I realized I had a drinking problem when I couldn’t stop.
Okay. Let’s back up a bit. I realized I had a cocaine problem, so in the spring of 1998, I gave up my on-again-off-again 20-year love affair with coke.
Once that happened, the whole better-living-through-chemistry balance was off-kilter. Suddenly I developed a tolerance to alcohol. I could have a glass of wine and lose the next 12 hours – which is very scary and not recommended. I could drink a bottle of tequila and not feel a buzz at all, which just made me angry. What the fuck?
It wasn’t fun anymore. I made promises to myself almost daily that I would not drink, which only made it worse. Through a series of unpleasant events, I realized that I had a drinking problem.
And I couldn’t stop. Until I did.
November 3, 1998 is the day I got sober. I haven’t had a drink or a recreational drug since then.
I wish I could remember when I took my first Klonopin.
With the alcohol out of my body for the first time in years, my childhood anxiety – which had been hiding behind the years of being numbed out – kicked into overdrive. I started having panic attacks. I felt my throat closing up. My heart fluttered weakly or boomed incessantly. I occasionally shit my pants.
Being a woman in my 30s at the time, with a full-time job and two small kids, I needed something in order to function. I was a shivering, shaking, shitting mess every time I left the house.
My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist. I was open about my (very recent) history of addiction and recovery, and he wrote me a prescription for clonazepam, with the brand name of Klonopin.
“It’s safe and non-addictive,” he said. “It has a long half-life, so you’ll be fine.”
I had no idea what that meant, having never been a pill person, but boy, after that first dose, in a couple of hours, I felt like ME. Like Bridget again. For the first time in a long time.
I was able to function. I was able to sleep. That medicine changed my life and made it better for a long, long time.
At some point in the first couple of years, I remember hearing that Stevie Nicks had gotten addicted to Klonopin. I think I rolled my eyes when I heard it – fucking rock stars, I thought. They gotta go and give this miracle drug a bad rep.
But it made me pay attention. I understood the danger so, even though I was prescribed 1.5 mg a day, half a milligram three times a day, I always took less.
I have never taken over the prescribed dosage.
What I didn’t know was what we know now: that benzodiazepines are only truly efficient for a 10- to 30-day window. That they should never be prescribed for long-term use.
And, as I found out, can almost kill you when you stop taking it.
But back then, with dial-up internet and not a lot of information out there, I didn’t even know I was taking a benzodiazepine. I didn’t know anything except that it made me functional. Who would question that?
If I only knew what was ahead….