Clonazepam (Klonopin) stops my symptoms almost completely

YippeeKi YOW !!

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@Replenished @Stretched
It's simply an observation that the mechanism of this drug has a way of relieving my symptoms and this may provide clues as to the cause of the illness.
Klonopin/clonzepam was created by Roche Labs to compete with Dilantin, and was intended to treat epileptic seizures. When that didn't bring in the rich financial stream that had been expcected, it started to be promoted for depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

That may be part of the clue as to why it works so much better for your symtoms than just regular bnzos.

Who knows. Just spitballin' ....
 

SlamDancin

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I think I’m going to push this issue with OMF. I don’t understand why benzos wouldn’t be a topic of great interest considering it’s apparently the only thing that keeps Whitney able to make hospital trips without crashing. That implies it’s more than anxiolysis which matches with my experience and others here. I’ll be goddamned if this is not figured out.
 
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All that said, there is some sort of neurotransmitter aspect to this illness. There's too many of us who, at one point or another, develop incredible sensitivity to glutamate/glutamic acid.

@YippeeKi YOW !! where do you get that info from? Here? Again, that is a theory around tinnitus (too much glutamate activity, stimulating neurons and producing phantom sounds).
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

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@YippeeKi YOW !! where do you get that info from?
A lot of it anecdotally from reading the threads closely. Some of it from personal experience. Some of it from the experience of close friends and ocasionally, family..


The plural of anecdote is data ....
Again, that is a theory around tinnitus (too much glutamate activity, stimulating neurons and producing phantom sounds).
It's just one of many.

  • Tinnitus and lead poisonging
  • Tinnitus and general heavy metals poisoning
  • Tinnitus and glyphosate
  • Tinnitus following food poisoning
  • Tinnitus and aspirin toxicity
  • Tinnitus and antibiotics
  • Tinnitus and chemotherapy
All of these competing theories seem to indicate to me that no one has any real clue about what causes tinnitus. Most likely it's a multi-factorial and lends itself well to any number of theories.

For my husband, it was gunfire and target practice. He was in the air force and was exposed to a lot of that, for quite a while and had tinnitus for years ....

EDIT .... for typos, misspelled word due to typo, totally unrecognizable word due to typo .... etc etc etc ...
 
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YippeeKi YOW !!

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I don’t understand why benzos wouldn’t be a topic of great interest considering it’s apparently the only thing that keeps Whitney able to make hospital trips without crashing. That implies it’s more than anxiolysis which matches with my experience and others here.
Opioids mask pain, just as benzos 'support' and maximize GABA receptors.

Opioids make it possible for chemo patients, surgical and post-surgical patients, burn victims, accident victims and numerous others that I can't dredge up right now, to survive sometimes excruciating pain. It doesn't change the nature of what's causing the pain, it doesn't heal anything, it doesnt alter anything, but by masking some aspects, it does allow for a better, if somewhat temporary, quality of life by muting the pain.

Benzos work on numerous aspects of the nervous system and brain, and who's to say that somewhere in there there isnt an answer. I'm fairly sure that there is, but I'm just not sure that it's The Answer ....
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

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Thank you for trying to temper expectations. If you are correct @YippeeKi YOW !! I will be the first to congratulate you. We are going to know either way though if I can help it
Totally ROCK ON ( fist pump emoji times 3) !!!!

And keep me posted if you can, yes ??? Like you, really looking for answers, and finding vey few relible ones ....
 

Davsey27

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Interesting,

Perhaps benzos may be dampening down some of the Immune responses.Im also curious if there may be elements of CIRS involved regqrdojf brain injury from mold and other toxins and if a subset of patients who benefit from benzos may have some abnormalities in the Nueroquant MRI or other CIRS markers
 

Rvanson

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Supplemental GABA is nothing like a benzo at all. I’ve tried nearly every GABAergic in existence and imo nothing gives the same symptom relief as pharmaceutical benzos.

And none ever will. Benzodiazepines are all different, too. Would you like to be awake for four days? Of course not. But Xanax, of all the benzodiazepines, puts me to sleep in an hour or less. I get about the normal 7-9 hours of nice sleep and with no side effects like the grogginess, that one gets from OTC sleep meds, or Seroquel, which is an anti-psychotic medication lots of the psycho-quacks are doling out like candy these days. I make NO APOLOGIES at all for using a benzodiazepine at all. I don't use it, but to get a good night's sleep. That gives me the energy to get things done. BTW, the psycho-quacks have a new term they use when people come off the SNRI medications, suffering from the side-effects of the use of the newer medications, like Effexor, Cymbalta, & Pristiq : “Discontinuation Syndrome”. Sounds like a case of an “addiction to a drug” to me, if I ever heard of one!
 

Rvanson

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@Rvanson I feel you. I am completely dependent on Gabapentin thanks to psych docs. It causes full blown withdrawal if I stop or try to taper too quickly.

I didn't know that about Gabapentin, SlamDancin. I know I too am dependent on Alprazolam (Xanax), and never said it was not additive. But so is sleep, when you get right to it. Some humans can get by on 3 or 4 hours of sleep, I am told, but few humans can do so, including me. It's too bad that drug users started the war on Benzodiazepines, by crushing it into a powder, then snorting it up their noses to get a high. I'm told it does not last very long, since I have never done that. I don't have any need to use it during the day, only at night for sleep.
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

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You absolutely do not have to snort or even abuse benzos to get high from them
Totally agree. Like, 1000% ....


You also don't have to abuse them to fall victim to their potential for devastation, cause they really don't give so much as a sack of soggy socks whether you're using them responsibly and for sound reasons, or grinding them up and snorting them 24/7 just for the hell of it. They'll burrow into your CNS, rewire your brain and neuro-transmitters, and then hang up curtains and re-paint the whole place before inviting the family over for a wine and cheese party.

A tiny percentage of the population seems to have incredibly fortunate genetics and is uniquely able to sidestep the worst of withdrawal and protracted after-effects, but for the rest, less genetically blessed, it's a world of hell that can go on and on and on and on and ....

Never mind. I'll see myself out now .... :hide: :hide: :hide:
 

Rvanson

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You absolutely do not have to snort or even abuse benzos to get high from them

I've never got high on Xanax. I use it so I can get some sleep. I have never snorted it at all. I have no "devastation" from Alprazolam. My brain works just fine, as it always has. I was born lucky and have a high IQ and I still do.
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

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I've never got high on Xanax.
The kind of 'high' you get from responsible use of Alprazolam is quite different from the usual drug high resulting from overuse or abuse.

What Alprazolam does, among other things, is boost your GABA receptors, the calming feel-good neurotransmitter. So with responsible use like yours, all you feel is that you don't feel bad. And you're getting sleep. But underneath that calm exterior is a neurotransmitter system that's being decimated, then decimated again, leaving you with seriously down-regulated GAB neurotransmitters ad receptors, which will definitely be an issue if you ever run out and have to miss a dose.

Your natural GABA system, now stripped to the bone and struggling severely, wont be able to respond and make up for the loss of the artificially imposed GABA, and you'll fairly quickly (Alprazolam has a pretty short half-life) experience anxiety, muscle spasms, possible depersonalization and derealization, severe sleeplessness, more anxiety, etc etc etc. And when I say 'anxiety', I mean the chest pounding, ripping, terrifying kind that feels like a heart attack and the end of the world as you know it, not mild worry-wort kind.

What you might want to do is transfer to diazepam, which has an ENORMOUS half-life and does the same thing that Alprazolam does, with somewhat less risk because of the vastly extended half life. One mg of Alprazolam is roughly equivalent to 10 mgs of Valium/diazepam, so if you're taking 2 mgs of Alprazolam your taking about 20 mgs of diazepam ....

I hope this helps. Think about it for a bit .....
 

Rvanson

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The kind of 'high' you get from responsible use of Alprazolam is quite different from the usual drug high resulting from overuse or abuse.

What Alprazolam does, among other things, is boost your GABA receptors, the calming feel-good neurotransmitter. So with responsible use like yours, all you feel is that you don't feel bad. And you're getting sleep. But underneath that calm exterior is a neurotransmitter system that's being decimated, then decimated again, leaving you with seriously down-regulated GAB neurotransmitters ad receptors, which will definitely be an issue if you ever run out and have to miss a dose.

Your natural GABA system, now stripped to the bone and struggling severely, wont be able to respond and make up for the loss of the artificially imposed GABA, and you'll fairly quickly (Alprazolam has a pretty short half-life) experience anxiety, muscle spasms, possible depersonalization and derealization, severe sleeplessness, more anxiety, etc etc etc. And when I say 'anxiety', I mean the chest pounding, ripping, terrifying kind that feels like a heart attack and the end of the world as you know it, not mild worry-wort kind.

What you might want to do is transfer to diazepam, which has an ENORMOUS half-life and does the same thing that Alprazolam does, with somewhat less risk because of the vastly extended half life. One mg of Alprazolam is roughly equivalent to 10 mgs of Valium/diazepam, so if you're taking 2 mgs of Alprazolam your taking about 20 mgs of diazepam ....

I hope this helps. Think about it for a bit .....
What Alprazolam does, among other things, is boost your GABA receptors, the calming feel-good neurotransmitter. So with responsible use like yours, all you feel is that you don't feel bad. And you're getting sleep. But underneath that calm exterior is a neurotransmitter system that's being decimated, then decimated again, leaving you with seriously down-regulated GAB neurotransmitters ad receptors, which will definitely be an issue if you ever run out and have to miss a dose.

Your natural GABA system, now stripped to the bone and struggling severely, wont be able to respond and make up for the loss of the artificially imposed GABA, and you'll fairly quickly (Alprazolam has a pretty short half-life) experience anxiety, muscle spasms, possible depersonalization and derealization, severe sleeplessness, more anxiety, etc etc etc. And when I say 'anxiety', I mean the chest pounding, ripping, terrifying kind that feels like a heart attack and the end of the world as you know it, not mild worry-wort kind.

What you might want to do is transfer to diazepam, which has an ENORMOUS half-life and does the same thing that Alprazolam does, with somewhat less risk because of the vastly extended half life. One mg of Alprazolam is roughly equivalent to 10 mgs of Valium/diazepam, so if you're taking 2 mgs of Alprazolam your taking about 20 mgs of diazepam ....

I hope this helps. Think about it for a bit .....[/QUOTE]

YippeeKi YOW !!,

Valium/diazepam do not work for me. Even if It did, I do not want a long-lasting Benzodiazepine anyhow. As I said, all Benzodiazepines are quite different. For instance, Lorazepam effects my memory, so I would never use it but a couple of times, then stopped. Klonopin is too long-lasting as well. When Xanax was introduced in 1981, it was said it has antidepressant qualities and from my use of it over many years, I agree. It is a miracle medication for me; short-acting and I don't abuse it, but use it only to get a good night's sleep, not to get high. I don't use any illegal medications either, and I never have. Thank you for your concern for my welfare and the information you posted, but I am aware of all the Gaba information you posted. I have been off of Xanax several times and had no side effects like feeling as though I was going to have a heart attack, stroke or a seizure, just increased anxiety and not able to sleep for days on end. I did not ask for this condition, but I am not going to go on living life without being able to sleep quite soundly and wake up with no hangover symptoms whatsoever.

All the best to you, YippeeKi YOW !! Your concern has not gone unnoticed by me. Thank you!
 
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