Clonazepam (Klonopin, Rivotril)

Benzos, Stress, Anxiety, Loud Music, Jaw Problems. Who knows

So... T from benzo it's rare. And you must use a lot of benzo for a long period to get T. You must to be very unlucky to get T from a sporadic use or from a little use (like me that i have got T the only time that i wath for a concert without my eraplugs. First time without and i have got T. Not bad life, thank you.)
Millions of people use benzo every day so T from benzo it's a very rare thing. Probably, how you write, it's a mix of factor or just predisposition.

 

! No disrespect for anyone and I am not trying to scare anyone, just want to give something back to linearb
I suggest you to read your post history! Seriously, I read your writings every week where you tell people to not take benzos. Your writings kinda help me to stay away and deal with it in other ways, you know what I'm saying? You have written that if you start taking benzos when you have T, soon you are going to have much bigger problems than T. You wrote that benzo withdrawal was a hell for you, I don't wish that you will experience it again. Take care!

 

@linearb I still take off and on and it's been a life saver for me

 

I used it 8 months 1 mg per each night for sleep. If you take a look at Benzo Buddies you will see MANY and MANY of people got it even one single pill. Of course it differs from person to person but tinnitus is one of the most common w/d symptoms in Ashton Manual(It is like a Bible of benzos) Unfortunately, this symptom is last to go or even the permanent one.

If you guys plan to quit this drug, please read Professor Ashton's Manual first. You can create a taper plan by switching Valium etc. I wish I had known it before quiting clonazepam.

 

What the non chronic tinnitus sufferer defines as tinnitus is much different than what we define T as and in many cases it's just a symptom that comes and goes for benzo users (they'll list it among a miriad of other symptoms). I don't believe for a second that you could get permanent T from 1 single benzo pill. Maybe fleeting T which scares people who don't know what it is. I personally am sick and tired of all the benzo bashing on this site - yes they are addictive and you can gain tolerance to them but they have honestly helped me at a very very dark point in my life and I continue to take them. Clonazapam .5 mg TID.

 

I know a member came to BB after 5 years of his last dose and he still has tinnitus and he claims he had never T before benzos. He used it sporadically only for a week. Not more than 3 pills. We need to see their danger but I do believe people should take them if they need to. I was insomniac and already tried 10 different drugs to get 5 hours of night sleep. Nothing worked. Then took benzo and magic! I wish I never quited them because I had no ear problems when I was on clonazepam. They are addictive right but it is not the possible danger of them in my eyes. They are HIGHLY ototoxic. That is why people get tinnitus. I know couple of people also lost some hearing. But if you already have tinnitus before touch them, they surely do help.

I'm a lab rat, I'm not against any drug here. You should see how many different drugs I have used till now. And I'm just 24

 

Benzos are not among the highly ototoxic drugs and the general consensus is that they become ototoxic when they are abruptly stopped.
There is no reason for them to be ototoxic. They bind to GABA-a receptors and increase GABA availability to the brain, preventing any buildup of what is suspected to be the number one cause for inner ear troubles (glutamate ototoxicity) - as GABA is, roughly speaking, a glutamate antagonist.
If anything, benzos should have a neuro-protective effect more than a nerve-damaging effect.
But when you stop benzos cold turkey, glutamate starts running a rampage in the brain - hence tinnitus and/or hearing loss.

Having said that, you are better of not starting benzos at all. You don't want to mess around with the brain's normal function.

 

I see that 2 mg of clonazepam queit my T. But at the same time i had a rebound effect for one or two day after with anxiety and a T more noticeable.
So when I take benzo I use this procedure:
2mg first day
1 mg second day
0.5mg third day
10 drops
5 drops
2 drops
stop

I have T since february so i can't copy with it without take benzo two times in a months with this system. Probably i must use an SSRI like duloxetine for my depression or try gabapentin until i decide that T don't bother me. For now it's a bad moment... but i hope to reach a right point and copy with T without drugs.

 

@Poyraz - listen to @undecided . He knows his meds. I know I wish I never started benzos... But they are the only thing that lowers my t. But he is right about the cold turkey stops as you know- I also know folks that have had peremenant T from an abrupt stop but it's rare that the actual meds induce the peremenant T. It's the way you stop. We'll have to agree to disagree.

 

I do not disagree anyone here. I know I did a cold turkey and got tinnitus. That is why I wish I never quited them(or started). But I have one question to ask. Some people got their T when they are still on them. Why is this happening?

@undecided Do you have any idea why? I'm asking this because I also consider to take them again but some people on benzo groups claim that this will make things even worse. I'm confused.

 

Looking at your list of Who Knows, I think Clonaz was the least of your worries.

 

Yeah, as I said before "Who knows".. But it must be a huge coincidence that I got it when I quited this drug?
I do know benzos are my real cause but I can not blame these drugs because I am the one went cold turkey. And of course, my doc never said not to do it.

 

It's not a coincidence. They work on GABAa that is know as a foundamental part in the genesis of T. So if we take a drugs that works on gaba we have some effects on T. Probably a cold turkey, for some people, it's a sort of rebound effect: the mind is not able to get back soon the previous levels of gaba. So we could have some neuronal problem like anxiety, panic attack and... T. Or for a person that suffer from epilepsy we can have a big epilepsy attack.

I hope that you know what i mean. I don't write english very well.

Probably you had small hearing problems before. And along with the rest, you've got tinnitus. Tinnitus is a maladaptive attempt of the mind. A sort of wrong correction.

For example in my case i have an acoustic trauma. A very quickly remapping due to lose some hearing cells. This remapping went wrong. So my mind has registered Tinnitus.

 

I know. Infact they often encourage it!! They often don´t know a thing what they are talking about these doctors. They have never felt benzowithdrawl on their body themselves.
What is important to understand is that if you take benzo long enough you are in a way in a constant withdrawl between every dose. Thats what made me use it for 25 years. The anxiety I had was uknowingly because of withdrawl. It becomes a vicious circle. You can taper to make the withdrawl easier, but some time you have to stop all together and thats when the problems really begin. You have to learn how to live without it and its no picknick. It can take years for the brain to stabilize the GABA-Glutumate levels I think.

I was on the type of benzo-anxiolytics with the shortest halflife too(oxazepam) which is not very viable to treat anxiety. You take one..BOOM 4 hours later you need another.

When it comes to benzo as a ototoxic drug I think it is important to destinguish between what drug actually damages/kills your haircells and what makes your brain fire neurons uncontrollably because of a nervoussystem out of control(GABA/Glutumate-missmatch) Both can or will give us T. I believe benzo does the latter, but then it should sibside eventually. If it doesn´t, then maybe I´m wrong.

Just want to say one thing about Clonazepam when it comes to dosage. I mean 0.5 mg doesn´t seem like alot, but if you compare it to what I took(Oxazepam) its equal to 20 mg and to me that was a healthy dose even 10-20 years into my missuse. 2mg = 80mg seemes like an overkill.

Anyway, 3.5 years have gone since I´ve realized benzo was a problem in it self for me and I still have strong tremors (especially in the morning) anxiety and my life is on hold.(Also due to my T.) I still take the occasional Diazepam. But only 5 mg less than once a week. I´ve had T for 1.5 -2 years now, and since I noticed benzo also helps with that it does´nt make it any easier to stay away from.

Bottom line. Short sighted, benzo is a wonderdrug when it comes to both anxiety and T. Long term, will make everything worse. I think we all know this, and it is hard to try and find a golden line with this shit.

Lastly I just want to post the BENZODIAZEPINE EQUIVALENCE TABLE for all to see. Its probably been posted befor but..

http://www.benzo.org.uk/bzequiv.htm

 

Yes - but this is much more of a problem with shot half life benzos such as oxypam and ativan as well as xanex. Klonopin and diazapam are much better in this regard. Not saying it can't happen but the chances are far far less.

 

I only used clonazepam. I guess I'm just unlucky.

 

Cold turkey. Hmmm brave of you all the same. Its less the drug, more how it was managed. I guess that's why they tell us all the time to do this or that under Medical supervision.

 

I have been trying this drug (Rivotril in France) for several months by varying the dosage between 8 drops and 30 drops per day. The problem was that I felt unbearable abdominal pain (as a side effect) before feeling a slight improvement in my tinnitus. So I had to stop the treatment.

 

Wow. What is it you have not tried these last few months?

 

I've been using 0.5 clonazepam sporadically and it makes my T quiet, not sure if it's just because I'm more relaxed or that I just don't care when clonazepam kicks in, but tomorrow it's the same old story. 1 mg definitely makes me a bit hung over the next day.

 

@grate_biff :
Sorry for the mistake. I have not taken drugs simultaneously, but one after another.

 

So I just took .25 yesterday and .35 today which I think has given a slight reduction in noise. My question is - if so many people are having success on drugs such as Kolonpin, why is somebody not making some similar type drugs that don't have all the bad side effects of Benzos?

 

That is a good question that I have contemplated myself lots of times...
If you think about it, during the entire human history, people have had a very small number of anxiolytic agents at their disposal:

- i'd say back in ancient times, you had good old alcohol or maybe a good knock on the head.
- i'd also say that at the end of the renaissance, people started noticing opioids (while not strictly anxiolytic, the effect is similar), which caused tons of deaths due to their misuse and their unknown potency.
- off to the modern industrial times, you get bromides, which did the job but were actually toxic and in the long term, positively lethal.
- then came the barbiturates, which were much safer than bromides but still pretty dangerous when mixed with other CNS depressants or taken at large doses.
- then, after the 60's, barbiturates where replaced by the benzodiazepines (valium then xanax, klonopin, etc) - benzodiazepines are a lot like the barbiturates but have a much better safety profile. You basically cannot OD on benzos unless you eat like 10 boxes of the dope or something.

So, sorry for the history lesson, but I guess you get my point.
Science is slowwwwwwwww. For, say, about 6000 years, there have been maybe 5-6 major iterations of anxiolytics where the newer drug actually improved upon the older generation.

I'm sure that someday, someone might find a GABA influencing drug that is safe and doesn't cause tolerance and dependency issues. But I would believe that for the next couple of decades, we'll be stuck with benzos (a personal estimation, for what it's worth).

 

Because the bad side effects are an inherent and probably inescapable result of the way the drugs work in the first place. If you use synthetic molecules to artificially enhance the way GABA works in the brain, over time this causes downregulation, structural receptor changes, and dependence.

 

Thus so popular amongst GP´s. They don`t care about the addictive effect. Keeps you coming back, doesn´t it? As long as you can´t kill yourself, they are in the clear.

I wonder if maybe ECT(Electro convulsive treatment) would put the GABA-Glutumate balance in place??
Pretty radical though! But in my worst time of withdrawl, I would have done it in a hartbeat!

 

Yeah, going down the permanent benzo way is a bad first step in not ever accepting tinnitus.

At the beginning it makes it go away for a day, then you need more, soon you feel like the neuro's best friend, at the end you pop 4-5 pills just to get an idea of the relief benzos originally gave you.
It's a long, slippery road to addiction and I'm glad I set some ground rules when I started them or I'd be living in and out of rehab by now.

I'm sure they've helped some people but I'm also sure they've destroyed the lives of some pretty normal individuals.

 

@undecided getting off benzos was one of the hardest things I've ever done... but I took them for the better part of a decade, they worked the whole time and I never increased the dose. Only withdrew out of anxiety about long term effects, and I'm still not sure it was the right thing to do.

I took 1mg Klonopin yesterday for the first time in two months and I feel better than I have in weeks.

I want to try 6-12 months of 20 hour fasts and daily meditation / chi kung before I elect to just go back on Klonopin forever, but I might hit that point.

 

I would suggest that everybody reacts differently to Benzodiazepines, but that majority of the millions who take them do not suffer from all the bad side effects they have. Personally, I'm quite afraid of them and only taking my Clonazepam occasionally!

 

I've been on the same dose of Valium the last two years (I stay between 5 mg to 7.5 mg 30 minutes before bedtime). You just have to remained discipline and not pop this stuff like candy. It's not a miracle drug; I use it to take off a slight edge of anxiety but I don't expect it completely eliminate my anxiety during the day and that is the mistake some people do. They keep taking more and more and more until the anxiety is 100% gone....then it comes back so they take even more. Bad mistake! These are just tranquilizers. I try to rely on guided meditation and CBT techniques. Note, my anxiety started before my T did - T never gave me anxiety - just bad annoyance at times. The Valium also helps me relax a little before going to sleep as I have some occasional insomnia issues despite following sleep hygiene (related to anxiety). I do plan on eventually weaning off, but will do so very slowly (like 1mg less per month). Google the Ashton method for details.

 

I take 0.5mg Clonazepam twice a day and it hasn't helped calm the ringing at all, but then maybe it's contributing. I've been on that medication for so long. Started out at 2mg four times a day years and years ago.

I'd really like to stop taking it all together.