I am a 25 year old woman with an addiction to steroids, but not the bodybuilding, muscle rippling kind. No, it's worse than that. As a sufferer of eczema from infancy, affecting my joints and face, quite severely, I was prescribed a number of topical steroids by a number of uninterested doctors. Steroids do not treat eczema, they prohibit your skin from becoming inflamed, suppressing your body's ability to produce its own cortisol, a stress hormone, and regulate inflammation itself. And as time goes on, your body becomes reliant and addicted to the steroids, causing redness, swelling and unbelievable itching when you stop using them. So why stop using them? Well, steroids thin your skin, something called steroid atrophy, leaving broken veins, see through skin, stretch marks and sagging and glaucoma, an eye condition leading to blindness. Trust me I'm a doctor????? Well thanks doc, now it's up to me to fix it . I work in a male dominate environment and any aspects o your personality and appearance are fair game for slaughter, but being just as bad myself (it's Kill or be killed, but we kid because we love), I have not a leg to stand on with my colleagues, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The main reason I have the courage to go through withdrawal is because of the support of my partner. He has done nothing but tell me I look great and I'm doing great all the time. I couldn't do this without him.
I am already 1 week and 4 days into my withdrawal, and celebrating getting through everyday like christmas!
Withdrawal is the only way to rid your body of the toxic steroids, and can take weeks, months or years, with periods of calm and flares.
It really wasn't my intention to start a blog, and I'm not a writer so apologies for any unintelligible ramblings, but reading other people's stories made me think I owe it to people thinking of going cold turkey to share my experience as well.
The following two pictures are 4 days in, an it was horrible, my skin was tight, I speaking a laughing like a ventriloquists dummy as it was sore to stretch my skin enough to emote or smile. The spots you can see are itchy as hell! Also I was getting flaking around my chin and around my eyes.
So far I have been using nothing but sweet almond oil on my skin, and keeping a bottle everywhere as I need to reapply it about 3 times an hour, I'm guarding it with my life!
My sleep hasn't been affected but I have slept through a fire alarm before so that's not really an issue for me.
I've found I am very sensitive to sunlight and keep looking at the ground as squinting hurts too much.
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