Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. It helps when I am trying to put things in perspective and trying to analyse what could be wrong. I've had trouble getting back "off the sugar" because even though I'm not shovelling tons in my mouth all day exactly, I'm still having withdrawal problems. It isn't usual for me to experience them so severely. But I know that eating this way also adversely affects my sleep, though it doesn't interfere with my body clock as such.

I felt horrible from Friday through yesterday morning. I probably would have come on here and talked it through but my internet connection was down for 3 days; my husband was out of town and I wasn't able to fix it on my own. Anyway, it seemed to end yesterday afternoon as suddenly as it had started. Like a switch inside me had flipped. I'm left feeling a bit stunned.

I started taking a lot of algin and it might have helped. I don't know. I mentally went through the symptoms I was having and couldn't really work out why they were so bad. I've had problems with sugar in the past, after eating a clean diet for a long time, and it didn't do this to me. When the depression originally started I wasn't in such a bad state. SAD is more of a gradual thing, so a few cloudy days aren't going to bring it on full force. It's just mystifying. But by last night I was asking my daughter to go on a walk with me (when it's usually me making excuses not to because I'm fatigued), and I even put on some Bob Marley music while I played games with her -- that is so, so not the "depressed" me.

I'm not too bad today either. I keep waiting for the "good" spell to end and the awfulness to come back, that's the way it's always been, but maybe this time I can hope.

Do people sometimes experience mercury dumps that only last a few days? Because that's what I'm thinking might have happened. It's hard to know. I thought that if an organ dump started it usually went on for weeks or even months.

It's hard when you know you can no longer go to your GP and hope for an answer. Sometimes you just have to make the best conclusions and decisions you can yourself.

Thanks for your words too Tracy. I'm sorry you feel so awful but I would say with 99% certainty that at this moment it is due to the benzo withdrawal. If you can get a supply of the drug and do a slow taper you won't go through such a rocky ride and you will probably feel better at the end. If your GP won't cooperate there are other sources you could try if you wanted. I'm glad you at least have a support group to help you deal with the symptoms.

Thanks again all; I am going to make a concentrated effort again to sort my diet out; maybe now that I'm feeliong a bit better, it will be easier. I'll see how I go with the body clock issues over the next week or so.