WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS: FEELINGS OF THE GROUND MOVING AND TINGLING, NUMBNESS, BURNING SENSATIONS
Feelings of the Ground Moving
Many people say that they feel as if the ground is moving when they walk, or that they are walking on cotton wool. It can be alarming but does settle down as withdrawal progresses. This unsteady gait (ataxia) can be experienced in severe anxiety states where no drugs are being used.
Tingling, Numbness, Burning Sensations
Many people complain of tingling and numbness in hands and feet (although the feelings can be anywhere), and also feelings like electric shocks going through the body. Some of the tingling may be due to overbreathing. It could be that an exaggeration of normal nerve impulses is the reason for the electric shock feelings. All these feelings and the burning in the spine, vulva and inner thighs (or elsewhere) also disappear when withdrawal is complete. _
Tingling feelings in withdrawal is complete.
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The aimless hyperactivity experienced by some can be very hard to live with. The constant desire to move is exhausting. Unfortunately, the energy cannot be utilized. The sufferer usually wanders about doing a small part of one task, then another without achieving anything. One caller said ‘I wash two plates, then find myself putting laundry away upstairs. Two minutes later I am sweeping up leaves in the garden. My mind won’t let me use the extra energy I have had since cutting down my pills’.
Pressure of thought and speech often accompany this stage. Endless conversations (sometimes from years before) or the same song can go around and around in your head.
Relatives often complain that the user has become completely self-centred, talking incessantly about the drugs and withdrawal symptoms. The sufferer is usually very anxious about these symptoms, and may need constant reassurance that they will pass.
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Accepting withdrawal symptoms as part of getting well could shorten your recovery time. Try to see a new symptom as a positive step nearer to a drug-free life.
You are working towards a state of physical and mental well-being that you may not have experienced for years. You may have been emotionally dead for so long, unable to respond normally to pleasure or pain. So even if you are uncomfortable in withdrawal, you will be coming alive again and will have glimpses, even in the early days, of a world you thought you had forgotten.
Most of the withdrawal symptoms are due to manifestations of anxiety. This does not mean simply worrying about the weather or which dress to wear for a party, but disabling physical and emotional symptoms which prevent the sufferer from leading a normal life. Clinical tests have proved that anxiety levels after the drugs have been discontinued can be six times greater than pre-withdrawal levels. This is called rebound anxiety.
Tranquillizers appear to stop that part of the brain that deals with anxiety from working—but this is not really so. It carries on working overtime under the ‘lid’ of the drugs, and consequently when the ‘lid’ is removed, it erupts like a volcano. This is temporary, and will return to normal.
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Doctors recognize four types of reaction in which the immune system responds to an antigen so strongly that unpleasant symptoms are caused. These are called hypersensitivity reactions. The reaction caused by mast cells and IgE is the most common and troublesome of the four, and is known as Type I hypersensitivity. The other three reactions involve different parts of the immune system. Type II hypersensitivity is not relevant here, while Type IV hypersensitivity is a very slow immune response produced by a particular group of immune cells. It may be involved in some reactions in the gut, such as Crohn’s disease but it is not generally relevant to food allergy. This section is therefore confined to Type III reactions. These occur when there is a substantial production of antibodies in response to an antigen in the blood. It is the sheer weight of numbers that causes the problem – die antigens and antibodies, bound together in immune complexes, are like so much litter going round in the bloodstream.
In the case of food, undigested molecules get into the blood through the gut wall, after a meal. This is a normal process that occurs in the healthiest of individuals, although in the food-sensitive person it is likely to be more pronounced because the gut wall is more leaky. Once the food molecules enter the bloodstream they encounter antibodies – again a natural, healthy process which leads to the formation of immune complexes when the antibodies and antigens bind together. Immune complexes attract the attention of phagocytes or ‘eating cells’, the vultures of the immune system that clear up any debris, dead cells and invading bacteria they come across.
Immune complexes form all the time, whenever antibodies encounter their antigen. Normally they are cleared from the blood by the phagocytes within a few hours. But if the immune complexes are both large and numerous, the phagocytes may not be equal to the task. Then the immune complexes accumulate in the blood, and eventually they are deposited in the blood vessels. This is the condition known as Type III hypersensitivity or serum sickness.
Serum sickness happens in autoimmune diseases, such as SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus; where there are a great many antibodies to the patient’s own proteins circulating in the blood. It is also believed to happen, to a lesser degree, in rare cases of food allergy – in some types of kidney disease, for example, where the disease seems to be induced by food. Although there is no definite proof for this, the circumstantial evidence is quite strong.
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Scientific and popular periodicals have devoted much space to the subject of royal jelly. True, this promotion no doubt has something to do with cleverly disguised advertising, since every manufacturer believes his product to be the best on the market. On the other hand, these efforts demonstrate that today’s world needs a biologically safe natural tonic, as opposed to a chemical or synthetic one. No one really knows how the bees manufacture the natural compound. All we can say is that the Creator gave them the necessary instinct to make this complex substance from the raw materials they have available in nature. What they produce proves the truth of the concept that ‘Food should be medicine and medicines should be food.’
Some years ago the newspapers reported that the Pope had recovered from a severe illness after his personal physician, Dr Galeazzi, had prescribed royal jelly as a tonic for him. It also was reported that Dr Paul Niehans, an eminent endocrinologist and specialist in live-cell therapy, was of the opinion that royal jelly vitalises the glandular system in a similar way to an injection of fresh endocrine cells. These observations are a strong enough indication that it is indeed appropriate to pay much more attention to royal jelly in the future.
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Cabbage leaf poultices or packs are excellent for the treatment of tumours. In the case of cancerous growths, their effect is very good when alternated with clay poultices. It sometimes happens that the condition or pain becomes aggravated at first, but after a while improvement usually follows. Cabbage pulp can cause a strong reaction; it can increase the secretion of urine, cause blisters, or simply dry out on the skin. Tests on myself and the testimonies of patients have always proved the effectiveness of these poultices.
Cabbage leaves are usually available in your kitchen, so why not try a pack when you suffer bruising, notice a growth or experience some internal inflammation? Apply the crushed leaves, in addition to taking the necessary oral medicine. Many chronic ailments can be successfully treated with cabbage and clay packs applied in alternation; one day apply the pulped leaves, next day the clay packs. In this way it is often possible to avoid the surgeon’s knife.
Good results are also achieved with onions and raw horseradish. Some skin diseases clear up when a paste made up of bran and an infusion of marigold or horsetail is applied. Or you can soak some wheat, put it through a mincer, then mix it with marigold or horsetail to make a soothing and curative paste.
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In the past it used to be the custom in the country to carry out a programme of cleansing the blood every spring. People would gather fresh leaves from blackberry and raspberry bushes, strawberry plants and ribwort (ribgrass), coltsfoot flowers and, where possible, cowslip. They would pour boiling water over these young green shoots and flowers and drink the infusion in the morning and evening. Honey was added to sweeten it.
This ‘spring tea’ is still recognised for its pleasant effect on our well-being. Those who take it regularly are convinced that it purifies the system, purging it of the winter’s metabolic wastes and infusing the new energies of spring. Some medical practitioners may turn up their noses, discarding the idea of blood-cleansing as being erroneous and unscientific, but there is no doubt that such herbal cleansing stimulates the body’s mechanisms and in this way achieves an overall cleansing effect.
According to the views held in ancient India, the blood and the circulatory system can and should be purified from time to time. Rasa is the ancient Indian word for the blood or body fluids, and Rasayana Kalpa is the name used for a blood-cleansing programme following the model and method of the ancient Indians.
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Always remember that nature will be able to rectify problems as long as the necessary raw materials are present. This principle should be observed in our diet and if it is, the body will respond, but if our diet is deficient, we must see to it that the necessary materials are supplied.
Recently, interesting observations have been made concerning the effect of this mineral on hard swellings of the tendons and ligaments, dilations of the tendon sheaths (known as ‘ganglia’) and even glandular tumours and hard cyst formation. It is gratifying to know that, besides other treatments, such a simple natural medicine as Calcarea fluorica will benefit these conditions. It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect too much from any given remedy, because we must remember that disease is hardly ever attributable to the deficiency of a single cell salt. Others, too, may be lacking and need to be replaced.
It has been found that cataracts of the eyes are usually associated with a deficiency of Calcarea fluorica, and their treatment should include taking this mineral in alternation with Kali chloricum (potassium chlorate). Sclerotic deposits on the eardrum, which may give rise to deafness and ‘head noises’, as well as painful whitlows and itching, and eczematous diseases of the skin are also relieved by taking this remedy for a period of time. Calcarea fluorica should be taken together with Millefolium (yarrow) or Aesculaforce to improve the elasticity of the walls of the veins in all cases of haemorrhoids (piles), varicose veins and phlebitis (inflammation of the veins).
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One day I was cutting grass on a steep meadow when I hit my foot with the scythe. It was careless of me, but I did not immediately disinfect the cut, only bandaged it with a handkerchief and carried on with my work. Because of this negligence, it was not surprising when blood poisoning set in. Well now, I thought, this is a chance to put our herb to the test and see whether the Indians were right. I proceeded exactly the way Black Eagle had taught me. Already a long blue line was visible on the leg and higher up, in the groin, there was a swollen lymph node. So I covered the whole leg with a dressing of crushed Echinacea leaves. Furthermore, I chewed some and swallowed the juice. In fact, I ate the whole plant. Now came the surprise, for within quite a short time the inflammation and infection were gone. This experience convinced me that everything I had been told about Echinacea was true.
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Loss of fertility might be considered the moment when the man becomes unarmed. ‘Have a vasectomy and join the club.’ It is impossible not to have attitudes to vasectomy, though the overwhelming first response to the event was that it was ‘a small job and made no difference’.
There is evidence that the quality of marriage for the woman may improve after vasectomy (Adler, Cook, Gray et al., 1981). On the other hand, there is a measurable regret for some men which leads to requests for reversal (Howard, 1982).
Mr G. is a fireman and one of those men who described his vasectomy as a ‘small job’. He then reassured himself by saying it was a difficult part of life at last put behind them and that they could relax. Sex was the same and the family complete. The doctor felt a strong hint that discussion of the matter should now be completed, and it was for the time being. Later Mr G. relaxed and was able to say how much more time he had at home, particularly because ‘we don’t seem to need so much sex now, and anyway the children need so much of our time’. Some time later the discussion returned to contraception. ‘Did it take long to decide about a vasectomy?’ ‘No. She said . . . . , well, we agreed that I would do my bit, and it didn’t matter who was done.’ There was a long silence. ‘I wonder if your wife would have decided so quickly about being sterilized herself?’ After a pause he replied, ‘You know, in a way, I thought more about it afterwards. It took me several months to get used to it. At first I thought I was bound to go off sex, but it is no good getting cross about it.’ Mr G. became visibly upset, and it was necessary to arrange a follow-up consultation later, which had a satisfactory outcome.
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