Belle's Story: Coming Off Xanax and SSRIs at 84 years young

For more than 25 years, Belle lived on anxiety & depression medication. Xanax,
Lexapro, Prozac, and other SSRIs. Over that time, something quietly slipped away from
her: not the anxiety or depression, but everything else.
"I hadn't cried in 25 years," she says. And if she wasn't crying, she wasn't really feeling
much of anything else either, no highs, no lows, just a flat, numb middle, wrapped
around a constant hum of anxiety and depression.
The numbness had a cost. Belle found herself pulling inward, more isolated, more
time spent in her bedroom, more time in bed. She stopped moving the way her body
needed to move. Her physical health began to follow her spirit downward. She wasn't living, more so just existing. She wanted to wake up.

The decision was hers
Belle had already spent over a year carefully weaning down, all the way to 0.75mg
of Xanax a day. But the taper was crawling, and she was tired of being stuck in the in
between. She made a choice: she would use mushrooms as a tool to help carry her
past the hardest part of letting go.
This is important…she went in with intention. Not looking for an escape, but for
something to steady her through the physical and emotional work of coming off drugs
she'd leaned on for over a quarter of a century.
She tried a couple of ShroomsConnect bars first, the Lucid bar, then the Social bar,
but neither quite got her past the Xanax and Lexapro. Next up, The Creative bar, and
that’s the one that worked.
How she used it
Belle stepped off the Xanax and took the Creative bar as her support, half a
square to a full square, spread across morning, noon, and night, for two weeks
straight. A gentle, all-day micro-dose.
Then she cold turkeyed the Lexapro (20mg) and carried the same approach through a
second stretch, taking the Creative bar on and off, whenever she felt she needed it,
for another two weeks.

What it did, in her words, was relax her and take her mind off the process itself.
Instead of white knuckling every hour of withdrawal, she had something that softened
the edges and let her ride it out.
And then afterwards….the anxiety was gone.
Waking up is not the same as everything being easy
Here's the honest part, and the part Belle wants people to hear.
Coming back to your feelings after 25 years of numbness is not a fairy tale. The
emotions came flooding, all of them, all over the board. Some of that is the awakening
itself. Some of it is life: a nine year relationship that ended, a body at 84 that doesn't
move the way it used to, balance troubles she's still working on with her doctors to
understand, but she’s feeling the feels, she’s doing the hard work of being fully here for
the first time in decades and that’s progress.
She’s also laughing, moving her body again, making dinner and making plans. She's
participating in her own life again and the only thing she regrets…not getting off of these
SSRi’s sooner. She’ said, “I couldn’t be more thankful for having the use of mushrooms
and the Creative Bar ShroomsConnect came up with to heal me, not hurt me.”
An important note on safety
Belle's story is her own, and it is not medical advice.

A few things we want to be clear and responsible about:
Belle made the decision to come off her medications herself, with intention, and she
did not do it alone, she lives with family who knew what she was doing and watched
closely for any warning signs throughout.
Stopping benzodiazepines like Xanax and SSRIs suddenly can be genuinely
dangerous and, for some people, medically serious. Belle had already spent over a
year tapering down before this final step.
Everyone's body, history, and situation are different. What worked for one person will not
be right for everyone.
If you are considering coming off psychiatric medication, please do it in
partnership with a qualified medical professional. Mushrooms were a tool in
Belle's journey, not a substitute for medical guidance or treatment.

*ShroomsConnect shares stories like Belle's to open a conversation, not to make
medical claims.

A ShroomsConnect testimonial Told with Belle's permission.

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"Coming Back To Myself"

Zack's Story: Two Pieces for Peace

I took two pieces of a bar over the course of about three hours, and I honestly don’t know how to fully explain what I’m feeling right now.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, the anxiety is just… gone. Not buried. Not temporarily pushed aside. I just feel calm. Present. Normal. I feel like myself.

And that’s the part that’s hitting me the hardest.

There’s something strangely familiar about this feeling, almost like I’m reconnecting with the person I was when I was a kid—before life got heavy, before the world fucked me up, before my own mind became such an exhausting place to live.

I’m sitting here having happy thoughts again. Genuine, effortless happy thoughts. I’m not forcing myself to be positive or trying to convince myself that everything is okay. My mind just feels peaceful enough to naturally go somewhere good.

I had almost forgotten that I was capable of feeling this way.

I’ve tried pharmaceuticals, and nothing has ever made me feel what I’m experiencing right now. This doesn’t feel like escaping myself. Somehow, it feels like coming back to myself.

I know it’s only a moment, and I don’t know what it means beyond that. But right now, experiencing this kind of peace after going so long without it feels incredibly therapeutic. Almost profound.

It’s beautiful to remember that somewhere underneath everything life has piled on top of me, this version of me is still here.

A ShroomsConnect testimonial Told with Zacks permission.

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