Does Deanxit (Flupentixol/Melitracen) Help Tinnitus? Share Your Experiences

A doctor in Belgium wants to put me on Deanxit! It's not available in the Netherlands. Has anyone got experience with this med?

 

@Tigo - I would stay away from this combo drug as it appears to have been banned by many countries, including the U.S.

From Reference.com: "As of 2014, Deanxit is banned in the United States, Canada, India, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom and Denmark due to its lack of clinical trials and untested compounds in the drugs, notes The Economic Times. Another reason for the ban is due to flupentixol's serious neurological side effects, according to PharmaBiz.com."

Ref: https://www.reference.com/health/side-effects-deanxit-10598bc7d50a5748

 

Doctor in Belgium (it seems only Belgian doctors prescribe this) put me on the Clonazepam-Deanxit combo.

I bought them both but currently only taking Deanxit.
I must say it works. First thing that actually works.

Problem obviously being that I can't stay on Deanxit forever and I'm expecting the tinnitus to come back in full force when I stop taking it. Also unsure if this has the potential to make my tinnitus worse.

So - while it is clear that it does something to lower the volume of the tinnitus, it's still an anti-epileptic medication. It can't be healthy to keep on taking it forever.

 

Deanxit drug is not available in the US.

I take Clonazepam + Gabapentin and have for several years; there are not many things that I find more alarming than benzodiazepines, but thioxanthenes (typical antipsychotics) are on that list (and one component of Deanxit is this kind of drug). Long term use of benzos is definitely not great for you but the typical APs all cause extrapyramidal symptoms over time, which generally will become permanent over a long enough period because these drugs are neurologically damaging.

Benzos are bad for your short-term memory, mess with long-term potentiation and the HP axis in insidious ways, and can be a nightmare to withdraw from. I think they're a lot safer than antipsychotics, though.

 

The Clonazepam/Deanxit combo is only meant to be a temporary patch.

Based on this research (from Belgian doctors):
Administration of the combination clonazepam-Deanxit as treatment for tinnitus

I have a follow-up appointment in 2 weeks with possible minor surgery, plus I needed something to calm down.

So @linearb, are you saying I chose the more evil of the two then? I thought I would not take the Clonazepam because I've read so many reports of people that had benzo withdrawal induced tinnitus?!

 

Ben, I would like to ask you about the Deanxit. It is not available in the UK but I could talk to a neurologist to get it mailed. However, it has been banned in a few countries, it has a scary list of side effects and I wonder whether I should try it or not. What is the idea? Is it possible you take it only for a few weeks, it lowers your tinnitus, you stop, and the tinnitus stays low? I know this is the best case scenario but was this the idea of the doctor who prescribed it to you? For how long would he prescribe it? Thanks in advance.

 

The Brai3n clinic prescribed Deanxit to me. Even within Brai3n there are mixed opinions on the duration it should be taken for.

Some doctors there say it's only a temporary patch, others say you can take it for life no problem on a maintenance dosage (some people only take 2 pills per month).

Pretty sure the idea behind Deanxit is not unique as all it does is take away the focus from the tinnitus and hence make it appear to be less intrusive. But I quit taking it 4 weeks (or so) ago and I can confirm that the tinnitus just comes back (into focus) as loud as it was before I started taking it.

At Brai3n they always advise to take Deanxit in combo with Rivotril (Clonazepam) - the Rivotril is there to prevent the nasty Deanxit side effect of twitching mouth spasms.

The idea of the doctor prescribing Deanxit to me was to get me in a better / more calm place as we were planning at the time to "implant" a patch on my eardrum - it's something they do at Brai3n as a therapy:

https://www.brai3n.com/en/treatment/vliesjes/
(select English at the top)

 

Thank you, Ben. The paper recommending Deanxit plus Clonazepam has been criticised in:

COMMENT ON ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMBINATION CLONAZEPAM-DEANXIT AS TREATMENT FOR TINNITUS
Staab, Jeffrey P. M.D., M.S.

Otology & Neurotology: June 2012 - Volume 33 - Issue 4 - p 685-687
doi: 10.1097/MAO.0b013e3182382681

Basically they have reservations on the trial design, on the bad side effects and on excluding placebo.

Still, I hold Prof. De Ridder in high esteem so if he recommended it to you based on his clinical practice I can try it too. I'll book a consultation.

May I ask you how long you took it?

 

Thanks for this. Could you tell me more about your experience with the medication?

 

That was plenty of years ago — I had nervousness, inability to sleep, and awful heartburn from it. It is a very old drug that is sometimes still prescribed in some countries in Europe as a temporary calming pill of sorts, but it is addictive, if I recall well.

Apropos, I like your avatar name. I wish I could experience seishuku, chinmoku, kamoku, seijaku, mugon, or anything else that makes silence silence.

 

Aren't you afraid of your doctor not wanting to prescribe you the Benzo anymore due to some change in government healthcare policy? One of the things that made me extremely anxious while on Xanax was that thought.

 

It is. I don't like antipsychotics and this is a mix with one inside but I'm desperate.

Apart from the side effects, was it totally useless for the tinnitus itself?

You and me too! Who knows if we will ever get there in this life. Let's hope.

 

I took Deanxit when my TMJ problems had begun but that was before I had any tinnitus. My tinnitus started much later and was mild for nearly a year before 4 medications (a single Aspirin pill, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, a glass of tonic water, and an antibiotic ointment that I applied on a burn wound for 12 days) made it moderate and then severe. It has not gone back to any previous mild/moderate base.

I am, thus, very wary of medications and suspicious of medications like Deanxit with their potential to mess with the brain functions.

This is not to say that I distrust the medical science - my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all physicians. It seems to me, though, that when it comes to tinnitus, most medications have the potential to do more harm than help.

 

Yes and no? I've done benzo withdrawal twice, I can do it again if I need to. My doctor is younger than I am, has no problem leaving me on this forever, and despite some crackdowns etc (I have to do urine screens to make sure I'm not on heroin), I don't really see a noose tightening on benzos.

However, if the US government decided tomorrow that US citizens would just no longer be able to be prescribed benzos under any circumstances, I would... just.... break several laws, spend several thousand dollars, and quietly obtain a lifetime supply of one of the myriad of diazepam or Clonazepam analogs which are, at present, super widely available on domestic and global gray markets. (This is a dangerous and bad idea, but we're talking in hypotheticals -- the US is not about to do a hardcore benzo crackdown).

So, yeah, I've thought about this but it's pretty low on the list of things I worry about. I calculate I would need 180 mg of Clonazepam, total, to do a reasonable taper, so on some level I'd feel better if I just had that extra ~3 month supply socked away in a freezer, but at this point I don't see any reason to be concerned about it or feel like I need to be doomsday prepping, I think I am more likely to die in some kind of climate-related disaster before I'm 60 than get cut off my drugs. This is America, we love drugs. There's something like 66,000,000 benzo scripts a year written here, and if and when they start tightening the noose on that, well, it's shitty to say, but people like me, being "middle class or above people on private insurance with no criminal record and a long track record of using this drug to treat a chronic condition" are the demographic most likely to be able to just keep getting their pills without much fuss.

There's a bunch of great reasons to not be dependent on benzos and this is certainly one of them but it's pretty far down the list for me. The fact that these drugs universally cause a crippling dependence with a withdrawal syndrome that can actually kill you is much more alarming to me.

I generally agree with all of this. I have no MDs in my family but my mother was a science teacher and my general philosophy towards life and media is "be skeptical of everything, but, trust the general scientific apparatus, except in cases where it's clearly being subjected to bias from capital, political or cultural pressure". Following the actual research on COVID-19 (in terms of, reading several hundred whitepapers) over the past year vs following how things were being reported in press vs following how average people were actually responding to them, has been very informative. I think the scientific method works and gave us a bunch of better-than-expected mRNA vaccines in an insanely compressed timeframe, but the messaging around it all and explanations to the public were pathetic (and I am throwing as much shade on the CDC here as I am on QAnon, especially because the CDC's confused messaging directly fed QAnon disinfo nonsense).

Subject for another thread, but, urgh. Science works! People's brains... well... sometimes they work.

 

Where did you buy Deanxit? I have a prescription from Brai3n but can’t buy it in Poland.

 

I wonder if there is an international pharmacy selling it? It's not sold in the UK either.

Edit: It seems you can buy the two component drugs though. I wonder if the pharmacy would accept to sell you the two separate drugs?

 

Any pharmacy in Belgium.

 

Do you know any online Belgian drugstore which I can try to buy both drugs in, that would ship outside Belgium within EU?

I tried to use my prescription in Poland and the Netherlands and none of drugstores accepted Belgian prescription…

 

Mentos, you can buy it in Belgium via internet. Ask Bra3in. They can help in this matter. I did the same but I don’t remember anymore where. It was a drug store in Ghent.

 

Thanks, I’m checking with Brai3n, I’m just not sure if an online Belgium drugstore is allowed to ship drugs outside of Belgium. We’ll see.

 

This was the store:

APOTHEEK PHARMAXPERT/ M-PHARMA
Prinses Clementinalaan 16
9000 GENT

m-pharma@proximus.be

They also send medications to EU countries.

 

Thanks for your help. I already ordered my medicines from this pharmacy and expect the delivery tomorrow.

 

@Chinmoku, I was suggested the same Deanxit + Clonazepam combo by Dirk de Ridder today. I really don't know what to do here. The sensible, logical part of me is screaming "FUCK THAT, I'M NOT TAKING THAT SHIT!", On the other hand, I'm getting very desperate, the tinnitus is getting worse all the time and I have no freaking idea what to do anymore. DDR said that I should only take the lowest dosage of Clonazepam and then split that in two, so it's a really low dose. Still, I'm skeptical. I've only heard horror stories. I've actually not heard a single positive thing about Clonazapam, ever.

I'm going to start working out again on a regular basis. I signed up for a gym yesterday and I'm going tomorrow morning. I'm also due for a hearing aid in about a month. I think I will try these things first. I also asked about Ketamine, but he said that he would only suggest that if I combined it with that neuromodulation they do in his office in Belgium. I can't afford to stay in a hotel in Belgium for 3 weeks - that would be insanely expensive.

I really don't want twitches in my mouth, but how risky is Clonazepam really on a scale of 1-10? If we're talking about a half of the lowest dosage...

 

Unfortunately it is unpredictable. Probably some genetic testing could help determine how sensitive you could be. I'm going through hell to reduce even 5% by-weekly and I started from a relatively low dose of 0.5 mg (10 mg Valium equivalent roughly). If he is suggesting 0.25 mg that would be 5 mg Valium equivalent. I don't want to advise you. It could work for you or not but severe tinnitus usually requires much larger doses. People on this forum have been stable on doses going from 2 to 4mg. Some people can stop without problems, other get stuck and go through hell. It's very individual but I would keep it only as very last resort.

 

No, based on what you've just said, I've already decided. There is no way in hell I'm taking that crap. I'd rather shoot heroin straight into my eyeballs (I'm not gonna do that either).

 

I am tapering Klonopin as well. What dosage are you at?

 

I'm down to 0.37mg. I cut 5% every 2-3 weeks but the tinnitus is killing me. I don't know if I can go on. What dose are you at?

 

I would still consider benzos. They are very safe compared to a lot of other drugs. They've been around for 50-60 years. I know elderly people that have taken them constantly for 40 years. Occasionally I take Oxazepam 5-10 mg per day. Max dose is 100 mg a day. It is considered to be the safest benzo. I try to not take them more than every other day. I want my body to be clean from benzos before I take them again. I also take Zopiclone which I believe is in the benzo family. I can take 3.75 mg per night for several months in a row which probably is too much. When I stop taking it, I have 3 nights of bad sleep. Nothing more. Benzo in a low dose is essential for me once my tinnitus is nasty. Once my tinnitus settles down, it's typically no problem to stop taking them. Long term I prefer an SSRI. They make me much more vital/creative compared to the benzos.

 

I am at 0.12 mg.

 

You are much further than me, well done. At what rate are you reducing? Is the taper bearable or are the symptoms very strong?