While I was able to adapt to a life without enjoying so many of the things I had eaten for my entire life up until my early 40s, it would not be too long before things got a bit more complicated. It was the late 1990s and although I am fortunate enough to have a wife that enjoys baking and was willing to make things for me with alternative ingredients, we did not have quite the selection of gluten-free products on store shelves that we do today.
While I was happy to have these treats that were made with alternative ingredients, they were never quite the same as the real thing. Gluten-free had not quite become a “thing” at that time so the ingredients my wife had to work with were limited. My mother also enjoyed baking so she and my wife often shared recipes for newly-discovered alternative treats that both my father and myself could enjoy without consequence.
It was not too long after the onset of my gluten problems when a new problem revealed itself. This problem was not quite as reliable as my problems with gluten had been. There was never an occasion when I could consume gluten without suffering from at least a mild headache. It was as dependable as the sunrise.
I have always enjoyed my “junk food” treats and even though I was no longer able to enjoy treats that contained gluten without experiencing a headache or taking Ibuprofen as a preventive, I still had my chocolate candy and ice cream to satisfy that desire for sweets. Or so I thought.
For reasons that were not clear to me at the time, I started to experience headaches after eating almost anything one might classify as junk food. Some things were worse than others. Chocolate was something that seemed to represent more of a risk than a bowl of vanilla ice cream, for example. But even chocolate would give me a headache perhaps 75 percent of the time. At times I was able to get away with it without any consequences whatsoever and at other times I would end up with a headache that was similar to a gluten-induced headache but was usually not as bad.
After a while I noticed that eating anything after a certain hour had the potential to give me a headache. I could get away with eating up until 8:00 pm or so and anything I ate after that would be accompanied by the risk of headache. Much like it was with chocolate, I could get away with it sometimes but most of the time I would pay the price.
It was frustrating since I enjoyed having a treat while watching some evening television for as long as I could remember. Now I had to be careful about what time I was going to do that and what I was going to eat when I did. Sometimes it seemed like drinking a good amount of water following a treat I consumed a bit too late would help and at other times it seemed to make no difference—I would awaken with that familiar headache the next morning.
Over time I noticed that there were things I would eat that would cause a headache that I would not have expected. As I got older the situation seemed to worsen. I discovered that things like watermelon or even a banana could give me a headache regardless of when I ate it. The headaches were not quite as reliable as when I ate something like chocolate and I could get away with eating things like that about half of the time. I had a mental list of things I would often choose to avoid in order to remain headache-free.
Sometime around 2004 I was dealing with some pretty stressful circumstances due to business and financial difficulties. I was having trouble sleeping and since I have always suffered with “General Anxiety Disorder” like my father did, it got to the point where the anxiety was becoming too much for me to continue putting up with. My father experienced what may be best described as a “nervous breakdown” around 1999 and was prescribed a benzodiazepine, which was like a miracle for him because it halted his anxiety within an hour of taking the first dose.
As a result of my father’s experience, I knew “solutions” existed so I called to make an appointment with a “behavioral medicine” practice in my area and was soon on my way to the pharmacy with my own prescription for a benzodiazepine. I was a little surprised how easy it was for me to get what I wanted. I surely did not have to work hard to convince the doctor to write the prescription for what I wanted. Telling him how well it worked for my father seemed to be enough to do the trick.
I am not going to lie. I loved the effect the benzodiazepine made me feel. It made my anxiety melt away and allowed me to sleep much better. At least it seemed so at the time. I have since learned that since benzodiazepines are sedatives, they do not actually promote “real” sleep and taking them for long periods of time for sleep can actually deprive you of meaningful and restorative sleep. I believe that years of taking them for sleep may have contributed to my mother’s death in 2018 from dementia. At the time, however, benzodiazepines seemed like the answer to my problems. When I started on them I did not realize that they would also solve another problem for me that I did not expect.
While solving problems with benzodiazepines is not something I now endorse, despite their obvious efficacy, I admit they can be useful if used responsibly and for the short term. My recent experience has demonstrated to me that there are often better solutions that are not accompanied by the risk of addiction or serious consequences like dementia in the future. But during the early 2000s I had no knowledge of other potential solutions and I did not know that benzodiazepines were associated with a possible increased risk of dementia. Therefore, I was not hesitant to follow my doctor’s instructions and take a single 1 mg clonazepam in the morning when I got up and another in the evening before bed. Did I mention that I loved the way they made be feel?
Since I am not the iron-willed stalwart of discipline I sometimes wish I was, I would sometimes push my luck by enjoying a tasty snack after the hour of 8:00 pm. A bowl of ice cream at 9:30 or perhaps some chocolate chip cookies at 8:45 are sometimes hard to resist. I knew I was probably setting myself up for trouble the next morning but there was always the chance I would get lucky and it would be one of those occasions when I experienced no consequences for my post-curfew misdeeds.
After a while I noticed something odd. I was not experiencing any consequences at all as a result of my late-night indulgences. I even decided to further push my luck further by having something at 10:00 pm or even later since it always seemed like the later it was when I transgressed, the worse the punishment would be the next morning. Still, nothing happened and it appeared that the only thing I had to worry about when eating late was weight gain and since that was never much of a problem for me, I felt like I was free to indulge as I pleased. And I did so.
It was not too difficult to figure out that this new development was most likely the result of the clonazepam I was taking twice a day. It was a nice fringe benefit from something that seemed like it was doing so many other good things for me. I was content to remain on it and enjoy the benefits indefinitely or as long as a doctor was willing to make it available to me.
I stayed on it for about four years and stopped taking it when I started to learn more about benzodiazepines. I know that some people become terribly addicted to them but I did not have that problem. Even after four years I never felt like I need to increase my dose above the twice-daily 1 mg dosage. I have heard that they gradually become less effective over time and increasing doses are required to achieve the same effect but I never felt like I needed more. Other experiences in my life have demonstrated to me that I may have a very “non-addictive” physiology and I am extraordinarily grateful for that.
I weened myself off of clonazepam in month or two. Although I did not consider myself “addicted” to it, my experience trying to ween off it too quickly was a wake up call. I experienced just a single evening that taught me that the process could not be rushed. I tried going to bed that night and just could not settle down. I keep feeling like there were small foreign objects under my body, making it impossible to get comfortable. I was also feeling quite a lot of anxiety and I could not seem to stop moving. I soon decided to get out of bed and go watch TV for a couple of hours and after that I was able to get comfortable and settle down to sleep. I had to slow my effort to taper off of clonazepam and after that I was able to get myself off it within a couple of months.
The result was predictable. I really did not find that I was having problems with anxiety more than I had before I had started on clonazepam but I soon found that the inability to enjoy snack treats later in the evening was gone. The old familiar morning-after headaches returned and I had to resume my time-restricted evening eating once again. The party was over, so to speak, and that confirmed my theory that it was the clonazepam that enabled my ability to indulge in those late night treats.
Although it was less apparent to me at the time, I was no longer able to eat things like watermelon or a banana without the risk of a headache that usually did not wait for the next morning. I guess the fact that was less noticeable than my late night eating problems is not much of a testament to my diet at the time but I definitely noticed when I started to get a headache sometimes after I did have something like watermelon. As a result, I stayed away from those kinds of things most of the time or at least made sure I only had a small portion, which I was almost always able to get away with.
The situation with my gluten sensitivity remained although I am not sure if I even tested that restriction while I was taking clonazepam. I had reached the point where I very rarely tested it since there was no “if” where that was concerned. If I ate something with gluten in it, I was going to get a headache. Whether I was less sensitive during my benzodiazepine years is something I cannot be sure of.
I was not confident that I would ever truly solve my gluten problem. I had pretty much resigned myself to alternatives and substitutes for the rest of my days and that was surely better than nothing but not quite the same as being able to eat “real” bread, cake, pie, cookies and a host of other things. I was not aware that a chance discovery of something online was about to usher in a pretty significant breakthrough on that front.