Leaps and Bounds
Improvements and progress as I taper
In a way, change happens very gradually, but at the same time, it happens in leaps. Somehow both conditions are true. Like, I’m amazed at some of the ways I’m still struggling three years into my taper, but then there are other ways that I’ve seen drastic improvement and ‘night and day’ change.
There are two big differences that come to mind that represent progress, from disorder to health and strength. One of them happened recently, around the time when I made the cut from 10 x 2 mg of Valium a week to 9 x 2 mg a week. It was a big difference in my relationship with sleep. For the last at least 2 years and probably longer, I couldn’t sleep after 5 am. Every day I experience intense fatigue and then every night I can’t sleep, but then also, I can’t just have a nap during the day. I used to be able to do that, but part of my condition these days is that I just can’t sleep during the day. But then that has changed in the last few weeks. I get up at 5 am to walk the dogs and then I can actually go back to sleep again for a while after that.
The other change I’ve noticed is to do with my reliance on Valium. I could measure this in a variety of ways but one of the most striking is that, say a year ago, whenever I left the house — even to go for a run or go shopping — I needed to take some Valium with me just…