Can Fibromyalgia Be Caused by Anxiety or Quitting Zoloft?
When I attempted to quit the Ativan, I started having a lot of pain in my body. Specifically, the pain was in my shoulders and chest. I get the pain when I am noticeably anxious, and sometimes when I’m not. For a while, the pain was making me stress out even more, because I was worried that I had lung cancer, pneumonia, you name it! I finally figured out that it was related to the anxiety, which is good, because I could have spent thousands having a bunch of tests done for no good reason.
Today, I’m having that pain. I’ve had it almost all day. Significantly, it started when I wrote about something that bothers me a lot in my journal. My day has been fantastic since then, but the pain pretty much persists.
I’m keeping track of my cycle. I should get my period in a couple of days, and for me, that’s a huge deal when it comes to the panic and anxiety stuff. I’m hoping that this is related to PMS, and that I don’t have something yukky like fibromyalgia, which all signs point to being caused by stress in many cases.
It turns out that stress can cause brain shrinkage in the frontal region. This leads to memory loss, which is, in my case most likely, exacerbated by Ativan use. Ativan is just awful for memory. Fortunately, you are supposed to be able to regenerate those neurons by meditating. I still don’t have the meditation thing down yet, though, not that I’ve been trying.
As far the Zoloft goes, so far, so good. I did wake up at 4:30 this morning, but was able to go back to sleep and had some fantastic vivid dreams. No yukky side effects. I’ve been divided my minuscule dose of .125 in half between morning and night. When I’m not so sensitive to it anymore, I’ll just take it in the morning.
Man, I wish I’d never quit the Zoloft. Hint: If you’ve taken it for years, perhaps you should just stay on it. If you’re not on it, you might not want to get on it, unless you don’t mind being in for the long haul.
