Aripiprazole (Abilify): Case Reports of Diminishing/Lowering Tinnitus

Meanwhile there's a boat load of tinnitus patients who swear Lipoflavanoids work too. I often suspect that tinnitus will do what it will do and if you happen to habituate while using the medication du jour you will credit that medication and ignore the fact that natural habituation might have just happened.

 

Please correct the title of topic. The woman who claim improvement don't use only Abilify but SSRI and benzos. 3 different class of drugs. Thx

 

@Mic Good thread. I have also seen two accounts of antipsychotics lowering T on this forum. Bill112 reported that olanzapine + Benzo + Sertraline did it for him. There was also another account but I can't seem to find it at the moment but from what I remember, it was a similar combo.

Lately I've been giving dopamine some thought in regards to how I got my T. I got it while having akathisia (if you want to know of something that is more distressing than level 9 tinnitus, there it is). Akathisia is a movement disorder caused by antipsychotics and other medications (I got it from a low dose of Celexa). It causes a dopamine blockage in the basal ganglia. Dopamine is literally the only neurotransmitter I have always had an abundance of but when it was blocked, I felt it big time. I felt every single symptom of low dopamine. This type of reaction can last 3-6 months. Around 1 1/2 months in I got the T. The akathisia is pretty much gone but the T remains and I have been considering a dopamine agonist (not an antipsychotic obviously as that would most likely restart the akathisia). I wonder if I still have a degree of dopamine blockage and need a medication to unblock certain areas in my brain.

Just thought I would share this as in my case, T seems to be result when the process is reversed which makes the dopamine theory even more plausible.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience @Cal18

Regarding the use of Olanzapine I can share that a close friend of mine who also suffers from T unfortunately has not benefited from it.

It is probable however that a combination of dopamine and sertraline medication could be beneficial for some people. In my humble... non-scientifical... cross referencing research attempt that I ve done on the internet one of the receptor of the 5-HT.. family (sertraline receptors) comes up as a potential drug target (dopamine medication also affects this receptors partially in most cases).

But... No bright mind with the right profession has turned up till now to give some serious thought about picking up a full scientifical approach on this matter...

With the current mindset there will be a cure... in about 100 years... of coincidental dumb experimenting with colour therapy and discussions about firing electrons (...btw...they are called neurons you... @#$* ).

...despite this... still going strong!

 

The first step to getting past this "There is no cure" mentality in the medical community is to build understanding that T is a neurological disorder, not an ear disorder.

Medications exist to treat psychoses, seizures, and a host of other problems that originate in the brain. There undoubtably is a medical path to trating T, as well. But to get there, we have to build awareness of T as a medical disorder of the brain, not a disorder of the ear. The brain is a lot more receptive to chemical intervention than is the ear.

 

It is not always a neurological disorder. It is sometimes an ear disorder.
It is likely that we need different treatments for different types of T.

 

It's a neurological disorder in that the brain is manufacturing non-existent sounds. It can be triggered by many things (noise, medications, injury, infection, etc.), but the perception of non-existant sound is a sensory processing disorder and occurs within the brain. This is why most people with hearing loss or injury have no T, while some people with T have normal hearing and normal ears.

 

I understood what you meant. But I claim it's not always true. We have proven that it's sometimes true (sectioning the auditory nerve doesn't always get rid of T so it's not always in the ear), but we've also proven the opposite in certain cases, for example the cases where sectioning the auditory nerve did get rid of T, or the otosclerosis cases where a middle ear surgery got rid of T, or the majority of objective tinnitus cases (pulsatile tinnitus being a subset of it), possibly Meniere's too and endolymphatic hydrops.

 

Medication and stress brought mine on...was wondering if anyone heard that lack of B vitamins is one of the reasons cause this ringing is from brain problem brought on by lack of b vitamins?

 

Take some B vitamins and see if it helps Or rather, get a test from your doctor to see if you're deficient in anything.

PS. Why is this posted in a thread about Aripiprazole?

 

The biggest issue with this drug is that it will reduce the levels of dopamine in the brain and can in fact cause movement related issues. In schizophrenia, patients have too much dopamine and that is why this drug is quite effective for it. Nevertheless, there are many other side effects associated with the chronic use of this medication.

 

An important thing to mention here is the fact that Abilify has completely different mechanisms depending on the dosage. Besides hyperacusis & tinnitus, I also have CFS/ME. Researchers at the CFS/ME Clinic at Stanford have found that Abilify in low doses treats neuroinflammation, which is a common symptom among CFS/ME patients. They’ve found that when given higher dosage, patients become worse. Something to do with the neurotransmitters.

My tinnitus came from noise, but it spikes on the days when I’m overstimulated and dealing with a lot of neuroinflammation as it relates to my CFS/ME.

I’m interested to see what effect Abilify will have on my tinnitus. I start tomorrow.

 

@danielthor - do keep us informed. I have ME/CFS as well and am particularly interested in this (and the role of neuroinflammation in tinnitus).

 

You know you're desperate when you're looking into dopamine drugs.

 

Why is that? Is it different principle to serotonin or norepinephrine agonists?

 

I’d been on a very low dose of Abilify for a couple of weeks and had to stop because of the following side effects: 1) it boosted my irritability, I would become easily angry over small things; 2) it made me wanting to spend money compulsively - I realized something was definitely wrong when I fell in love with an expensive sink that I didn’t even need. Seriously, a sink.

On the bright side Abilify lifted my mood and my energy and while on it I was feeling like I could get through the day alright. No effects on the tinnitus itself though.

 

It’s kind of funny in a sense. The side effects of Abilify are compulsive gambling, spending and sex. I guess there could be way worse side effects lol.

 

I've tried Abilify. It's one of the few medications that didn't affect my tinnitus negatively but it didn't affect it positively either. I had to stop because it made me feel agitated and uneasy.

 

@danielthor, any update on this?

 

@danielthor, did you ever try this?