Clonazepam (Klonopin, Rivotril)

Bauman strikes me as a quack; anyway, he claims that gabapentin "doesn't work" but the actual data is a lot more muddled, with some studies showing a strong impact and some showing none. Shulman in NYC has published data indicating that the combination of Gabapentin and Klonopin was successful in reducing the volume or intensity of tinnitus in a significant number of patients, and that this relief was sustained in most patients for a full year (which was, unfortunately, the length of the study).

It's not controversial that benzo withdrawal can cause tinnitus, and I have no problem believing that Klonopin or Gabapentin can cause tinnitus in rare cases as a result of simple use, but that's not the same thing as "ototoxic", and Bauman's list of "what is ototoxic" would basically convince you that you need to live on water and kale for the rest of your life.

 

Thank you linearb. I am so desperate that I wanted to try Gabapentin and had big fear after reading Bauman. I couldn’t find hearing loss in the adverse drug effect list so I was so confused and irritated.

 

Don't be afraid. Like you said, "Medication works differently on everyone!"

 

Hi Once - hope you are doing well!
I have been managing day to day has I always have -still battling allergies (pollen), making my T spike but I notice that when the barometric pressure is low, my T is lower - below 30 is a good day, unfortunately since I started this new tracking barometric pressure in relation to my T ups and downs - we are going through some fierce pollen counts - usually pollen doesn't bother me but this year... WOW!
soooo....
the big news is I got a prescription of gabapentin, and I have stayed on the clonazepam only 0.25mg at night, since being sick a few weeks ago....nice to get some solid sleep again.
I'll start with 100mg of gabapentin at night along with the clonazepam 0.25mg and see how it goes...I would be immensely happy with a reduction in T but if at the first onset of additional tones, buzzes whatever I will stop the gabapentin immediately.

 

@GLJ Hey, I had the allergies bad too but since I started taking allergy shots 2 years ago I've been doing a lot better.

I hope everything works well for you.

I was just talking to someone about if there was a difference between clonazepam and its generic version and Klonopin. What color is your pill and what does it say on it? Some people say the Klonopin (and it says Klonopin on the pill) one works better with Gabapentin to silence the tinnitus. I do not know and have not done any research about it but I will ask my doctor.

Be well,
Once

 

My pills are generic only - it's the only way insurance will cover - so I have 0.5mg clonazepam only, my pills have been pink and yellow - it varies with each refill and I normally take 0.25mg each night for sleep and use herbs during the day (like gingko, vinpocetine and pycnogenol) and have been using quercetin and butterbur for allergies)
Well I will give the clonazepam and gabapentin a shot.

Guess with the allergies it is difficult to gauge a difference - best of luck to you - hope all is going well with your endeavours with klonopin and gabapentin. Are you still seeing/talking with Dr Shulman?

BTW I was born in Brooklyn NY many many years ago! My father was Coast Guard and I married a USMC and life took us all over but we retired in Georgia!

 

I had a bad experience with Accord generic so now I get name brand Klonopin but even with good insurance it's an extra $800 a year

 

I had 9/10 tinnitus for about a week. It was louder than anything in my apartment. Even the TV. It felt like hell.

Tried Clonazepam and now my tinnitus is 2/10. Been a month like this. Huge change.

 

What dosage do you take and how many times a day?

 

1mg 2x a day.

It’s almost like I don’t have tinnitus in MOST environments.

I’m hoping my tinnitus gradually fades away so I don’t need the drugs later. But they make life so much better and liveable because that 9/10 loudness was insane. Louder than my phone music on close to full blast. Unsustainable. I feel I now know what hell on earth is.

 

I really admire your guts Jack. Because that is what it is.

On Monday I took 10 mg of Diazepam, woke up on Tuesday with tinnitus gone all day. My painful sensitivity to sound also alleviated. Today it´s blasting super high pitch fucking crazy in my right ear, spreading across the brain. It´s an excruciating feeling.

I know benzos will help like magic, but I´m so skeptic to its sustainability. I don´t dare taking it every day or even every week. I should make aware that I have a problematic history with benzo addiction and withdrawal in the past and maybe even present so I´m well aware of the consequences.

Well, your tinnitus is relatively fresh, so you still have a window where that is a possibility. But I´m afraid taking a healthy dose of benzo, like you are, hoping it will get better, and then taper off, is wishful thinking IMO.

The way this drug works and how it affects the brain, in our case a brain with local hyperactive activity (tinnitus) it just doesn´t seem viable.

So how does it work in regards to tinnitus (as I have come to believe at least):

1) Benzo binds to GABA-a receptors in our brain, this prompts a biochemical reaction on a cellular level and has a calming (inhibitory) effect on our neurons/cells.

2) Tinnitus often originates in a part of our reptile brain called Dorsal Cochlea Nucleus (DCN). It´s these hyperactive neurons called Fusiform cells that spreads to the brain from the DCN and we perceive it as sound/noise. Like the rest of the brain, the DCN has many GABA-a sites, thus this inhibitory effect will occur and alleviate or remove our perception of tinnitus completely as long as we keep up with the benzo. It it a powerful drug to filter tinnitus away from our conscience.

The problem, however, is that the brain will always seek balance. In this case, after affecting the GABA-a receptors, over time, it will increase the flow of Glutamate. Glutamate does the exact opposite of GABA. It has an excitatory/stimulative effect on our neurons. An important neurotransmitter for learning and keeping attention, but not so good when in excess and in controlling the activity of the DCN and to keep tinnitus under control.

When one stops taking benzos the gabaergic/glutamatergic system is out of balance. No more calming effect, as your GABA-a receptors would be downregulated in addition to the heightened stimulative/hyperactive effect of the Glutamate.
This can take a long time to balance itself out naturally and there is no real way to speed up this process. We have talked about Flumazenil on this forum, but not sure it would help as a way to upgrade your GABA-a receptors.

I have thought long and hard about this, both because I am in protracted withdrawal and I want to make this way of treatment viable. Maybe benzos and a strong NMDA- receptor (binding site for Glutamate) antagonist like Ketamine, to cover for the excess glutamate would do the trick? I don´t know and nobody really seems to do real research on the subject. Ketamine, though, is in the limelight at the moment for treating depression.

I dont´t mean to startle you, but better to be informed if you are not.

I see quite a few people going this benzo route now, many with added Gabapentin.

I have not been able to make a choice so I end up taking it sparingly, getting short time relief and probably upholding my protracted withdrawal.

If one only knew how long it would work, how long can one keep up-dosing when tolerance kicks in and you would need more to keep tinnitus & hyperacusis suppressed?
Will our GABA-a receptors eventually be completely depleted? How many years to reach that point?
Some people take benzos for a lifetime without up-dosing. Why is that?

In (my) reality it´s a question of killing myself now or take benzos for a "no way to know how long", but enjoy life and kill my self when it becomes futile in suppressing tinnitus. Or what if a cure comes along and you get rid of your tinnitus, but now you must get off benzos again, which is "hell on earth" and something I don´t think I would survive going through again. Maybe even the glutamate storm in my brain and ears will kill off my newly regenerated hair cells. Then what?

I am in a middle of an AD (Venlafaxine) withdrawal right now. I´m on two kinds and feel poisoned already. Not in a good place at all and can´t make a decision about anything right now. And the question of going all in on benzos, or not, is the hardest one to make ever in my life. Long term thinking it's the choice between two evils.

All I am is anxiety, tremors and screaming ultra high pitched tinnitus and so broken by my noxacusis. I have all the reasons to take benzos, but as I´ve said, I don´t have the guts.

Somebody tell me, what is the right decision?

 

Hi,
Nobody can make this decision but you of course but you seem to know a lot about benzos, how long were you on them before and why did you stop taking them in the past? Was it for tinnitus or other problems?

I can only say that it isn't 'some' people that can take them a lifetime and don't need to updose but actually it is 'a lot' of people.

Unfortunately this isn't useful info for you since you had withdrawal issues before.

 

I took Oxazepam (a short half-life benzo) on and off for 18 years. I did have to updose a few times during that time to get the desired anxiolytic effect. But it just happens unconsciously when you aren´t informed about the dangers and no doctor told me about it. After a while I unknowingly got anxious because I needed the drug and not because of any psychiatric illness. Then it became dangerous. Of course I got really sick without it and was committed for detoxification and tapered off. No health-professional will tell you to up-dose when you come pale and shaking into their office. And many doctors will actually stop prescribing it when they become aware of your problems. Still it was a nightmare for 3 years. This was in 2012 and I´m still in protracted withdrawal because I can´t seem to stop it completely now that I have tinnitus. Now on Valium (Diazepam, long half-life benzo).

The people who don´t have to updose, I think, generally takes them for sleep issues and not anxiety or other issues. But people respond differently to it. That's a fact.

 

I wish I had 100 10mg valium pills myself. I'm not worried about withdrawals, only suppression of the noise. I know valium is a good muscle relaxer as well as working to calm down the firestorm in our brain. I forget all the technical terms about glutamate and Gaba involved. I could care less about those words, I just want something that works.

 

But your doctor won't comply?

Yes, it certainly is, but becomes even more stressed when the benzo is out of your body.

So you would take benzos every day and never look back if you could? You are not afraid it would be like pissing your pants, in the Siberian cold, to keep warm?

 

Well it doesn't seem to be the case, it looks like clonazepam given for anxiety keeps their anxiolytic effects even after years.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9641001/


Also when you look at user reviews for example clonazepam and filter on anxiety and duration on the drug it seems that it keeps working for most
https://www.drugs.com/comments/clonazepam/for-anxiety.html?sort_reviews=time_on_medication

 

Well, two years, anyway.

 

when you mean off and on, do you mean like months on and then months off or a few times a week, month because maybe you had withdrawal issues inbetween or had kindling effect?

 

Sorry I edited my post and added the reviews on clonazepam which are people who have been taken it 10 years or more for anxiety

 

Not at the moment, I don't have a Dr. that will prescribe it. Trying to see my old psychiatrist, but he's booked for months. He is not in-network so it would be a cash visit. Maybe I could see him sooner with a cancellation.

I took diazepam pre-tinnitus for anxiety so I'm not terribly afraid of taking it occasionally or going back to gabapentin plus klonopin combo. Everyone reacts differently. I hate the side effects of SSRI's & SNRI's and that's what Dr.'s like to prescribe.

 

Really can´t remember. But I took it more and more and at increased doses as time went by. I remember I started at 10 mg at the time, but after 18 years I needed 150 mg a day to cope with the panic attacks. I was definitely kindled.

But I admit there are other variables contributing for things to go this far, like tapering ADs, alcohol, cannabis abuse, life situation etc...

 

Agreed, and their withdrawal can be as bad as benzo, especially the short half life ones.

 

Well, the second post in that link read:

"I have taken Klonopin for 10 years for anxiety. Dr. started me at 0.5mg/day. Because of increased anxiety, my dosage was increased slowly to (3) 2mg doses per day. I was at 6mg/day for several years. It calmed my anxiety and helped me to sleep very well. I went on a 2 day trip 3 years ago and forgot my medication. I was up all night and realized that I was dependent on Klonopin. In the past 3 years I have slowly decreased my dosage to 1mg at night and 1mg in the morning. I have been at this dosage for 1 year. If I forget to take this Klonopin dosage, I get very anxious. I want to decrease dosage more, 1/4 mg at a time. Klonopin absolutely helps with my anxiety, I just didn't know I shouldn't have taken the high dosage that I was on."

I´m afraid this is typical.

 

When I take a look at the percentages of people having a bad experience it seems to reflect that around 15 percent will develop tolerance to benzos or will have withdrawal issues. That's what my doctors told me.

 

I wish I could believe that.

Clonazepam would have a high rating of course. It makes you feel good and relieves all kinds of stress related symptoms. But I have read hundreds of withdrawal stories as well as experienced it myself. If I went on it, I could never look back. And if Neuromod doesnt work, I probably will go for it. I have my GP on board if I want to. He understands my suffering with this fucked up condition called tinnitus and noxacusis.

 

found this also

"I was prescribed this medication to help with mild tinnitus. After 3 months, I was having severe memory issues and thinking problems, so the doctor tapered me off. After a couple of days, I started experiencing painful muscle spasms and a feeling of chemical burns all over my skin. The doctor said this is common after coming off of klonopin and that it would stop in a couple of days. It took over 3 months for these issues to stop, and no amount of pain medication would even touch the sensation of chemical burns on my skin. Additionally, my tinnitus is now much worse than it ever was before klonopin - instead of the steady mild hum, it now sounds like air horns are being blasted in my ears. Patients beware!"

Like this person it is also my experience that doctors and even trained health personell in drug abuse centers knows NOTHING about benzo and withdrawal. So the danger are you will be left on your own or be seriously miss treated.

 

Taking these benzo drugs are in my opinion no way a long term solution.
So, might as well deal with your problems now.

 

And if you can't deal with your tinnitus problems.

 

In tiny Belgium alone 10 percent are on benzos, meaning 1.1 million people. Of course there will be thousands who had a bad experience. I also read the horror stories and bad experiences but who will go on the internet joining BenzoBuddies or other forums searching for answers and telling what happened to them?

The ones who take their benzos and live their lives further without the anxiety have no need to visit the internet and tell their story, that's why I posted the review site because you can also read about people who have good experiences with benzos even after taking them for a long time.

 

Then find something else, if anything Benzos will make it worse.