You can be addicted, and not know it!  In the first place, I’m not a Doctor or even close to being one, but . . .

I just spent a month beginning to control an addiction.  I’m far from the first one to do such a thing, but I betcha I’m one of the few who didn’t even know they were addicted, and what’s more thought all I’d have to do is just stop taking the dang pill and that would be that.

How foolish, but this all began quite a while ago, when we weren’t very aware of side-effects and I wasn’t computer savvy enough to know how much info Google can offer and reveal.  But I sure do now, and today as soon as I’m given a new prescription, I go to my ‘trusted friend’ and find what the  good and bad effects will be.  Maybe I wasn’t listening way back then, but I don’t think I was ever told that Valium, now known as Diazepam, is addictive. Or what ‘addiction’ really means.

And anyway, I was only taking One-Fourth of a pill each day, and that dose is about the size of two pin-heads, so what was the big deal?

Well. I’ll tell you, it is a big deal.  I was having a few problems I didn’t like, thought I was into Depression, and that small pill, plus a caution to ‘watch my diet’ seemed to take care of the matter.  Now, if I’d ‘googled’ it, and found the ‘bad’ side of that Pill, I’d have been not so heedless.

An awfully lot can be learned from the computer, and in that manner, slowly began to sense that maybe my problems were the result of a blood imbalance and its many unwanted side effects.  Well, yes, I’d been told to ‘watch my diet’, but was never told what ‘watching my diet’ meant.

So, I blundered along with what I thought was border-line Depression until one day I told my friend Rita about it and she, who is a 39 year, healthy, survivor of Hyperglycemia (too little insulin), and who has learned an awful lot about blood imbalance, while coping with her own body.  She told me my words sounded as if I had Hypoglycemia, (too much Insulin), and she gave me a few instructions on what to and what not to eat, and see what happened.  Simple things that, if she were right or wrong, could do no harm. 

Now, remember I’m no medical specialist, but with talking to Rita, I found that  Hyperglycemia is the fancy name for Diabetes, and Hypoglycemia is the opposite.  Simply put, the first has too little  Insulin and the other more than enough.

It changed my world, for within two or three days I was a new woman and now, if I’m careless and forget what the good-and-bad foods are for me, my body tells me. 

Again I go back to Google, and if you’re just not feeling ‘up to par’, not much energy, a bit woozy, think you might need new glasses, look up Hypoglycemia and a new world might open up for you, as it did for me. There’s plenty of expert help on too little insulin, but never once was I told about too much insulin until Rita, from her own long-time experience with Diabetes, showed me how a ‘simple’ blood imbalance can cause havoc to the body.

Anyway, anyway, I now keep track of what I do/don’t eat but getting off the Diazepam, even slowly, as I am doing, is not fun, and the first month when I cut my dosage down a bit, I wondered if I would die.  Sound extreme? 

Well, hope you don’t ever have to find out.  It isn’t a pill, such as aspirin, that can be casually tossed into your body, and my doctor of quite a few years ago (who knows where he/she now is) might not have known either.  Oh well, now I just consult either Dr. Rita, Dr. Ethel, or Google. Joke, joke, joke.  But it is no joke for me, so with the help of a licensed doctor, I’m coming to terms with starting to get off my addiction.

Don’t try it.  Or better yet, don’t get addicted in the first place.  I’m about half off and am crossing my fingers about the other half.  Wish me luck.