[Excerpts from a Salon article on battling drug addiction]
Sunday, Apr 5, 2015 05:00 PM PDT by Ashley Zlatopolsky , Salon
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/my_r...n_and_halcion/
My road to hell was paved with Xanax (and Klonopin, and Ativan, and Halcion)
The pills were a release from my crushing anxiety. But the more I took, the more I struggled with a new pain
The Rolling Stones’ “Beggars Banquet” and “Let It Bleed” were the soundtracks to my addictions. I’d play the two records over and over, downing pills with a bottle of wine. Sometimes I’d get so high that the record would skip for an hour and I wouldn’t even notice. In rare moments of hopefulness, I’d listen
to Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours.” I found Fleetwood Mac, especially Stevie Nicks, to be highly inspirational when nothing in my own life inspired me. Nicks conquered a Klonopin addiction, and though she didn’t write “Don’t Stop” (Christine McVie did), the lyrics convinced me, however temporarily, that maybe one day I could conquer my own addiction, too. I’d play the song over and over, dreaming of a day with no anxiety and no pills.
“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow / don’t stop, it’ll soon be here / it’ll be better than before / yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone…”
* * *
Stevie Nicks said getting clean from her Klonopin addiction was like somebody opening up a door and pushing her into hell, but what she forgot to mention is that getting clean from a Klonopin (in my case, Klonopin, Xanax, Ambien, Ativan and Halcion) addiction is like somebody opening up a door, pushing you into hell, locking you in, and throwing away the key with a smirk. You become disassociated from everything real, tinkering on the edge of insanity as depression and anxiety creep up behind you and dare to push you over the edge.