Benzodiazapines

[Moof]

It's pretty much already been said, but I'm another Ativan victim: prescribed it at age 17, without having a clue what it was, why I'd been given it, or the fact that it was addictive. I was on a small dose for seven years and managed to withdraw without any support (our GP surgery had a notice on the wall saying NO MORE TRANQUILLISER ADDICTS, which was the attitude at the time towards people who'd been made addicts by these same doctors), but it was many more before the side effects stopped completely. Never again.

 

[paul80]

I can't reply to you all just now my brain is a mess i got such crap sleep last night.

But originally i took the xanax during the day for anxiety, not sleep and then to my surprise it made me feel great, totally relaxed, brain fog gone. And i'm sure that the same night, even though it had worn off, i got a great sleep. it wasn't placebo, my nerves seemed to stay calm afterwards, then after a few days of crap sleep my nerves would go bad again.

My plan was never to take them 2 days in a row, i thought that would stop me getting addicted.

I live in Scotland, my doctor gave me a small amount of a crap dosage of valum (2mg), that was what she was warning me about, and they didn't help much, so i tried to get stronger ones and someone gave me xanax instead. I ended up getting xanax on the dark net after. It was risky but i was desperate.

Since i'm withdrawing from another drug just now i have to keep the xanax going, but i wonder if i would be better off taking 0.5mg every night rather than 1mg every few days?

The problem is my brain is too fried to make these decisions!

 

[geraldt52]

Since i'm withdrawing from another drug just now i have to keep the xanax going, but i wonder if i would be better off taking 0.5mg every night rather than 1mg every few days?

The problem is my brain is too fried to make these decisions!

I don't think that anyone knows the answer to your question, but I think you are better off continuing to do what you are doing (1mg every few days). Try to stretch out the interval...use it only when you feel you absolutely have to. I offer this only as advice based on my experience, and only because I completely understand how difficult the smallest decisions can become when you're in the middle of something.

Twenty years after the worst Klonopin withdrawal you can imagine, I still occasionally use Ativan when I simply have to get some sleep...before a day that I absolutely have to do something. One has to function...occasionally. I never take it two days in a row, and it would be extraordinarily rare for me to use it twice in a month. I've done this for many years, without any real problem.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

@paul80

I can't reply to you all just now my brain is a mess i got such crap sleep last night.

The problem is my brain is too fried to make these decisions!

These sound like classic tolerance withdrawal.

Since i'm withdrawing from another drug just now i have to keep the xanax going

What other drug are you withdrawing from, if you don;t mind my asking? It could be having an influence on you Xanax and your perceptions of what's doing what.

Since in spite of the negative feedback here you keep asking about increasing your dose, I'm assuming that you're hell-bent on upping your Xanax and are hoping for corroborative input from the community. If you think it's what you need to do, then you'll do it, regardless.

Good luck, and please post back here and let us know how you're doing. I'm genuinely concerned, as I know the other posters are.

 

[Thinktank]

Since i'm withdrawing from another drug just now i have to keep the xanax going, but i wonder if i would be better off taking 0.5mg every night rather than 1mg every few days?

That's something you should discuss with a psychiatrist.
But my choice would be 0.5mg every 3 - 4 days or switch to 10mg diazepam which has a much longer half life.
Then slowly taper the xanax with 10% deductions as per the Ashton manual.

There are other medications you can use to treat your anxiety.
SSRI's are now the med of choice for GAD, not great either and they come with their own withdrawal symptoms but it's better than benzo's for longterm use.
Mirtazapine is another antidepressant with sedating effects. That might suit you if you seek an anxiolytic effect and an improvement in sleep.

Certain herbs and supplements or off-label medications can be very effective in treating anxiety.
It's trial and error really.

Most xanax bars on the black market are fake, they contain too much or too little alprozalam and often many other addictive ingredients.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

off-label medications can be very effective in treating anxiety.

@paul80 , @Thinktank
Actually, Klonopin, when used as an anxiolitic, is also an off-label use. It was developed and marketed initially, and still is, as an epileptic anti-seizure med.

 

[paul80]

My neurologist put me Lamotregine, she thinks i have Epilepsy, i'm going for an EEG this month to get tested. But the drug made all my m.e symptoms worse and i felt exhausted on it. I've got it down to 1 pill with a lot of withdrawl symptoms. I've just stopped today so i'll probably get bad withdrawl in about 5 days. The xanax is great for that.

I think i'll take your advice on my xanax and just keep it the same at the moment. The lamotregine is making me so tired the thought of getting good sleep every night was tempting me.

I did buy the xanax bars before, but i got some that look better, in blister packs in a box. So hopefully they are pure.

If your wondering about the epilepsy:
I've been having occasional short absenses (like maybe 10 seconds) for several years( maybe 6 or 7 years). I wasn't even aware of them but my family told me.
It's weird because during it i always say the same thing every time, i say "haha that's funny".
Anyway, when i seen a neurologist about it he was an asshole. I think he was one of these M.E scepetics and just said i was probably depressed, and i wasn't at all. That was about 3 years ago.

In November last year i decided to try a ketosis diet and after about 5 days it made me feel very sick and compleltey off my appetite. About 2 days after i stopped it, i still felt ill, and i had a big seizure in my sleep, was taken to hospital and the then had two more. I had kidney failure and was in for about 10 days.

Since then i've been doing relatively ok, untill my new neurologist put me on the lamotrigine at about the beginning of March.

 

[paul80]

There are other medications you can use to treat your anxiety.
SSRI's are now the med of choice for GAD, not great either and they come with their own withdrawal symptoms but it's better than benzo's for longterm use.
Mirtazapine is another antidepressant with sedating effects. That might suit you if you seek an anxiolytic effect and an improvement in sleep.

Yes, i'm currently trying Tumeric and Flaxseed and i ordered NAG. Hard to tell if they're having effect though, my symptoms are fluctuating too much ATM.

 

[Likaloha]

I can't seem to cope without taking Xanax every 2 to 3 days. Without it i get poor sleep and my nervous system is wired like crazy. I startle easy, anxiety etc.

I feel like it would probably help me a lot more if i took it every day but my doctor warns me against it as she says it would stop working or i would need to keep upping the dose.

But i also read that some PWME take Klonopin every night and are fine on it. I think some m.e specialist doctors advise their patients to do this too. I think it was on this website i read about that

What do you think?

I have taken klonipin for many years for my restless leg syndrome and I cannot sleep without it..I used to kick and jerk every 18 seconds ( yes my husband timed it when I kept him awake) and my younger brother takes it too for the same restless leg syndrome!

 

[paul80]

@Likaloha What dose do you take every night?

 

[Stretched]

(Here’s a relevant repost for this thread): I took Klonopin for 30+ years as part of the protocol to help CFS (in early years.). Dr. Paul Cheney was an early pioneer from the Lake Tahoe area (current outbreak source) and wrote an article that Klonopin (clonazepam) was not additictve. Well, that’s BS! See forums at http://benzo.org.uk/ and those there specifically related to Klonopin. (There’s also an equivalency chart there of benzo potencies.)

I decided to get off KL in 2017. I spent a year titrating down to .5 mg then switched over to diazepam at 15mg and titrated down to .5mg over 6 months, then stopped, Dec 2018. Three weeks later on C-Mas day, 2018 my hands and body had tremors. I saw a PCP and showed him the Ashton Manual after he initially said Parkinson’s! He reinstated the diazepam at 8mg daily. It was not enough. I then added another 10mg after seeing a neurologist. The tremors are just now reducing by about 50%, 3 months after stopping and reinstating. I’d guess it will take another 6 months - year to titrate down to zero, which is a total of 2.5-3 years to stop Klonopin. (This is pretty typical given from others in the benzo.com.uk forum histories.)

I might add that similar scenarios occurred with SSRI and dedicated sleep aids, e.g. Ambien, Lunesta, Sonesta.

 

[SlamDancin]

Anyone ever heard of Etizolam?

https://drugwiki.org/index.php?title=Etizolam

It’s a special benzo-like drug that has some anti-tolerance and GABAA upregulation contrary
To lorazepam. I’ve been using it on and off with no real tolerance issues for 2-3 years now.

Safest, least addictive, most medicinal benzo option. And it helps me soooo much!

One love pwme fam

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Anyway, when i seen a neurologist about it he was an asshole.

@paul80
Why so many Drs are total @sswads is one of the great mysteries.

Or maybe not. My theory is that the less capable a Dr is, the more of an @sshat he/she becomes. It's a defensive posture, intended to hide or at least obscure their complete ineptitude and near-criminal mediocrity.

Yes, i'm currently trying Tumeric and Flaxseed and i ordered NAG. Hard to tell if they're having effect though, my symptoms are fluctuating too much ATM.

None of those did anything for my massive anxiety/panic issues.

What DID help me was magnesium glycinate. I tried it first at a normal or above normal dose, 2 times a day. Nada. Thru endless experimentation, I came up with my own dosing plan, which worked incredibly well: 50 mgs mag gly every 45-60 mins, depending on the severity of the anxiety. It took about 2 months of very modest improvement until it finally really kicked in, and since then, after half a year of this discipline, I;ve been pretty much anxiety free.

Since you clearly need some help getting of the lamotrigine, it might be better to go on diazepam (Valium), which has an enormously long half-life, and is somewhat easier to get off of, tho you will need a long, slow period of gradual dose reduction once you're ready to.

You might also want to look nto @SlamDancin 's rec re etizolam, which sounds incredibly good.

Anyone ever heard of Etizolam?

https://drugwiki.org/index.php?title=Etizolam

It’s a special benzo-like drug that has some anti-tolerance and GABAA upregulation contrary
To lorazepam. I’ve been using it on and off with no real tolerance issues for 2-3 years now.

@SlamDancin
This sounds almost too good to be true, and would be a real boon to patients who need help.

Which means that most Drs will never have heard of it, or will refuse to prescribe it.

Thank you for posting this, Slam, I've never heard of it before. Anything that doesn;t down-regulate receptors is a godsend. That it might actually upregulate them is close to a miracle!!!

 

[Thinktank]

@paul80
Why so many Drs are total @sswads is one of the great mysteries.

Or maybe not. My theory is that the less capable a Dr is, the more of an @sshat he/she becomes. It's a defensive posture, intended to hide or at least obscure their complete ineptitude and near-criminal mediocrity.

None of those did anything for my massive anxiety/panic issues.

What DID help me was magnesium glycinate. I tried it first at a normal or above normal dose, 2 times a day. Nada. Thru endless experimentation, I came up with my own dosing plan, which worked incredibly well: 50 mgs mag gly every 45-60 mins, depending on the severity of the anxiety. It took about 2 months of very modest improvement until it finally really kicked in, and since then, after half a year of this discipline, I;ve been pretty much anxiety free.

Since you clearly need some help getting of the lamotrigine, it might be better to go on diazepam (Valium), which has an enormously long half-life, and is somewhat easier to get off of, tho you will need a long, slow period of gradual dose reduction once you're ready to.

You might also want to look nto @SlamDancin 's rec re etizolam, which sounds incredibly good.


@SlamDancin
This sounds almost too good to be true

It is. Etizolam is not a benzodiazepine but a thienodiazepine. It comes with it's own withdrawal symptoms much like benzodiazepines. Tolerance develops quickly.
Many who wish to taper off etizolam switch to diazepam.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

It comes with it's own withdrawal symptoms much like benzodiazepines. Tolerance develops quickly.

@Thinktank
Oh crap. What little I've read about it said exactly the opposite: resistant to tolerance withdrawal and the concomitant steady increases in dosing, easy to get off of, etc etc etc.

Soooo tired of being disappointed, time after time. So many members here are battling against the effects of the appalling drugs that Drs put them on with no plan for getting them off of them, and even less interest, and it would have been so good to be able to recommend etizolam as a way off the merry-go-round, with few if any bad effects.

Whether it's a thienodiazepine or a benzodiazepine, if you have to continually increase your dose and eventually transfer to diazepam to titrate off, it's not a good thing.

 

[roller]

1 mg etizolam equates 10 mg diazepine.
etizolam is a very potent thienodacepine

Etizolam, like all hypnotica from the benzodiazepine-range, shows a high addiction and abuse potential.
.
translated from source german wiki: "Etizolam ist ein sehr potentes Thienodiazepin, 1 mg Etizolam entsprechen in etwa 10 mg Diazepam.
Etizolam weist wie alle Hypnotika aus der Benzodiazepin-Klasse ein hohes Abhängigkeits- und Missbrauchspotenzial auf. "

then there is

Flumazenil has been found to stimulate the reversal of tolerance and the normalization of receptor function.
... the antagonist flumazenil resets benzodiazepine receptors to their original sensitivity. Flumazenil was found in this study to be a successful treatment for protracted benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, but further research is required.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_withdrawal_syndrome#Medications_and_interactions

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

@roller

"Flumazenil has been found to stimulate the reversal of tolerance and the normalization of receptor function.
... the antagonist flumazenil resets benzodiazepine receptors to their original sensitivity"​

This would be great if flumazenil were readily available from Drs in the U.S., but unless something's changed, it's not. There's too many potential problems with, among others, sudden and complete drug withdrawal, including possible seizures and comas, and the concomitant nasty effects of that immediate withdrawal, all of them at least extremely unpleasant, and some of them with potential for very long-term side effects.

But it might be useful towards the end of very slow taper in terms of getting the patient completely off the drug in question, once the dose is reduced to miniscule amounts. There would still be the effect of the immediate withdrawal, but at small enough amounts of the titrated drug, it would be a fast, clean, survivable break with the additional benefit of the normalization of the GABA receptors.

 

[SlamDancin]

It is. Etizolam is not a benzodiazepine but a thienodiazepine. It comes with it's own withdrawal symptoms much like benzodiazepines. Tolerance develops quickly.
Many who wish to taper off etizolam switch to diazepam.

The literature I quoted above and my own experience tell me that Etizolam is in fact much less tolerance building and this is why for 2-3 years I’ve never had to escalate the dose past a certain point. I’m also able to go on and off without much of a taper. Some old small human trials found the differences in GABAA modulation bared out in patients who had less withdrawal and actual sensitization of the GABAA receptor and less anxiety 2-4 weeks after starting 2 mg Etizolam a day. Find me one study on any other benzodiazepine that shows results like that. I wouldn’t switch to Diazepam or any other benzo or thienobenzo to taper as I find them all addictive. Your only evidence that Etizolam isn’t special was that it’s a thienobenzo. Of course it should be respected but we’re pretty much between a rock and a hard place with ME/CFS.

It’s not available in the US so everyone will have to figure out where to source it but I recommend it to anyone struggling with being overwhelmed by the environmental “noise.” Truly has been a god send.

As for Flumazenil that a cool idea, but if you went too high on the dosage I could see it being really unpleasant like a bad trip.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

@SlamDancin

Of course it should be respected but we’re pretty much between a rock and a hard place with ME/CFS.

Totally, completely, absolutely agree. If it works for you, then it's your holy grail, and it might be someone else's, too, tho there are no guarantees.

Something they don;t bother to tell you when they put you on this shite.

As for Flumazenil that a cool idea, but if you went too high on the dosage I could see it being really unpleasant like a bad trip.

You dpn;t have to go too high on the dosage to experience some pretty miserable side-effects unless you're under the care of a knowledgeable Dr, and even then it can produce some spectacular crash-and-burns from everything I've read.

 

[percyval577]

I have only a generel input, don´t know if it can hold any water:

In the brain there are a lot of metals. The most natural guess is, that they will have tasks. For some prominent metals some tasks are known, for zinc e.g.

So, if one wants to change the actions in the brain, it might be helpful to replace the metals.
This can be done by chelating them (a known and easy to get chelator is citrate acid) and to take them in at a different time (chocolate contains metals).

Additionally a change of epigentics porobably would be desireable. VitB12 is known for a methylation, but there are other -ations, one should be acetylation (wikipedia).

What I am doing now on my example of mecfs is: putting juice from a lemon in 1l water, adding 2 drops of b12, [half a drop of vinegar for] acetate (well, it has an effect, dont know if it´s the supposed one -), and drinking from it (taking a straw) over some time, hours, a day, it depends. Later I am happy to eat some chocolate, though not too much, up to 37g.


As I said, I don´t know how much of an effect it could have on withdrawl, but for my changes it´s marvellous.