Elmira ny obituaries

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flying from corning/elmira NY to fort Lauderdale FL one way
one adult, three children 3,5,7 years old.
need to find the cheapest one departing asap.
thank you!

details
flying from corning/elmira NY to fort Lauderdale FL one way
one adult, three children 3,5,7 years old.
need to find the cheapest one departing asap.
thank you!

Hi everyone, my GF is going to med school this fall and we are looking at places in Elmira, NY. She is dead set on an apartment but in that area it is $2k/month without utilities. I want a house so we get something out of payments those 2 years. How can I convince her a house is better than an apartment more expensive? I was reading into different mortgage options. What is my best loan option and what are the differences? https://www.fha.com/grants/homebuyer-dream-program

Hi everyone, my GF is going to med school this fall and we are looking at places in Elmira, NY. She is dead set on an apartment but in that area it is $2k/month without utilities. I want a house so we get something out of payments those 2 years. How can I convince her a house is better than an apartment more expensive? I was reading into different mortgage options. What is my best loan option and what are the differences? https://www.fha.com/grants/homebuyer-dream-program

This title reads like clickbait, or a phony testimonial, but I am just a person who's come here over the years to find community as I navigate diagnoses of mental health and neurodivergence. I have been deep in the alcohol use subs lately, but I wanted to pop over here to share my experience with benzo addiction and recovery. In fact, it was my successful taper off benzo's, over the past year, after ~12 years of daily use and a raging addiction, that prompted me to consider that maybe I actually I do have the strength and the tools to address my problematic relationship with alcohol as well. That is journey I have just embarked on just recently but with encouraging early progress. I wouldn't have even begun if it weren't for my experience beating benzo's.
I want to be the rare person who logs returns to a forum/support group to share a success story. We most seek support when we are struggling deeply-- as we should-- but that leaves our collective successes greatly underrepresented, an imbalance which can make recovery feel all but impossible. I'm here to remind you that it isn't. Recovery from benzo's Absolutely. Is. Possible. In fact, with the right tools, you stand a very excellent change of recovery. Truly, I did not believe these words myself even one year ago, but now I want to shout it from the rooftops: You can do this. There are tools to help you. It's called the Ashton Method; It works, and it's easy. There is hope. A lot of hope. I promise.
........
A year ago I thought I was doomed to a life forever in service of clonazepam-- obtaining it, taking it, withdrawing from it-- if not an untimely death. I'd been prescribed clonazepam for anxiety attacks since 2011, with daily use since soon after that. I relied on my own prescribed pills and never took more than I felt sufficiently relieved my anxiety. It worked like a charm-- until it didn't. Rebound symptoms between doses eventually led me to take the occasional extra tablet until I was regularly taking more than my prescription supplied, gradually running out earlier and earlier each month. Withdrawals before my next refill grew worse and landed me in the ER more times than I can count. Once I even went by ambulance, my EKG showing a worrisome heart arrhythmia. My boyfriend started lending me doses lorazepam when I was having a particularly hard time; Before long, I started asking for them, then sneaking them. I resorted to taking shots of tequila when my prescription ran out, leading to a further compounding of problems. I'd been a "responsible" benzo- user for years until suddenly I found myself, to summarize, in a bad, bad place.
I don't remember when or where I first learned about the Ashton Method. I had read that people often used diazepam (valium) to taper off of benzodiazepine drugs; I may have even heard the method's name. I'd considered asking my psychiatrist about a longer-acting medication, but the idea of tapering off benzo's remained antithetical to me, a still more terrifying prospect than the imminent withdrawals awaiting at the bottom of my Rx bottle. My next refill would bring incredible relief, after all. I kept my doctor in the dark, lurking on message boards in shame and terror. The cycle continued in a downward spiral for a long time.
I vividly remember the day things changed. I came across, in the NY Times, the 2020 obituary of the woman whose life's work would later save me. I always enjoyed reading the science sections, especially accounts of the groundbreaking female scientists whose work remained previously under-recognized. British psychopharmacologist Dr. Heather Ashthon was a truly remarkable woman who dedicated her career to helping benzo-dependent patients, but it wasn't an earth-shattering obituary that struck me. For whatever fate or reason, i followed a hyperlink within the article, which linked not to another news story or research foundation, but directly to the primary, foremost published work of Dr. Ashton, "Benzodiazepines: How they Work and How to Withdrawal". This is The Ashton Manual. If you are struggling with benzodiazepines, heck even if you were prescribed a benzo for the first time yesterday, you should read this book. It's also available as a free ebook download on Amazon, and probably countless other places on the internet.
Whats remarkable about The Ashton Method is that it doesn't require willpower. It doesn't require you to confess your deepest flaws to a room full of strangers. It doesn't even require detox/withdrawal or abstinence. I will expand on this below, but first I want to speak to how, for me, reading the manual was life-changing medicine all on its own. By reading the science behind how benzodiazepines work, and the mechanisms driving physical dependence and addiction, I came to realize that my problem was not only a normal consequence of human physiology, but also simply-- not my fault. You might be here because you've made mistakes with these powerful drugs, mistakes which can have severe and debilitating consequences. These mistakes are also not your fault.
The manual is written with such a compassionate yet matter-of-fact tone, I'd never before felt so validated and seen, represented right there in the very data of that publication. Layers of shame fell away. I came to realize the real place where things went wrong: benzo's should never have been prescribed to me as a daily medication in the first place, not for more than a few weeks at a time. By the time I recognized I had an addiction, I was too far in its grasp to make "good" choices. My mistakes were simply choices made by a desperate brain trying its best to survive.
Not only does she envelop you in compassion and hope, The Ashton Manual also is your step by step out of benzo's ever-tightening grip. Its full of statistics showing you how very achievable tapering completely off benzo's actually is (The manual reports an overall success rate over 90%). Reading this book will make you *want* to taper off, not because you are an addict who needs to get clean, but because you'll learn that doing so is remarkably possible, requires no withdrawals, and will bring you immense relief. If you're like me, as soon as you start the proces, you'll begin to feel a lot better right away.
In addition to the Ashton Manual itself, there are many excellent summaries of the basic strategy and its principles across the web. I won't attempt to do so here other than outline the most major points.

• you will switch to a long-acting benzodiazepine, most likely diazepam (aka, valium). This switch is made based on dosage charts of estimated benzo equivalency. The longer acting drug (The half life of diazepam is a full 48-hours) will even out the amount of benzo in your bloodstream throughout the day(s). You will no longer experience rebound symptoms or mini withdrawals between doses. Instead of taking the drug "as needed" , you will take the diazepam at the same dose at the same time or times each day. This is the most difficult step, but none of them should be all that hard. It may feel like like your "baseline" anxiety level is somewhat greater than you're used to achieving from a dose of more potent short acting drug, but the relief you soon experience from the extremes of panic and relief will be sweet.
• From there you will taper the amount of valium you take each day/week/month very very gradually. Dr. Ashton recommends step downs of ten percent at a time. The pace of dose reductions should be self-directed. That means that a prescriber should never force you to drop your dose before you are ready, and never more than about 10-20% or an amount you are comfortable with .
• A good physician will help you assess your progress and to realize you are ready to step down even though it's likely a little scary. You may have suffered traumatizing withdrawals in the course of benzo addiction, so it's only natural to be scared. But these acute withdrawals simply won't happen with small reductions of a benzo with a 48-hour half-life. In practice, its actually quite manageable. After the first dose reduction, the next one are less and less of a big deal.
• It's perfectly well and good to start the Ashton method without knowing exactly how it will all pan out. The Manual has in the appendix extensive, detailed suggested taper schedules for pretty much every conceivable benzodiazepine regimen prescribed to patients in the US and UK that you and your doctor can use as a starting point. These taper regimens have been distilled from the experiences of many thousands of patients treated in Ashton's clinic over more than two decades.
• You will inevitably run into times when, in the past you, would have taken extra tablets or otherwise increased your dosage. These will be challenging blips, but they will be manageable and nothing compared to the vicious cycle you were trapped in before. It is fine to pause your taper for a while, but you should never backtrack up to a higher dosing regimen. Again, once you take the first step in dose reduction, the next ones soon become no big deal, they may even start to feel like accomplishments to celebrate.

Two other points that you wont find in the manual, but come up in unofficial accounts, and definitely match my own experience:

• I don't recommend this, but even if you mess up, cave and take extra tablets of diazepam (addiction can be slow to relax it's grip, after all), you'll be okay. The consequent withdrawal may be somewhat unpleasant, but you should not undergo any symptoms of severe withdrawal. Diazepam is "self-tapering", meaning that its half-life is so long that if you were to stop cold turkey, it would still leave your system in such a gradual manner as to spare you the worst repercussions. This is why it is used in emergent settings to help people undergoing alcohol detoxification. Id love to preach 1000% adherence, but the fact is that even after switching to diazepam, I continued to run out of pills a bit early each month for a while, but this wasn't the end of the world anymore and I naturally got better. Several months in the process it became more natural to take my tablets as prescribed. Do your very best.
• Most people taper off diazepam completely over the course of several to many months or even a year or more. You will probably be surprised by how great you actually feel on a low dose of valium and it may begin to feel unnecessary. You may find that after completing all but the final step of the Ashton Method (a complete taper to zero) that you are able to continue with a small prescription of diazepam to use sparingly for cases of acute anxiety, the long half-life of drug and low overall quantity of medication take will allow you exercise more control and as-needed use of your monthly prescription shouldn't send you spiraling back into addiction. This is something to decide with your doctor when you have almost completed the entire taper and are feeling largely released from the control the benzo used to have over you

In my case, I tapered down over 8 months until i got to half a 2mg tab of diazepam a day (diazepam doseages are huge by comparison to many benzos like ativan or xanax). An acute anxiety attack, which are less frequent now than anytime in the past 5 years, for me requires about 4mg to fully treat. My doc has me held me at ten 2-mg pills a month, with permission to use this supply however helps me feel best. I now have the control to save those pills for times I know I'll kick myself if I had them, such as an upcoming trip involving plane travel. At the same time, I no longer recoil in horror at the idea of fully abandoning benzos. At some point, perhaps soon I may find I forget to refill the rx at all.
After reading the manual, I "came clean" to my psychiatrist. It was scary, but I knew that change was not only possible but would make me feel a lot better. My doc is an older, curmudgeonly guy, pretty strict and cautious with my adhd stimulant prescription (no early refills, not even the time an airline lost my luggage). So when I admitted I could no longer control my clonazepam use to the point of extreme duress, I was prepared with research papers in hand, to ask about diazepam and the possibility for long slow taper as per the Ashton Manual. It turned out, not only was he familiar with the technique, he was scribbling down a diazepam script before I even had the chance to ask.
So if you're struggling, I can't encourage you enough to read the manual. Get yourself to a psychiatrist who is willing to work with you using the Ashton Method, even if you have to pay out of pocket, you will likely save yourself many times over in (ineffective!) future rehab or emergency room visits. I was in a terrible place and felt *truly* hopeless and helpless. The Ashton method worked exactly as described in the manual. The hardest part was getting up the courage to ask my doctor for help. If I can help you do that or to clarify details of what i've written here, I absolutely welcome direct messages.
I'm just a person on the internet who stumbled across an incredible solution to what once seemed like an impossible problem. I'm messaging the folks over in the alcohol use subs all the time ;) Together we got this.
​
The Ashton Manual
Dr. Heather Ashton, NY Times obit
*If youre worried about having your benzo prescription yanked away from you entirely, you may wish to inquire about a switch to diazepam an Ashton-style taper while keeping the reasons vague. This is an understandable instinct. Know that experiencing troublesome rebound symptoms between benzo doses, even if you're taking meds at exactly the dosage and intervals prescribed, is a sign that the drug may no longer be serving you well. Rebound symptoms are a perfectly reasonable cause to seek a change in your benzo treatment, whether the problem has progressed to dependence and addiction or not.