I have never seen anything like it. I have read about drug withdrawals but no one could prepare me for what I saw happen to my sweet, frail, sensitive 78 year old mother in law when the hospital doctor took her off alprazolam.
She swore. She yelled at all of us. She tried to get out of bed and fell. Because of anti abuse laws, there can’t be rails on the beds. So they had a bed alarm on her. It was ringing constantly.
She hated the smell of Germ-X which is what they use each time they enter the room. So whenever she smelled it she told the person ‘I hate your aftershave’. She saw men entering and leaving her closet like it was an elevator. She saw people walk past her second story window.
She didn’t recognize me most of the time and yelled at whoever came close. She accused them of pinching her and thought everyone was rough. When she did recognize me she was very possessive and wouldn’t let me leave her. At one time when she did know me she made me stay with her. She made me leave my daughter as hostage when she did need me to get help and the sad thing is she was serious.
Anytime someone had to move her she said hateful things to them.
Had I been more prepared I wouldn’t have taken any of my kids to see their grandmother like this. Yet we learned what love is. Love is truly love when given toward one who cannot reciprocate. That is the closest thing to God like love there is.
The crazy thing about coming off Alprazolam that fast is that the hearing becomes super sensitive so she could hear us whispering about her. After years of near deafness, this was odd.
So, why did she need to come off alprazolam. I am still not really sure why they took her off for those first few days after being admitted to the hospital for the bowel obstruction. I think the doctor said she had so many things going on that they wanted to take that part of the equation out of the way.
So, after 72 hours they put her on Lorazepam which is similar to Alprazolam mostly because it was that only way to get it into her since she wasn’t taking anything by mouth and she was on IV. The crazy symptoms disappeared and she “returned” to us. She was still confused but the fighting, crazy person was gone.
Wow, I really hope I never have to see that again.