Withdrawal
This was originally posted elsewhere years ago with the title Withdrawal and then reposted somewhere with the title Managing Withdrawal (I think around seven years ago and I probably added the intro and footer at that time). Other than these first two sentences and correcting some typos and formating issues, it is unedited.
I wrote it in part because if you have cystic fibrosis and are trying to start using more natural remedies and fewer drugs, getting off the drugs will be a very big piece of the process, taking years. The main thing you first have to do is start feeding yourself properly so you aren't following "the normal progression of CF" which is basically an ugly downward spiral.
I talked to someone once who had taken some of my advice (for example, using coconut oil and sea salt) for their child with CF. This person stated the child "was not taking less medication" but was having fewer exacerbations, thus was in the ER less. In other words, they were still taking all of their maintenance drugs, same as always, but did require fewer "extra" drugs, like anti-biotics and steroids, for exacerbations. (In other words: Yes, they were, in actual fact, taking fewer drugs.)
I told this person that the first drugs I stopped taking were all the "extra" drugs -- the "extra" dose of Advil because I was having an especially hard day and my usual maintenance dose did not work, the drugs prescribed at the ER for exacerbations and so on. Your first goal has to be to establish a relatively stable baseline. Don't even think of cutting back on your maintenance drugs until you first stop living from crisis to crisis and stop needing "extra" drugs every time you turn around. And although I know it is really hard to mentally count that as "taking less medication," the reality is that if you are having fewer exacerbations, you are taking less medication.
Even if you never get to a point where you can cut back on your prescribed maintenance drugs, eating better and avoiding exposures so you don't need all the "extra" drugs will still dramatically improve your quality of life. You need to learn to count those seemingly invisible successes. Getting well with CF is a very long haul and it is hard, like trench warfare. You cannot get through it if you do not learn to count the avoided crises and the avoided drugs when cataloging where you stand.
Since the summer of 2002, I've gotten off about 8 prescription drugs and then gotten off most of the OTC drugs I took after that. When I make major changes to my diet, I typically go through withdrawal as well. So withdrawal is commmonplace in my life in recent years and I have learned to cope with it pretty effectively. In my experience, doctors generally don't do a good job of helping people get off medication. From things I read on email lists, it appears that most people don't know how to effectively cope with it. So here is some of what I know about successfully making the transition off of all the drugs.
I will add that my experience is that "life is chemistry" and any changes in my daily routine can come with health consequences, some of them apparently a form of withdrawal. I tend to be a creature of habit and I tend to make changes as close to one at a time as I can manage, in part so that when things get wonky, I have some hope of identifying the cause of the problem and, thus, being able to do something constructive about it.
Related:
I wrote it in part because if you have cystic fibrosis and are trying to start using more natural remedies and fewer drugs, getting off the drugs will be a very big piece of the process, taking years. The main thing you first have to do is start feeding yourself properly so you aren't following "the normal progression of CF" which is basically an ugly downward spiral.
I talked to someone once who had taken some of my advice (for example, using coconut oil and sea salt) for their child with CF. This person stated the child "was not taking less medication" but was having fewer exacerbations, thus was in the ER less. In other words, they were still taking all of their maintenance drugs, same as always, but did require fewer "extra" drugs, like anti-biotics and steroids, for exacerbations. (In other words: Yes, they were, in actual fact, taking fewer drugs.)
I told this person that the first drugs I stopped taking were all the "extra" drugs -- the "extra" dose of Advil because I was having an especially hard day and my usual maintenance dose did not work, the drugs prescribed at the ER for exacerbations and so on. Your first goal has to be to establish a relatively stable baseline. Don't even think of cutting back on your maintenance drugs until you first stop living from crisis to crisis and stop needing "extra" drugs every time you turn around. And although I know it is really hard to mentally count that as "taking less medication," the reality is that if you are having fewer exacerbations, you are taking less medication.
Even if you never get to a point where you can cut back on your prescribed maintenance drugs, eating better and avoiding exposures so you don't need all the "extra" drugs will still dramatically improve your quality of life. You need to learn to count those seemingly invisible successes. Getting well with CF is a very long haul and it is hard, like trench warfare. You cannot get through it if you do not learn to count the avoided crises and the avoided drugs when cataloging where you stand.
Since the summer of 2002, I've gotten off about 8 prescription drugs and then gotten off most of the OTC drugs I took after that. When I make major changes to my diet, I typically go through withdrawal as well. So withdrawal is commmonplace in my life in recent years and I have learned to cope with it pretty effectively. In my experience, doctors generally don't do a good job of helping people get off medication. From things I read on email lists, it appears that most people don't know how to effectively cope with it. So here is some of what I know about successfully making the transition off of all the drugs.
- Sugar:
- IF sugar is not a big issue, it can be used to take the edge off the pain and misery of withdrawal. One weekend when I was going through really bad withdrawal, going cold-turkey off antihistamines after moving to a cleaner housing situation, my son gave me a single sugar cookie. He was refusing to give me Advil because he didn't want more medication in my system and his option was to give me one (and only one) cookie. (I may have had three or four cookies over the course of the weekend. I just mean he gave me a single cookie the way you might give a single Advil. He did not give me a plate of cookies.) It did make me much less miserable. Sugar in small amounts can sometimes take the edge off pain. Just don't let that become a new addiction and, of course, don't eat so much of it that you screw up your blood sugar.
- Sweating it out:
- I find that showering more often and changing my clothes more often and cleaning my sleep area more often helps when I am going through withdrawal. During withdrawal, I find that I sweat out a lot of stuff and it gets on my skin, in my clothes, etc. Cleaning those things more often can help gently support the process of getting the junk out of the system.
- Support Drugs
- Sometimes it's not possible to get off one drug without taking another drug to help support your body through the process. It took me three tries to get off steroids. I wasn't successful until one friend suggested guaifenisen to help support my lungs and another friend told me that I really needed to ween myself off the drug instead of going cold turkey. Getting off of steroids is extremely hard on the body. It was the hardest drug for me to get off. I couldn't successfully do it without first putting some supports in place.
- Weening
- If at all possible to arrange this, gradually reducing the dose over time is the gentlest way to get off medication. If you have a serious medical condition (like cystic fibrosis), going cold turkey can cause an exacerbation which lands you in the ER and gets you prescribed yet more drugs. There are times when going cold turkey is the best thing to do. But most of the time, gradually reducing the dosage is the best way out of this trap.
- Going Cold Turkey
- Cold turkey can work if the reason you were taking the drug has suddenly ended. When I moved to a cleaner housing situation, I immediately stopped taking the antihistamines I had been on for months. The move to cleaner housing was going to be a crisis anyway -- a form of withdrawal, actually -- and you can't move to a new home gradually. You do it all at once. So there really wasn't a means to avoid "cold turkey". It also meant that the reason I was taking antihistamines had suddenly ceased to exist. So although withdrawal that weekend was dreadful, it did not cause me a medical crisis requiring a trip to the emergency room. I laid on the floor in a darkened room (light sensitivity) and was a basket case for two days. But no exacerbation of my medical condition occurred.
- Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
- I have noticed that getting off medication is often not a "once and for all" thing. It is really common for me to stop taking medication and be fine without it for a few weeks, then go back on it at a lower dose than what I was taking before. Then I quit again at some point. I might go back on it yet again, usually at an even lower dose than before. I think the mechanism here is that as I repair my body, I then need less of the drug. At first, there is so much lingering in my system that I can do without and still have enough to get the effect I need. Then when it drops below some threshold, I have to resupply, but at a lower dose. I guess this is a slightly different version of weening. I mention it in part because I used to feel like a huge failure when I would get off a drug temporarily and then start taking it again. Eventually I realized that I usually went back on it at a lower dose and it was, in fact, forward progress.
- Fixing The Underlying Problem
- This is the crux of the matter: You can't just stop taking a drug. You first have to resolve the underlying problem that causes you to need that drug. Of the eight or so prescription medications I once took, about five of them had anti-inflammatory properties as either their primary or secondary purpose. When I realized the connection between acidity and inflammation and began working on getting the acidity under control, that allowed me to gradually take fewer anti-inflammatory drugs. Digestive enzymes are not technically a drug, but my son and I got off of them after we added coconut oil and sea salt and reduced yeast in our diet. I had to do a lot more than that to heal my gut and it took me longer to get off the digestive enzymes than it took him. But the principle is the same: Healing the gut meant we no longer needed to take pills with our meals.
- Listening To My Body
- As I gradually heal, I often find that I just forget to take medication (or supplements) or I remember it two hours later than usual, etc. These days, I view such incidents as indicators that my body doesn't need as much of whatever I am forgetting to take. My usual response is to lower the dosage. It is a very natural, organic form of weening. There is no plan or schedule. I just pay attention to what my body is telling me about what it needs and take less of something I am needing less of. This goes hand in hand with the point above: If I am fixing the underlying problem, that is when I find myself just not needing so much of it until eventually I don't need it at all.
I will add that my experience is that "life is chemistry" and any changes in my daily routine can come with health consequences, some of them apparently a form of withdrawal. I tend to be a creature of habit and I tend to make changes as close to one at a time as I can manage, in part so that when things get wonky, I have some hope of identifying the cause of the problem and, thus, being able to do something constructive about it.
Related:
