#11: Headaches and Body Aches
March 26th, 2001. (Basic Facts - continued)
I wasn’t going to list this one and the next one because they seem so obvious, but I might as well cover all the bases here.
Headaches? Yes. Bad headaches? Yes. Really bad headaches? Yes. Headaches go along with everything I’ve listed here. There’s no way around not having headaches. The body aches became particularly painful after my withdrawal. Some people don’t get this and some people do. I did. As I write this (on March 26th, 2001), I still have the body aches to a degree. For instance, I have to wear deep-soled slippers around the house now because I have become painfully sensitive to the vibration of my heels hitting the ground as I walk; it leaves me feeling a dull ache throughout my entire body that I’ve had to take a special pain medication for (regular pain relievers were useless). It hasn’t been easy (sometimes it’s like living in the Twilight Zone), but it’s slowly getting better with time.
P.S. (Sept. 2006): The headaches, body aches, fatigue and sleep disturbances that go along with Paxil withdrawal seem similar to those of fibromyalgia (FM). The cause of FM accorrding to the National [US] Fibromyalgia Association:
Most researchers agree that FM is a disorder of central processing with neuroendocrine / neurotransmitter dysregulation. The FM patient experiences pain amplification due to abnormal sensory processing in the central nervous system. An increasing number of scientific studies now show multiple physiological abnormalities in the FM patient, including… low levels of blood flow to the thalamus region of the brain… [and] low levels of serotonin and tryptophan…
The muscle pain I experienced during my withdrawal didn’t go away until about 2002, and even today I still feel a residual stiffness in my back and neck. I tried yoga but didn’t maintain the practice. I probably should have stuck with it.