@Stretched - Last year when I was dx'd with "severe idiopathic polyneuroapathy" the doctor offered to prescribe something for pain. I think he was kinda surprised when I declined because my pain levels aren't all that bad. The neuropathy causes my feet and legs to be numb, vibrate, and are so sensitive that I can't go barefoot in the house. I feel every crumb on the floor (crazy, when they're numb at the same time!)
Plus my balance is so awful I take a cane when I go out. But I'm wondering if the LDN is keeping the neuropathic pain part away. Just a thought.
Interesting 2Cor.12:19. This was/is one of my more severe and long-lasting klonopin withdrawal symptoms.
A few years prior to beginning my taper, I was having increasing paresthesia in my lower legs. As my fast taper progressed into about Month 2 or 3, it evolved into a severe sensation of having my legs perpetually plugged into electrified water. No pain per se, just forever in a jacuzzi or vigorously bubbling brook. The vibrations and tinglings feel rooted in and emanating from my bones, not just on the surface. For weeks at a time, especially in the evenings, the sensations would travel up into my hips, pelvis and torso.
But thankfully, after 3 years off the poison, it is finally easing up quite a bit. It flares again at times, but eventually fades to mild. It's there more often than not (like right now, comparatively mild), but I've been surprised to notice it's almost gone for short periods some days now. So I have little doubt my 10 years on the benzo is the underlying culprit, and hoping that it may wholly resolve (if I live that long - hah!).
Similar goes for the worst (by far) symptom I had/have, still crippling at times but thankfully for 'only' weeks at a time, not endless months-to-years: neck pressure /squeezing sensations, like an accordion, from top of head to under collar bone and shoulders. The base of my cervical spine feels like a constant feed of couple hundred volts into my neck, which travels through my spine (meeting up with that neuropathy in the legs and feet). Never-ending. Agitating, aggravating, like an annoying big brother with his fingers on the back of your neck that never lets go, ever! I can see where unrecognized interdose w/d in some folks would cause violent or suicidal tendencies with this symptom! Causes severe cognition problems, brain = rotton pea soup. Not to mention exhaustion and collapse (which may be the toll it's taking on ME?).
But some of it is slowly resolving, in the classic "waves & windows" fashion. With this particular symptom (though they all feel interconnected at this point), the marked cognition decline which I mistook for rapidly progressing ME fog, was the only thing besides much more 'fatigue' I'd really noted while on the drug. I had never had this pressure/squeezing in my long life, or the chronic contracted neck and shoulder muscles until starting about half way through (about Week 8) my fast klonopin w/d. (Recently, the pressure travels up to my ears, mouth and back of head, which seems to be dominant in a lot of folks going through w/d and post w/d. But mildly, so far.) I'm left with chronic neck pain I never had in my life (feels like tendonitis), that started after roughly the second year of this BS....
I can only guess what these symptoms would feel like going through a very slow taper, or if they'd even be recognized as w/d symptoms. Undoubtedly they vary from person to person.
