I'll get the question out of the way first:
Does anyone have conflicting results of how they feel after exercise? For example some days during and after lifting weights and/or cardio I feel great and high on endorphins. My anxiety will practically be whisked away. But other times during and after exercise I feel really anxious. Like the adrenaline didn't go through the proper.... tubes? I don't know. Does this happen to anyone else? Is it just related to the amygdala and there's nothing I can do to fix it or is it related to the cortex and I can train the brain to recognize it's not some sort of threat?
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Anyways yeah I just wanted to vent in hopes it will relieve some, even just a little bit of anxiety. Perhaps I can see yalls insights to my situation too.
A brief background: Had depression since I was 10, when I was 19 I drank too much and went to the hospital where I puked it all out. The day after that I was helping my mother garden and decided to smoke some weed and got hit with my first panic attack. After that I joined this forum. Fast forward maybe 4 years and my anxiety is better, but I decide to start drinking caffeine - which really jacked up my nervous system. Took some years to heal after that. Eventually I arrive to a few months ago where I was doing quite dandy on my 1mg of Klonopin a day. I got stupid again and decided to have just a little sip of caffeine and of course next thing you know I was drinking quite a lot and dampening it out with my Klonopin. This lead to me taking more than I was supposed to until the point where I ran out and had 5 days until my next RX was filled. I freaked out and called my psych. He told me he wouldn't give me more. Understandable. It's my fault. I didn't cold turkey off of it but I did a suddenly massive reduction in how much I was taking (1/4th for 2 days and then 1/8th)
...on the third day on reduced dose I woke up in complete agony from Klonopin withdrawal. Words really can't describe how awful it is. Well, eh, I guess they can. Imagine you have a terrible flu but don't feel hot or cold nor does your body hurt. Now imagine with that flu-like symptoms your whole body is lit on fire to the point where you feel like you need to pace back and forth to get the flames to calm down. Ok, now add on this: sometimes the fire gets so hot that you start to solidify, and you completely freeze up as if trapped in a cacoon. Now if that's not enough you lose your appetite. You lose your desire to drink water. The smell of food nearly makes you puke and it's dang near impossible to eat anything down except for when the symptoms surge. I say surge because they do go down. It's like a roller coaster in hell.
I couldn't take it for 3 days. By the end of the 1st day I checked in to a nearby hospital, with a dry mouth having little ability to drink or eat. They gave me fluids and some diazepam to stop the withdrawal, gave me a script for more diazepam, and sent me on my way.
So eventually I got my Klonopin again 20 or so days ago. The withdrawal hell is over but my body has been tweaked and I'm still suffering from increased anxiety.
The first week back on Klonopin I would only get triggered by bumps or doors closing from my room mates after evening started. It would send me into a sort of alert I can imagine war-vets have.
The next week that stopped, but I would have bad anxiety in the morning.
Now it's the third week back on Klonopin and my anxiety seems to be consistent throughout the day. Depression is coming to the forefront, which I usually haven't experienced in the form of sadness, only laziness and lack of motivation.
It all really sucks. I'm trying to work out but have injured parts I was too stingey to go to physical therapy for when they happened back in August. Since last August I've done near no exercise, which was what was healing me. Now (related to the question above) there seem to be certain days when exercise just makes it worse.
I can't relax. I am near constantly on edge. I just suffer through it. Kind of try to ignore it. I still have diazepam left but I am trying to not use any at all - have only used some twice in the past 20 days.
Of course the quarantine isn't making it any better. Luckily I just got approved for a gym (1 hour, 3 times a week, because of limited capacity) so hopefully I can start to exercise some of the symptoms off, even if my cortisol makes it worse... I had to go to the gym pretty consistently before my body started to crave the stress and cortisol and it oddly enough started to cure my anxiety. School's are shut down. I can't actually go anywhere.
I'll likely never touch caffeine again and always be more mindful of my health. So yeah... thanks for reading... just in a terrible place right now. I try to see the good in it.