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i feel like i’m dying. i’m really suffering, and need to express what i’m going through to some people that might understand. for the past 10 months i’ve been stuttering progressively more, scaling up aggressively since august of last year. it was triggered by a stuttering episode at a consulting work dinner. before this, i still stuttered, but only during work. from 2021 (when i started work post-grad) and onwards, my stuttering was isolated only to when i worked. but after august of 2023, i started stuttering outside of work, but its since infected my personal life. i would fight it by taking lose dosages of klonopin, and that worked. but then klonopin (under 1mg) stopped working, so i turned to alcohol. then alcohol stopped working. my fluency seems fundamentally broken and has advanced to a point where i can’t avoid stuttering. now i’m taking an old dose of prozac which didn’t work when i initially tried it, but i need a safe, non-addictive medication to stabilize me. tbd if it works. i think there’s something wrong with my central nervous system maybe. i have a sense of “brain fog” — i feel less aware of my surroundings, and not processing information in the same way i used to. my hands get so sweaty, i have heat flashes, panic attacks at work where i start shaking, and can’t go one conversation without stuttering. i listen to conversations and i am processing language differently. i don’t know what’s happening. i wasn’t always this way. i used to be a public speaker, and overcame a great amount of anxiety rooted in childhood trauma. i used to lead things, create things, and be an impactful leader. now i feel like i’m cognitively declining, unable to speak, unable to socialize, and unsure what to do. i’m asking myself, is this some neurodegenerative disease? maybe i finally broke? maybe i took too much klonopin and damanaged my body’s CNS? maybe i’m just really, really anxious and stressed? maybe i’m psyching myself out (i hope!)? can by one else relate / help me process this? i’m down bad, and not sure what to do.