through. If anyone else is going through this let me tell you that it does appear that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I sure hope the worst is over because a year in hell was very hard to make it through.

ANOTHER UPDATE: JULY 23, 2013

Good News,Bad News-the good news is that after a year of sometimes barely being able to walk, ringing in my ears so loud I could hardly hear the tv and my brain so spaced out I could watch the same program twice in a row and not remember a thing, I no longer have ringing in my ears and can mostly remember a program I watched. I do not have my body strength back but I am getting stronger. The bad news is that it took a year of my life and almost killed me. Al I can offer those of you going through this is that if you can manage to hang on it will get better, but not until after you almost lose everything. Unfortunately from reading everyone else's account of going through this that is the norm. If you are strong enough to make it through the year there is a light at the end and hopefully you won't have lost everything by the time you get there. I am glad I am on the other side coming out but I am far from done as far as reclaiming my life. At least now I do see some progress and I am hopeful, especially since I have cats and dogs depending on my survival for their survival. Without their love I would have never made it this far. To any of you going through this, or contemplating it I do recommend you do it even though it has been a nightmare but if you have a choice go off the benzopines slowly, but never go back on them if you can help it because it will just make the process take longer and you don't want that!  
Finally 9/10/13- I can now say with certainty that I am 90 % healed. This is the scariest and rockiest road I have ever traveled. I really had no faith that I was going to make to the other side but I am not a suicidal person so for me there was no other choice than to keep living one day at a time and I can say I have finally made it, and none of my pets died while I was struggling to take care of them, thank God because I would have felt even worse than I already did if they would have had to pay for what the doctor's in my life did to me. The ringing in my ears is totally gone, it went from being so loud I could barely hear the tv to a major annoyance and now it is totally gone. If you are going through Benzopine recovery let me tell you that you really will get better, but it will be a ride to hell and back. It is worth it to me because I think the alternative was death, and I do enjoy living. Good luck and if you have any questions send them to me!