Transcription
What is up everyone. I want to give an update to the events that led up to my shooting myself. Um, trying to think back to the reasons, and it all came down to prescriptions doctors gave me like benzodiazepines without knowing how dangerous they were, how they, uh, can kill you when you get off them. I think it's like 30,000 people a year or even higher die in detox facilities because they only have 30 days before insurance cuts them off to detox someone.
And what happens with benzos is Gaba receptors in your brain are flooded, and it's artificial. So your brain stops producing it naturally. Now, Gaba regulates calmness and mood, and, um, it really gives you that sense of well-being. There's no anxiety when you have good Gaba receptors. And I wasn't put on, uh, benzodiazepines and Xanax for anxiety. I was put on it to help me sleep. Gosh, I got like four mic setups here.
And, uh, it was until I forgot the dates, but April last year when I came off of it. I was doing ketamine treatment. I thought it was a byproduct of ketamine while so depressed and why all these things started happening. It was so bad in Arizona, I couldn't even leave my apartment. I was too scared, and I'd get anxious and sweaty standing in lines of people. And this is not me. I'm a very outgoing guy, you know. I was always going to the gym. I was always, you know, podcast hosts, all that stuff. And that, that all went away.
And so the night I attempted to end my life, I shot myself in the wrist and, uh, was attempting to shoot myself in the head after I took 50 Ambien, 50 Xanax. And, uh, I didn't realize it was the drug causing this. I thought I was going crazy. And so I thought, you know, there's just something broken with me. It can't be fixed. Uh, my depression, my behavior was just, it put off all my family, you know.
And then after I, I technically died, I, I don't remember, but, um, apparently if I lost it, any more bloody would have been game over. My family stopped talking to me. Yeah, both sides of my, my fake family and my real family. So I was isolated, and I still didn't know what the [ __ ] was going on with me. It was scary. It was one of the, uh, most horrific moments of my life is feeling alone.
I was sleeping in my car because I couldn't work. And then I started doing research into benzodiazepine withdrawal. And apparently, it's the only drug that will kill you if you stop taking it. Uh, recently I got into a motorcycle accident. And, uh, at first I thought I fell asleep, but apparently I had a seizure riding the motorcycle. And I got road rash all over my body. I broke my wrist. And I, I don't remember. I just remember like feeling very weird and then, you know, completely falling going like 50 miles an hour without a t, you know, with just a t-shirt on and helmet. Thank God I wear the helmet. I wasn't even going to play and I'm wearing the helmet.
And, uh, so I started doing researchers into benzo withdrawal and contacted a couple facilities. There, like, yeah, it's a seven-day detox, um, but with 30 to 50,000 people dying in detox from benzos, it's evident that they just cut you off cold turkey, which is very bad to do. You will die. You will have the most insane night terrors. Um, my fourth day into withdrawal at home, like I was sweating profusely. I couldn't sleep. I felt like a part of my brain was activated where I could feel it, when the other part was still asleep. So I was hallucinating. It was a scary [ __ ] in my life.
And this is right after I raised six million dollars for Vape box. I couldn't work. I couldn't attend the meetings. And eventually, I had to forfeit my, uh, Security and Exchange clearance to to crowdfunding. So I lost six million dollars, uh, during this process. And then I found what's called the Ashen method, which has a 90% success rate, where detox facilities have a 5% success rate. So the, the whole principles of the D, the Ashen method is that it's over years that you're cutting your dose in micro increments to give your brain a chance to heal. When you just cut it off, only 5% of people are successful in detox facilities if they don't die or have permanent brain damage.
No, I, I've had many seizures. I've had many lapses of time where I wake up three days later, but I wasn't asleep. Uh, auditorial hallucinations, uh, hot and cold, like, uh, you're sweating something out, but it's just sticky. And, uh, my poor dog suffered the most because I was too scared to go outside. I'd step out the door and start shaking. And this isn't, this isn't because I had anxiety before. I didn't. I was a very sociable person. It's a manufactured response of having no Gaba, uh, regulators in your brain. These neurotransmitters that cover half of your brain were completely destroyed, and they take years to heal.
So that's why you see they found out that Xanax and benzodiazepines were the number one drug found in suicide patients. And it comes down to, uh, following the action method is that families, you destroy your family in the process. They don't know what the [ __ ] to do, right? But, uh, in educating them, they don't want to hear it. They just label you a drug addict, even though these are doctor prescribed medications that I was not abusing. So when I got prescribed them, there was no warning about what, what was coming.
And then, uh, I found a support group called Benzo Buddies with over 150,000 people going through the same [ __ ]. I thought I was losing my mind, going crazy. I was like, yeah, this is unique to me and nobody else. But no, there, there's hundreds of thousands of people getting [ __ ] up from the withdrawals and dying. And, uh, you know, their lives go to [ __ ]. They can't work. How can you work if you get one hour of sleep a night? That's not really sleep.
I, I was driving my car and I wrecked into a car in front of me at a stoplight, not sure what happened. I, I can speculate. I had a seizure. The second one was, uh, riding my motorcycle going around a turn and then losing consciousness. The guy behind me said my head was convulsing when I fell down. So that could have killed me. And I lost a fifteen thousand dollar motorcycle. So, uh, fortunately, I have enough assets saved up to where I can do this three-year taper and kind of focus just on that. I mean, I haven't gone to the gym in six months, and, uh, I don't have friends. I don't have family. I have no support from anyone. My family banned me from seeing all the kids, you know, the nephews and nieces I love the most. Like he's trying to kill yourself, and everyone isolates you. It's kind of [ __ ] up. It just showed the true colors in my family. If they're not getting something out of it, they don't want anything to do with you. And they're very pretentious Mormon. So it's like if you're not adhering to their schedule, they, they don't give a [ __ ] about you.
And, uh, so you have to recuperate and realize, okay, your family's out of the picture. You have no friends. Uh, what do you do? And I, I'd recommend for anyone that's going through benzo withdrawals to go to Benzo Buddies and connect with the forums and speak about your experiences because you're going to get met with thousands of other people that went through the exact same thing. A lot of good tips and, uh, things to do to mitigate those, uh, withdrawal effects. But the best thing to do is to have a tapering program that is so extensive that gives your brain time to adhere, uh, to the micro increments that you're cutting off, which is very hard to do.
I found a compounding pharmacy that was able to facilitate it for about twenty thousand dollars. So very expensive price to pay, but very more effective than going to a thirty thousand dollar lock-up facility with meth heads and Fentanyl recovery guys. They're trying to kick your ass the whole time. So I mean, I got kicked out of my thirty thousand dollar facility, lost all the money on my like fourth day. I got punched in the face and said, [ __ ] you guys, I'm done.
And I didn't really know while I was there. I didn't really understand the purpose of what was going on in my life. It just seemed like something changed, and it was internally in my mind, and I didn't really have an answer for it, uh, or how to mitigate those effects. And every, every, uh, Utah-based rehab center, detox center is doing it the wrong way, and people are dying. And now they have low death numbers in the facilities because they rush them to the hospital, and the hospital becomes in time of death, so they don't have to record it. Uh, they'll immediately cut you off and lock you in a room, and it's like, this will kill you. You will have seizures that lead to coma. You will die. You won't come back from it. And that's not if you don't kill yourself. Like, like my situation. I felt so alienated from friends and family that I figured the best option was to shoot myself. And I successfully shot myself. Am I proud of it? No. It's just I thought there was no other option for me. I was losing my mind. I had no data about benzo withdrawals. I had no idea what the [ __ ] was going on. And I was experimenting with ketamine, and I was like, oh, [ __ ], the ketamine is [ __ ] up my brain, but it wasn't.
So that's my update. I lost six million dollars for my startup because of this [ __ ] drug. And, uh, now I'm doing a three-year taper of, uh, diazepam. So I switched to a longer acting benzo that's easier to get off. But again, uh, the, the, the Ashen method says choose your own schedule, choose when you want to get off of it. And and don't make it quit. You make it quit, you're going to have severe side effects. Uh, I mean, I'll, I'll be sleeping and I'll hear something outside of my room calling my name, you know, saying, you should kill yourself. Like, you hear these subconscious things that feel, you feel them in your ears, you feel it like it's someone's actually there talking to you, but this is your mind [ __ ] with your neurotransmitters producing a false result.
So anyways, that's my two cents, guys. I'm still alive for some [ __ ] reason. My dog is still healthy. Um, I was able to get on diazepam today, and all the effects are gone, just like that, because it produces Gaba in the brain, and my body has been facilitated synthetic Gaba. So it realized, hey, we don't need to produce this anymore. So it usually takes about three years for for those receptors to be healed and grown back. So I have a long journey ahead of me. I don't know where the [ __ ] I'm going or how I'm gonna work. But thankfully, I have a couple houses and, uh, some supplemental income about, I don't know, 200 grand a year. So I'm gonna continue living in my shitty apartment, tough this thing out, try to get exercises, nutrition during the day, and, uh, eventually be able to cope with the the mitigated, um, withdrawal.
So if any of you guys have taken Xanax and have any questions and don't want to end up with a bullet shot in your wrist and almost to your head, reach out to me. And, uh, you know, I'm an open book. Ask me anything. So that's my update.