R
Revert2015
Guest
Hello -
I normally wouldn’t burden people in a forum with this kind of thing, but I haven’t found a spiritual director in my area yet. I don’t even know if this matter is appropriate to discuss with a spiritual director, but I’m hoping that it’s ok here.
Some very quick background. I’m almost twelve years sober, a recovering alcoholic. I became a Christian at the same time I got sober. I’ve spent many of those years bouncing different denominations, and even had a 2 year hiatus where I explored new age and zen buddhism. Those 2 years were short lived and after a series of events, I’ve now come back to the Catholic church after being gone for 30 years. So, that’s really good news!
What I need to mention is that about a year before I got sober, I began to have panic attacks and OCD irrational fears. These continued on well into sobriety. I never fully addressed these issues, and they always just were an issue that lingered in the background. In about my eighth year of sobriety, I had a situational depression due to many stressors all at once, and were complicated by medicines I was given at a trip to the ER. I just kind of crashed, and the depression was way worse than any I had at the end of my drinking or getting sober. Long story short, it got so bad that I had really bad insomnia, and ended up taking a leave from work to get help at a local partial-day program. They did what they thought was best and prescribed me a sleeping pill and a mild antidepressant. Sadly, these medicines only made things worse, which is no surprise since I am now extremely sensitive to anything since I’ve gotten sober. The sleep aid especially, Lunesta, sent my life into a tail spin. I was advised to discontinue it by cutting in half and going from there, only problem was that my body had already become habituated to it. Upon trying to discontinue it, things got even worse and I went into a hellish withdrawal for many months. Throughout all of this, I began to suffer from depersonalization and derealisation, which is a very common experience for those withdrawing off medicine. I had never once experienced depersonlisation until I put a psych drug in my body. This symptom is very often accompanied by existential ruminations and worries. What was most troubling about these ruminations is I had NEVER questioned these things before. They were never questions I had wrestled with, and yet here they were. Come to find out that many people experience these when they have DP/DR. it has now been over year since I discontinued the anti depressant, and over 3 since I discontinued the Lunesta. I feel TONS better, and the bakers dozen of bizzarre symptoms that I experienced during withdrawal have disappeared. All but a touch of the DP/DR and these darn ruminations. What brings me to share this in this forum is that I feel like I’m losing my faith because of this experience. Because I wanted to address the strange questions that were arising, I’ve done alot of exploring into Christian apologetics. That is a good thing, the only problem is that almost always they will address an opposing viewpoint such as atheism, or buddhism, etc. And hearing what those other worldviews had to say just raised more questions in me. A therapist I’ve been working with says that it’s common for people who have a traumatic experience to question everything they had at one point come to terms with. I hope he’s right.
The hardest thing about this all is that I once had what you might call a childlike faith, in my first 8 years of sobriety. Now I feel like I’m riddled with doubt, and I feel like I’ve read too much other stuff in an attempt to address these questions. It’s almost like in an attempt to seek reassurance I’ve made things worse. I’m hoping that there are those here that can relate, and I’m hoping someone might have some advice. One positive is that I did find help for anxiety throughout all of this, and it has helped tremendously. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be free of these existential obsessions. There’s a part of me that says that I need to just try and move on and focus on Jesus and it will all be ok in the long run. I’ve just never wrestled with so much uncertainty in my life.
I normally wouldn’t burden people in a forum with this kind of thing, but I haven’t found a spiritual director in my area yet. I don’t even know if this matter is appropriate to discuss with a spiritual director, but I’m hoping that it’s ok here.
Some very quick background. I’m almost twelve years sober, a recovering alcoholic. I became a Christian at the same time I got sober. I’ve spent many of those years bouncing different denominations, and even had a 2 year hiatus where I explored new age and zen buddhism. Those 2 years were short lived and after a series of events, I’ve now come back to the Catholic church after being gone for 30 years. So, that’s really good news!
What I need to mention is that about a year before I got sober, I began to have panic attacks and OCD irrational fears. These continued on well into sobriety. I never fully addressed these issues, and they always just were an issue that lingered in the background. In about my eighth year of sobriety, I had a situational depression due to many stressors all at once, and were complicated by medicines I was given at a trip to the ER. I just kind of crashed, and the depression was way worse than any I had at the end of my drinking or getting sober. Long story short, it got so bad that I had really bad insomnia, and ended up taking a leave from work to get help at a local partial-day program. They did what they thought was best and prescribed me a sleeping pill and a mild antidepressant. Sadly, these medicines only made things worse, which is no surprise since I am now extremely sensitive to anything since I’ve gotten sober. The sleep aid especially, Lunesta, sent my life into a tail spin. I was advised to discontinue it by cutting in half and going from there, only problem was that my body had already become habituated to it. Upon trying to discontinue it, things got even worse and I went into a hellish withdrawal for many months. Throughout all of this, I began to suffer from depersonalization and derealisation, which is a very common experience for those withdrawing off medicine. I had never once experienced depersonlisation until I put a psych drug in my body. This symptom is very often accompanied by existential ruminations and worries. What was most troubling about these ruminations is I had NEVER questioned these things before. They were never questions I had wrestled with, and yet here they were. Come to find out that many people experience these when they have DP/DR. it has now been over year since I discontinued the anti depressant, and over 3 since I discontinued the Lunesta. I feel TONS better, and the bakers dozen of bizzarre symptoms that I experienced during withdrawal have disappeared. All but a touch of the DP/DR and these darn ruminations. What brings me to share this in this forum is that I feel like I’m losing my faith because of this experience. Because I wanted to address the strange questions that were arising, I’ve done alot of exploring into Christian apologetics. That is a good thing, the only problem is that almost always they will address an opposing viewpoint such as atheism, or buddhism, etc. And hearing what those other worldviews had to say just raised more questions in me. A therapist I’ve been working with says that it’s common for people who have a traumatic experience to question everything they had at one point come to terms with. I hope he’s right.
The hardest thing about this all is that I once had what you might call a childlike faith, in my first 8 years of sobriety. Now I feel like I’m riddled with doubt, and I feel like I’ve read too much other stuff in an attempt to address these questions. It’s almost like in an attempt to seek reassurance I’ve made things worse. I’m hoping that there are those here that can relate, and I’m hoping someone might have some advice. One positive is that I did find help for anxiety throughout all of this, and it has helped tremendously. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be free of these existential obsessions. There’s a part of me that says that I need to just try and move on and focus on Jesus and it will all be ok in the long run. I’ve just never wrestled with so much uncertainty in my life.
