Clonazepam (Klonopin, Rivotril)

@donbraby: People’s reaction to benzo’s vary. I don’t think they are a long term solution. How long have you had tinnitus?

 

I had sudden sensorineural hearing loss and my tinnitus was cured but relapsed from benzos.

These fucking benzos destroyed me, I lost my sleep & silence, I developed super severe hyperacusis & ear pain.

If you have tinnitus, benzos are a total disaster.

 

Clonazepam and its uses: I've been prescribed it for Restless legs syndrome (Periodic Limb Movement Disorder).

I've also had tinnitus in my left ear since 1992 and as it's a steady sound I accepted it after a while.
I've also had Periodic Limb Movement Disorder since the early '80s, and until two years ago no-one in UK (nor in NZ where I now live) offered me anything for my kicking legs which kept me awake at night.
A year or two back I was offered clonazepam to help me get to sleep fast enough (usually workss) before the leg-twitching starts (and then develops into full-range kicking).
So I'm on clonazepam for reasons other than tinnitus. Odd that no-one mentioned it in relation to tinnitus.

NOW - related topic - since January I have had an un-tinnitus-like problem on the right side of my head/ear.
It happened the moment I woke up and for a few hours was just a loud whistling sound on the left side and a hollow/boxed-in sound and distortion on the right. I thought it had gone a few hours later, but the right side distortion has remained.
It becomes worse according to the position of my head (look down, up, turn sideways, gets worse).

I'm going to ENT (here in NZ, and having to pay) next Tuesday. What I want to say to the guy is 'why can I stop it for a short while by pressing my right ear, as that is not like tinnitus?'
The audiologist has simply done his job and said there was nothing wrong with the outer or middle ear, but it was likely the cochlea which was damaged. So how come I can temporarily (around half a minute!) stop the whole thing? Seems to me like there's inflammation somewhere which returns slowly after half a minute.

 

Please DON'T EVER take benzos! It is the worst psychotropic substance to ever exist, much worse than illegal drugs.

Much worse than heroin or cocaine.

It does not cure tinnitus & hyperacusis, it makes them worse and will give myriad other problems. You will go crazy with benzos.

This is from my experience.

 

@1MW
Stop the scare monger you are not correct and your experiences does not apply to everyone. I am proof that Benzo's are very useful if you don't abuse it. Not sure why you insist on scaring people that may need to use medication just to adjust to Tee life.

 

@Carlos1 benzos are useful only if you want to do a surgery 1-2 times in your life.

NOT for tinnitus. They are a total disaster for tinnitus, believe me, never take benzos for tinnitus.

If you have tinnitus, your tinnitus will become worse in the long term and if you don't have tinnitus, you have an increased risk of getting tinnitus.

 

@1MW
Again that's your opinion I went to Mass Ear and Eye and they said that Klonopin was a viable treatment.
We may have other treatments coming out in the near future why sit there and suffer because Klonopin may or may not worsen your Tee. What would you suggest telling someone that's at the end of their rope and can't take Tee any longer? Come on man think about what your saying.
I get it that you had a terrible experience but you refuse to acknowledge that other people have not.
I have been on K off and on for 4 years and its been a life saver for me.

 

@1MW,
Your view is your view on how you went on with Benzodiazepines.
For some people it can help and whom may have been suicidal.
A debate is good but everyone does not react to them the same way ..
Love glynis

 

I´m unsure of that to be true!

Even though, as mentioned by others here, people will react differently. Everyone, on a steady benzo regime, will eventually build tolerance and would have to up-dose as some point to get their relief no matter what they are taking it for and your symptoms would be much worse off than it was originally. At some point, could take years, your whole nervous system will break down if you do not have it in your system. If you by then, do not have a contract with your provider to just keep up-dosing, you will have to go through withdrawal, which for 99% of us is sheer terror for a very long time, even though your taper is healthy.

What would happen if you just kept updosing, is the big question in my view. Where would it end?
There is one member of this forum that are doing just that(@birdy). And she has been doing it for many years and is currently on a ridiculous high dose Clonazepam and other drugs, maybe to make it more viable?

She is totally T free though and seems very happy. I might go that same route very soon, but if nothing else, I really question the viability!!!

Hopefully, she would chip into this discussion.

One thing is for sure though. If I would go the benzo route, there would be no turning back and no half-hearted approach either. T and H in benzo withdrawal is just not an option in my view either.

If it comes to killing your self over T and H becoming too much or go the benzo route, the latter would most likely give you a good life for who knows how long(depending on your previous relationship with benzo and your genes).
I salute @birdy for being forground-figure in this, and I wish she would come on here more often, to give us updates. But she is T free, so why should she be on this forum?

How do we define viable? If it extends your life with hightened quality, then I guess, maybe it is. But it wont come without hardship. And for some, it will be a point of no return into unknown territory.

 

I have severe tinnitus. The only thing that has helped is a combination of Clonazepam and Gabapentin. I have been taking the same dose (0.5mg Clonazepam and 300 mg Gabapentin 2x daily for over 6 years. It has lowered my tinnitus and made my life more normal. The drugs are amplified when taken at the same time. Don't ask me why, but I don't get the same effect if I take it at different times. I don't know how I could handle my tinnitus if it wasn't for these drugs. I first suggested this to my family doctor after reading Dr. Shulman's study: http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/gabapentin-and-tinnitus-relief.pdf. This is probably only for the worst cases of tinnitus like mine.

 

@dkota, it's exactly what I'm taking... I take 300 mg of Gabapentin in the morning, then at night I take the other 300 mg of Gabapentin along with the 0.5 mg of Clonazepam. People have very strong opinions of Clonazepam but it has helped me tremendously.

Stay strong.

 

Has clonazepam or other benzodiazepine tranquilizers reliably helped anyone to overcome the spike, reduce tinnitus, and in such a way that the effect persisted after the end of the drug intake?

 

Hard to say for sure but I have used them sparingly when I am at my worst and after a short course of them I do seem better but I think that's because they helped me break the cycle of anxiety and start either ignoring or just getting used to my tinnitus again. In my about 4 years I have had some very bad months followed by some pretty good ones, the goal is to have more good than bad. It's a constant effort to not obsess on my tinnitus and keep engaged in living life and not avoiding regular life events or over protecting. It can be done.

 

THANK YOU! You took the words right out of my mouth. This problem of 'always' or 'never' is one of the reasons I stopped coming to posting boards as often. I came today to 'check in' regarding my tinnitus, but this post stopped me first and I'm really happy it did.

I've been slowly tapering off benzos for a year now. It's been rough for me, and my tinnitus has spiked, but I do have some days where it's barely noticeable.

Now, if I left my post at that, then you'd automatically think it was because of the benzos.

But there are other pieces of the puzzle. I have atypical facial paresthesias and numbness, along with vertigo and Meniere's Disease, which includes tinnitus. The benzos gave me the ability to be able to work at my job a little longer, and get through vertigo spells a bit faster.

I have good days and bad days with the tinnitus, and I am on a very stable, low (4 mgs per day) dose of Valium. I take it exactly at the same time every day. Some days I have to actually 'listen' for the tinnitus, and other days it's in my face to the point that I want to cry.

I am under a doctor's care. She is amazing. She wanted me to just stay on a low dose for a while, and not pressure myself to have to get off of the Valium. I'm grateful for that. She is happy to work with me and let me do what I want, but she's supportive if I want to stay on it too.

So I can't say what exactly is helping or hindering my tinnitus. I only know that lack of good sleep, stress, and loud noise makes it worse. How much the benzo is contributing to it, I can't say. So I will continue to try to slowly taper and see what happens.

I left the benzobuddies board because it starting becoming more about politics and arguing than it was about support. As wonderful as it is to have support boards, whatever we offer in terms of support is not a one-size-fits-all deal. What works for me might not work for you...but don't discount benzos to the point of demonizing them.

Okay...off my soapbox now...

 

I was prescribed clonazepam in 2010. I take it whenever my tinnitus reaches very severe levels. It will usually reduced the tinnitus to complete silence over 3 to 24 hrs. I take it about twice a month for up to 3 days maximum. Dosage, 2x0.5mg tablets. My tinnitus is variable from: complete silence, mild, moderate, severe and extremely severe.

Michael

 

I have been taking Clonazepam over 25 years with no problems. Last night I took one from a new prescription that I just got, the pills looked a little different but I found out that it was from a different supplier. 15 minutes after I took the one .5 mil of the new pills my tinnitus started to increase. I could not believe it. I called the pharmacy and asked about the new pills and was told they were identical to my old ones "same active ingredient" then I thought, maybe one of the fillers or color dye lot, could have been a problem. Could it be that these new pills are ototoxic in some way, maybe the fillers or dye lot? The pharmacy told me no way. I guess it could be just one of my spikes, but I was not exposed to any loud sounds that day. I just don't believe it. When I woke up this morning the tinnitus was still louder then my normal baseline.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had a reaction like this when their pharmacy changed medication suppliers ? I thought maybe it's an allergenic reaction to one of the fillers or dyes, I have always thought that the fillers had no medication in them that they were inert and harmless.


Please let me know what you think, this kind of thing happened to me once before when I took a zantac. but my tinnitus went back down to my baseline in about a week. I wonder if that is possible in this case.



Thank You


Louie
Quietatnight

 

@quietatnight - good question

https://www.drugs.com/answers/have-you-had-trouble-with-different-brands-of-335045.html

https://forum.drugs.com/need-talk/same-drug-different-effect-42692.html

 

@Greg Sacramento


I read all of that, it's very interesting.


Thank You


Louie
Quietatnight

 

I had to get off Klonopin because I was realizing it was addicting

 

Hey guys, I'd just joined the chat last night and I've now got a potential trial of clonazepam 0.5 strength, just looking for feedback and advice on anyone's experience... Cheers, Flutterlug 77

 

It's very helpful in the short term. I used it here and there to relax my tensor tympani muscles (they tend to contract/seize up) and it worked brilliantly for up to a week. I took maybe ten 0.5mg tablets across 4 months, so didn't become addicted but towards the end I did notice they started losing some effectiveness.

 

I am nearly finished with my taper of benzo's and my T has NOT gotten worse or changed at all. AS long as you do a VERY slow taper like me, your T will most likely be unchanged.

Benzo's CAN BE life savers. They were for me.

I am also on a fb group for people tapering of benzo, and only a couple of the many people there have reported T as a side effect AND it was either intermittent or it went away again

 

Hi Folk,
I am interested in Klonopin with Gabapentin Therapy. What was your dosage in the beginning? Does it loose efficiency with time or keep stable?
How long you can take this pills , weeks months or years?
I have severe tinnitus and would like to give this a try. They mentioned relief so it’s worth Trying for some subgroup of tinnitus I understood. Do you combine klonopin with Gabapentin each day or randomly?
Thanks so much.

 

Klonopin should not be taken for more than two or three weeks, or you risk dependence, and a post acute withdrawal that can last a very long time. It happened to me, with a relatively short term use of Klonopin, but I had used another benzo, Xanax, years before, which makes things worse. I've been completely off Klonopin for over six months, and still have bad post-withdrawal symptoms. Benzo withdrawal is much worse than that of narcotics. Proceed with extreme caution, that's the only advice I can give you other than stay the hell away from benzos completely.

 

I used to take Xanax on bad days, but it did not stop tinnitus, it just took the edge off, and I didn't care about tinnitus for the next couple of hours, something like instant habituation.

@Michael Leigh Is there something specific in Clonazepam that makes it stop tinnitus? I would like to ask my GP to prescribe it, but I am not necessarily interested in the 'benzo effect', I would like to know if it's 100% guaranteed to stop tinnitus for a couple of hours. My tinnitus is mild, but I am far from habituation and sometimes I just need a break.

 

According to the attached document from Harvard Medical School, looks like there might be a 75 percent guarantee.

A partial cut and paste of the contents:

Medications like klonopin [benzodiazepines] quiet tinnitus in about 75% of people, but
(1) its effect on tinnitus is DOSE RELATED. ---- this means
The MORE klonopin you take, the QUIETER the tinnitus.
(2) Klonopin works within a few minutes to hours [not days]. --- this means
If a dose is going to work you will know about it soon.
(3) The most common side effect is SEDATION [drowsiness]; next most common is IMBALANCE.

 

@lymebite Thank you for the document, very informative. It seems they encourage very high dosage though... I want to stop tinnitus and enjoy my day, not be totally knocked out and go to sleep. I think I will pass and wait for habituation to occur naturally

 

@sky_high

Clonazepam will not work for everyone. When my tinnitus is very severe I take it and the tinnitus will either reduce to a very low level or complete silence. This is not a medication that should be taken too often as the body will quickly get used to it and more of the drug needs to be taken to get relief. It also has unpleasant side effects if taken too often and dependency sets in. I have had no problems with it over the last 8 years.

You have only had tinnitus for 3 months so are still in the very early stages. I do not recommend that you take clonazepam especially as your tinnitus is "mild". Focus on trying to habituate and the rewards will be much better for you. It takes time and if necessary, try and get a referral to a Hearing Therapist or Audiologist for tinnitus counselling and management. Please click on the links below and read my posts which you might find helpful.

All the best
Michael

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/new-to-tinnitus-what-to-do.12558/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-a-personal-view.18668/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/is-positivity-important.23150/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-and-the-negative-mindset.23705/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/acquiring-a-positive-mindset.23969/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/the-ent-doctor-and-hearing-therapist.24047/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/inspiration.22894/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/can-tinnitus-counselling-help.22366/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/the-habituation-process.20767/

 

If you want to live, never ever get these rat poisons called benzos.

 

Why does Dr. Levine recommend them then? It is an individual decision I suppose.