How Can Benzo Fully Remove Tinnitus and Hyperacusis and Hearing Distortion for a Few Hours?

Do benzos help with sleep? I mean, help you sleep like before, deep beautiful uninterrupted sleep and wake up feeling as if you’ve slept 2 days. My nervous system is obviously in a shock and while I read this discussion with great attention, if you leave your CNS like trash for long, it isn’t good either. I’ve left mine for almost 6 weeks now. The effect I can feel, I know well what it does to the adrenals, cortisol and consequently the rest of hormones. So my question is, as I have never used them before, do they provide you with a proper sleep and is the next night without them equally good or does the anxiety return ten fold? I’m more afraid of the rebound effect.

Thank you in advance.

 

Having used both, Mirtazapine at a low dose, like 7.5mg, works much better for me than 5mg of Xanax.

 

Hi @donotringatme -- People react very differently to various kinds of benzos. I've had enough experience with them, and have heard many other stories from others, that I would suggest trying other alternatives before resorting to benzos. When my nervous system went into overdrive after getting tinnitus from an ototoxic medication, and I decided to try an extremely low dose of Lorazapam, I experienced a seizure instead of getting the calming that is normally associated with benzos.

Desperate to get some sleep however (I only got about 20-30 minutes a day in the beginning), I tried a 1/4 tablet of Tylenol 4 (which has codeine in it). When I finally dozed off after taking it, I slept for 6 hours straight! It's been my go-to solution ever since whenever my sleep becomes disrupted. I recently heard of another woman who was prescribed Tylenol 4 for her sleep issues, so I'm not the only one it works for.

In short, I would try Tylenol 4 before trying benzos (need a prescription for it). I'd also recommend experimenting with things that are very supportive of the adrenal glands (adaptogens), and other modalities like acupuncture, heavy doses of omega 3 fatty acids, etc. -- Best...

 

Did you ever try this? Would be curious to learn from your experience.

 

My distortions are a joke when on benzos. Literally the difference between living life and living constantly white knuckling.

 

That was a bit cryptic. What do you mean?

 

Benzos + Scopolamine + Gabapentin + Betahistine and a pinch of Memantine = I basically am cured. Tinnitus is a joke, it's so quiet and distortions are static.

Not sustainable and you feel drunk lethargic and stupid. Buuuut the almost silence is nice. My heartbeat with earplugs in is louder than the tinnitus for the first time in months.

 

Bruuuuhhh how did we think of an almost identical drug cocktail.

 

Yeah I basically thought... slam the receptors from every angle and it seems to be working.

I listened to music and it had like 5% distortion tops.

Gives me a lot of hope for those K channel drugs.

Does that shotgun approach give you lower volume?

 

Do you find you pay for it 10 times over in the coming days?

I took benzos yesterday because I was off the charts. I know tomorrow is going to be shocking for me. There is a pattern... 48 hours after benzos days I spike so bad.

 

Yes for about a week I pay with more thumping tinnitus.

 

Not really. Do you think you or I will ever be 100% cured of this distortion phenomena?

 

Yes I do.

There's plenty of evidence out there saying this can go away. I'm living proof. I've heard the change, I've zapped tones out of existence. It can be done.

Even in the next 5 years, I think it may not be cured, but drastically improved... to the point it becomes regular therapy via ENTs.

 

Have you tried Betahistine or Cyclobenzaprine yet? Both are pretty safe.

 

My neurotologist refuses to prescribe them until I get imaging done and the wait time is infinite.

 

What could Betahistine possibly do to hurt things? Even if it's autoimmune, it wouldn't show up on CT or MRI for the ears. Maybe if you had Susac's syndrome or MS.

 

Well his main theory is that it's literally just progressive Cisplatin damage. It NEVER leaves the cochlea and literally physically destroys the organ.

 

Would you ever consider regular benzo use? I'm 2/3 of a way to a year and it's something I revisit as more time goes on and I'm only semi-functional.

 

Do you take Betahistine for the distortion or generally for tinnitus? Do you have dizziness or vertigo?

Where I live, it's commonly prescribed for tinnitus without balance issues as well. I took it alongside with Piracetam for 2.5 months starting a week after onset of my low hum and one week prior to the onset of the UHF tinnitus, and they did absolutely nothing.

I rarely hear of anybody who gets beneficial effects from Betahistine. But it's well-tolerated, not many side effects.

 

It may be placebo but my thudding tinnitus has reduced while on Betahistine. I noticed it comes back a bit when off. But it needs to be like 70mg a day spaced out. Scopolamine is similar but less benign. I never got to try Piracetam. Various shrooms are my next trial for vasodilation and for psychoactive changes.

 

Regular as in once every 2 weeks.

No more than that. I want the escape to work even if it means I have to suffer in the meanwhile. Gives me hope my own receptors can figure this out.

I did a hearing test in the silence and no change really... perhaps even better hearing in my problem 500 Hz area... So benzos didn't lower the gain on my auditory system.

Which means having the tinnitus is entirely pointless and it should figure its shit out.

 

You may want to check out this post on Sodium Thiosulfate preventing Cisplatin induced hearing loss and tinnitus.

 

Would that even work considering it was throughout 2003 I was given Cisplatin?

 

If you are continuously getting worse, there's something up, it could be residual Cisplatin catalyzing breakdown of cells making super oxides. So yes NAC and other reducing agents would protect you.

You can't really "use up" a catalyst, so it wouldn't surprise me if some was still there catalyzing the formation of radicals.

Heavy metals are no joke to have in large amounts in your body.

 

Your guess is probably as good as mine. I mentioned Sodium Thiosulfate (STS) because you mentioned that Cisplatin can stay in the cochlea, and cause ongoing damage. I have to think there's a possibility that if you get some STS in your body, it might have a chance to migrate into the cochlea and perhaps do a little house cleaning. Seems feasible, but I have no idea how realistic that might be.

Just to mention, STS is the compound found in healing hot sulfur springs that apparently gives it most of its healing qualities. You can actually make a sulfur hot springs in your own bathtub by adding just a tsp to tbsp of the STS crystals (which are very inexpensive). Not only does STS have some very significant detoxification capabilities, but it apparently totally neutralizes chlorine that's in the water; so you get a chlorine bath to boot.

STS is commonly sold in pet stores because of its ability to quickly and easily remove chlorine from aquariums.

 

Note: not a doctor, also I think daily use of benzos is incredibly dangerous.

Just a few observations:

#1 "shotgun approach" and binge doses are generally much worse for you neurologically than taking a small, steady dose of a benzo on a regular basis.

#2 using Valium PRN was moderately effective when I was in spike mode in making me less crazy. Taking Clonazepam + Gabapentin daily has, so far been moderately or more effective almost 24/7, with my only "bad spikes" very much corresponding to personal periods of fairly extreme stress. I am only 3 years into this experiment so I will have to get back to you in another decade, one supposes.

#3 as dangerous as benzos are, I am going to put the risk of "using a benzo daily in the prescribed manner under medical supervision" as being much lower than "consuming aquarium chemicals that were not designed for human consumption and therefore may contain a lot of trace toxins that would not be allowed in something that is"

I mean, not necessarily? Sure, there's plenty we don't know about heavy metals but they're notoriously hard to clear and do cause ongoing damage in some cases. On the other hand, hearing tends to degrade with age, this tends to accelerate from the mid-30s into the 50s, and simple organic worsening of hearing can lead to worsening tinnitus in some people, even if it doesn't seem to.

Personally I would not be trying to chelate out chems potentially consumed in 2003, barring the input of an actual doctor who had some clinical reason for thinking this is useful based on some measurable thing. I say this not because I think heavy metals are especially well understood, but because chelating agents can be quite dangerous, and, even if they work, if you don't know what you're doing you are freeing trapped heavy metals into your bloodstream.

 

Unless they are organometallics, they don't get trapped in body fats, just float around causing havoc. Once chelated, they are far less reactive and easily get excreted. The only danger of chelation is depletion of good metals.

 

@Matchbox, how much benzos are you taking that it eliminates your tinnitus?

 

Benzos don't eliminate my tinnitus, but it makes it much lower in intensity.

It's a toughie because now I'm spiking and before the benzo weekend I was doing markedly better. Earplugs had more hissing than ringing / wavering. Feels like it's all undone.

Regardless? 1 mg Clonazepam + 900 mg Gabapentin and a Scopolamine patch is the most I used. Freaking tired, but I noticed things were... very quiet. I could go outside and not worry about it.

As I came off, I spiked and it's as if I didn't improve at all.

 

Thanks for your response. When you say you “came off“ do you mean you came off the Clonazepam? If you’ve been on that for a while I think you probably already know you should do a really slow taper. But I don’t know if you take it every once in a while or if you take it daily. I take about .75 mg daily to sleep. I’m trying to slowly decrease that. I was completely off of them until I lost more hearing and got a new tone in my ear about a month and a half ago. Totally. Stinks.

Does the Gabapentin help?