О язве двенадцатиперстной кишки-About duodenal ulcer

1. Hold your head up—you are brave. What has happened is not your fault.

2. Do your ‘homework’—breathing exercises, diet, exercise, relaxation, cultivating optimistic thoughts.

3. Remember it has taken you a long time to get into this state. Recovery won’t come overnight.

4. You are the only person who knows what it feels like to be in your body. Ignore the person who says you should be well after two weeks.

5. Smile—the real you is still there!

Holistic Healing

Often great emphasis is placed on the physical, emotional, and mental health of the individual. Spiritual well-being is ignored. ‘How can that possibly affect the way I am feeling?’ Some believe that this is the most important area to explore.

Many have discovered or renewed their faith in God by the experience of nervous illness.

In the search for inner peace and relief from ‘disease’, some people have found spiritual healing the answer. Following the discipline of yoga or meditation has been the way for others.

Suffering Is Not All Bad

It can be a time for learning, and because of new insight, a time for reaching out to those in distress around you.

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Aching muscles, cramps, and joint pains are very common. The drugs have artificially relaxed them for so long that they have forgotten how to work efficiently. The stiff, sore heavy limbs will recover. Some people say they feel as though someone is pulling them back when they are walking. Massage, yoga, swimming and warm baths are all helpful. Accept that your muscles need to be reeducated and work hard by slowly building up movement.

The muscles of the neck and shoulders are particularly troublesome. You may find yourself walking around with your shoulders almost touching your ears. Ask your family to gently press your shoulders down when they see you doing this, or pretend that you have a heavy weight in each hand. Sitting on a hard chair, pushing down on your hands and slightly raising your buttocks may help to exercise neck muscles. Sitting up in a chair with a covered hot water bottle between the shoulders can be helpful.

Some doctors prescribe quinine for the muscle spasm. Perhaps the joint pains can be explained by the strain resulting from abnormal muscle action.

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If you feel that the lack of sleep is seriously holding you back, your doctor may prescribe a sedative (just to give you a rest) for a short time. Check to make sure that it is not in the benzodiazepine group—i.e. Valium, Librium, Ativan, etc. (See tables on pages 100-104).

The dreams and nightmares that you are flooded with during withdrawal are just your mind doing work that it should have done months or years before.

The dreams are often described as evil. They include: violence; disaster; disturbed sexual behaviour. People who are distressed by incestuous or homosexual dreams feel greatly comforted when they learn it is a common experience in withdrawal, and will soon pass.

Recounting your dreams or writing them down when you wake sometimes helps to make you less anxious about them. Trust your mind to do the work. Your normal dreaming and sleeping pattern will return.

Those who suffer withdrawal insomnia say it is the most difficult symptom to cope with. So often it is said ‘If only I could get a good night’s sleep, I could cope with the days’. Sleeping only a couple of hours a night in early withdrawal is not uncommon. Although it is very hard to bear, try not to become too anxious about it. Withdrawal insomnia is a particularly severe form of insomnia—time is the only cure.

Lying in warm water or in a warm bed can give your muscles the rest they need. Listen to relaxation tapes, and practise abdominal breathing. Try to quieten your racing thoughts by concentrating on feeling the breath entering and leaving one nostril. Every time your concentration wanders away to your jumbled thoughts, just gently bring it back again to concentrating on your breath. Do not get angry with yourself for not even being able to do this simple task, just keep going for five minutes, then try later. This simple meditation is helpful if you can discipline yourself to do it regularly. Some people have found a radio with headphones very helpful; it cuts out external sound and helps to slow down racing thoughts.

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If you consider what the drugs do, i.e. control anxiety, relax nerves and muscles, help you sleep, and slow down heartbeats and breathing, it is understandable that your body will complain loudly when they are cut down or stopped.

The opposite of the desired effect can be expected (in some people) for a time. This is called the rebound reaction.

Do not be alarmed by this list of symptoms. You may only experience a couple of them, particularly if you reduce carefully:

increased anxiety, increased depression: insomnia: panic attacks: suicidal feelings: agoraphobia: outbursts of rage flu-like symptoms: hyperactivity: craving for tablets hallucinations (seeing and hearing things): confusion headaches: dizziness: sweating: palpitations: slow pulse tight chest: abdominal pain: nausea: nightmares: restlessness: increased sensitivity to light, noise, touch and smell: sore eyes: blurred vision: creeping sensation in the skin, loss of interest in sex: impotence: pain in jaw or face: sore tongue: metallic taste: pain in the shoulders and neck: sore heavy limbs: pins and needles: jelly legs: shaking. Fits have been reported but only where drugs have been stopped abruptly.

Remember that some people don’t get any of the above symptoms and also that there is now much more help than in previous years for those who do have discomfort.

Why some people become physically dependent on tranquillizers (or any other substance), and others don’t is unknown. It is possible that people who become addicted to benzodiazepines are those who are also allergic to them. Dr Richard Mackarness, in his book A Little of What You Fancy, describes masked allergies in alcohol and cigarette dependence. When even small doses of the substance are taken the masked allergy is under control. There are certainly many allergic-type symptoms in withdrawal, and they appear after complete withdrawal.

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