Who says we heal as we go?

This notion that we heal as we go... what is there to support this scientifically? My own doctor says the brain cannot truly start to heal while we're still on, I have no idea why he believes this, what there is to support that idea anymore than I know what there is to support the other quite frankly. Considering the drug is in our blood stream doing it's job of disregulating gaba receptors, why would a slower taper, even while perhaps experiencing fewer symptoms, give anyone the idea they were actually healing? So many do a slow taper and get slammed afterwards, if this were true, that would simply never happen, and so many others suffer terribly during a slow taper only to get slammed even further after. Some do better going more quickly, like myself, who knows what will happen after I'm off, but that's true of all of us. It's one thing to say you're going to be more comfortable maybe tapering slowly and that's fine. Healing is something entirely different.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Thanks,

m

removed comment as it was not helpful

Hey Marina,

 

You gotta check out this post...it is a very detailed description of the pathology and physiology of our symptoms as it relates to benzo affected brains. It is EXTREMELY informative, encouraging and uplifting.

 

Please look at it...you might find some hope in it.

 

The link:  http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=66397.0

 

A cosufferer,

 

David

klon 1.3125

halcion .48

This notion that we heal as we go... what is there to support this scientifically? My own doctor says the brain cannot truly start to heal while we're still on, I have no idea why he believes this, what there is to support that idea anymore than I know what there is to support the other quite frankly. Considering the drug is in our blood stream doing it's job of disregulating gaba receptors, why would a slower taper, even while perhaps experiencing fewer symptoms, give anyone the idea they were actually healing? So many do a slow taper and get slammed afterwards, if this were true, that would simply never happen, and so many others suffer terribly during a slow taper only to get slammed even further after. Some do better going more quickly, like myself, who knows what will happen after I'm off, but that's true of all of us. It's one thing to say you're going to be more comfortable maybe tapering slowly and that's fine. Healing is something entirely different.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Thanks,

m

 

Hi Marina -

 

I am glad that I stumbled upon this thread.

 

I FULLY agree not only with your doctor, but Professor Ashton claims this as well. To me, as you stated, the benzo is only doing it's job by "down regulating" our GABA receptors. It only makes sense that when one slows down they will get some relief as the drug now is dominant again. Our brains kick into "high gear" & start to try & repair the damage done to the down regulated receptors when the benzo levels starts to decrease in our blood plasma levels. This would explain why I have never seen any long term users on this board walk away unscathed or effortlessly from ANY type of withdrawal. Whether slow or fast.

 

I do believe that the drug should be eliminated rather slowly as our brains are the SLOWEST organ in our bodies to heal. This is a FACT. There are so many variables involved with the liver & elimination of benzo's. Withdrawal rates are an individual thing, as our bodies all eliminate these drugs at different rates.

 

I CT in the beginning (HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE), up-dosed could NOT seem to stabilize, tried cut & hold (UNBEARABLE), switched to daily reductions (RELIEF AT LAST), got "stuck" at 2.25 mgs & changed back over to cut & hold. Surprisingly enough, the method that was so unbearable (cut & hold) for me, has now allowed me to continue  on with my taper with LESS intense S/x's. Does this mean that I am  truly "Healing"? To a certain extent,  I believe my brain is trying to "adapt" as it is meant to do when traumatized. All of the painful sensations we endure are a sign of our bodies TRYING to heal. I do not believe one can fully "heal" till the benzo has been eliminated. NO PAIN=NO GAIN for those of us who are sensitive. JMHO

 

Be well, & Smoooth tapering to ALL...

 

Joe

 

Just read the thread below... Thanks dmw61! ... GREAT LINK from Parker. We WILL heal eventually.

I started my taper in painful tolerance withdrawals.

 

I am still in pain.

 

I am planning a 6 - 9 month taper from Klonopin and Halcion.

 

The pain is difficult to bear...I'm still working and my irritability is through the roof. I can hardly be around other people. I just want to scream.

 

PLEASE...someone "out there"...I need some hope that we DO heal as we go. We've got to...less benzo = less damage = increased opportunity for healing?

 

Somebody, throw me a bone...

 

David

klon 1.3125

halcion .4375

I finished my taper today and the severe symptoms have improved. I have been tapering for a year. Although I still have some symptoms, I truly believe that some healing had to be going on because I felt so wretched throughout most of my taper. My anxiety is so much better and the depression has lifted about 80%. The DP is still with me but the head pressure has also gotten better and the headaches also. I won't go on and on but I would have to have been improving throughout my taper because I feel differently but not 100% by any means.

 

P2

 

 

I think people who are in tolerance withdrawal, have paradoxical or toxic reactions are exceptions; but for the rest of us seeing that some don't believe healing happens during a taper revs up my anxiety and makes me want to take a break from BB. I'm gonna go work out now and burn some energy.

Marina:

As another poster remarked, drug effects are dose and time-related. That's why how much you took and for how long have a lot to do with the limits of your withdrawal. People are commonly told by their doctors "you can keep taking this for the rest of your life". They find out that a few years down the road their doses have increased and their symptoms right along with it. Then they have to taper.

Anyway, your doctor is the one who must prove his postition, not vice versa. I suggest you consider the effect of your words on other people, and think about removing your post.

 

Aweigh

Wow, well, I don't know how to remove this post, maybe someone can ask a moderator to do so I really don't see why posing a question is so threatening. I say I don't know now, not that I do. Any other interpretation is projection and I don't take it personally, but those being unkind to me might consider their position. I'm just saying...as you and several others felt free to. I'm not the one being confrontational. If an honest question is too much, by all means, I'm not getting any answers, feel free to have the moderators remove it, the sooner the better in my opinion. This is turning out to be unpleasant. Anyone else feeling the need to be nasty can kindly keep it to themselves, it serves nothing. Truly nothing.

m

I know for a fact I have healed during my taper.  When the Dr. put me on 2mg in August 2012 it could not touch my w/d it was like taking ZERO.

 

In December I had a big Holiday party and I NEEDED to be 100% no matter what. So I broke taper and popped 2 mg that night and I nearly fell asleep and was major relaxed. That could NOT have happened just 4 months before.

 

If my GABA had not re-regulated in that time the drug would have had no effect. I also slept 14 hours the day after.  That's my proof we heal. If you have a doubt take a dose you were on many months ago and see what happens (not recommended, but you will be a believer too)

Thanks for that reply Bird, you make things so clear.

 

I think my body adjust to the many cuts I made in the course of my taper.  What was not possible in the beginning, such as being able to think, talk or go anywhere, became possible later in my taper.

 

Something improved.

I can tell you my experience. At the start of my taper I would make a cut and feel it. I would stabilize  and cut again. Toward the end of my taper, I no longer felt the cut. I feel that I healed as I tapered. I wasn't always sick. Toward the end when I began feeling nothing, I jumped. I've felt fine. I think I had such a tiny bit of medication in me that it wasn't registering with my brain at all and with few symptoms, I felt I had healed over the course if my taper, without a doubt.

 

 

The whole question revolves around what exactly takes place physiologically that constitutes healing of benzodiazepine dependence. Physiologically, benzodiazepine dependence involves the inversion and loss of GABA receptors brought about by the surplus of GABA produced by the benzodiazepine.

 

As you slowly taper and the surplus of GABA is reduced by the reduction of the benzodiazepine the inverted receptors begin the process of resynthesis. This resynthesis of course takes a long time which is why the taper has to be carried out slowly. During the taper, then, there is healing, inasmuch as the reduction of surplus GABA stimulates the resynthesis of the lost inverted receptors.

If there were no healing until the benzodiazepines were completely eliminated -- i.e., no resynthesis of the receptors taking place -- the tapering process would be meaningless. Even the rapid tapers carried out at detox facilities would be pointless unless at least even a minimal amount of resynthesis were taking place.

 

Having said that, FULL healing can't begin until all of the surplus GABA produced by the benzodiazepines have been eliminated from the body, since it is only in the complete absence of the drug that the receptors will FULLY resynthesize and tolerance to the benzodiazepines will be reversed. So there IS healing during the slow taper which only becomes complete after the benzodiazepine has been eliminated from the body.

I've never heard about inversion and loss of receptors, or that the benzos themselves causes a surplus of gaba. I thought the receptors were damaged and when the benzo is removed they couldn't uptake the gaba the body was producing. As with any dependency, from what I understand, the body will stop producing whatever a drug is either substituting for or facilitating the production of (know about the first guessing about the second) so there being less gaba actually available makes sense and loss of receptors makes sense too. I've never heard it described this way. Thank you odysseus, that is the kind of answer I was looking for. That makes perfect sense.

Again, thank you.

m

I have read so many technical papers over the last 4 months my head is swimming in data about GABA receptors and such. One researcher from India was proposing a cyaniate drug that would quickly up regulate receptors and normalize GABA /Glutamate function but the draw back was that it could literally stop your heart by dropping your blood pressure to deadly limits.  In the end the argument not to developed the new drug was that the brain needed time to heal and adjust slowly. So maybe this just can't be rushed, it seems that the brain has a built in safety so this can't go too fast. Fast healing could be dangerous too.  That's something I never thought about but it makes sense. This is just how the brain works it has got to go slow to be safe.

Benzos work by potentiating the effect of GABA which is to open chloride ion channels in the efferent neuron. They do not directly effect the amount of GABA. GABA receptors become downregulated in the presence of benzodiazepines because fewer are needed to open the chloride ion channels. This downregulation slowly reverses itself over time. There is little we can do to speed up the process, but I suspect we can slow it down somewhat with a poor diet, lack of rest, etc.

Hi bart, 

The GABA chemical (acid) and GABA receptor is always mentioned but it is really the unchecked GLUTAMATE that  is more responsible than anything in making us feel so bad. Free glutamate running around in the brain is overwhelming any remaining GABA receptors that are still fully functional. 

 

Researchers have already found that tinnitus is simply too much glutamate in the inner ear (magnesium sulfate)  They know this since if the inner ear fluids are injected with a glutamate agonist then tinnitus disappears in about 60 seconds but with other nasty side effects like motion sickness and vomiting about 12 hours latter (magnesium sulfate injections were used in the testing)

 

Could it be that benzo's ALSO INCREASE glutamate in same kind of counter balancing reaction?

 

So what makes us feel bad is as much over effective/excess glutamate as much as under effective GABA.

 

Agree?  Disagree?

 

Bird

(thank you thank you, this is precisely the conversation I was hoping to stimulate. I have nothing to add, Which is why I posted, please, sorry to interrupt, carry on....)

Hi Marina,

 

It's looks like you really stirred the hornets nest,  LOL

 

What are your main s/x on your taper?

 

Bird

 

 

  Never think about it Bird, or as little as possible. Body scanning creates an adrenaline loop that the brain can have trouble getting out of, increasing the sensation of the severity of sxs. It's a limbic thing. So I try not to worry (as much as possible) and not to care (as much as possible). Just coming off, and doing it as quickly as possible. The drug has turned, my body loathes it, the only thing that has allowed me to have my life back was to start cutting rapidly. Actually, I'm really happy. No hornet's nest here, just open dialogue and sharing information. It's a beautiful thing!

m

Hi Bird

My understanding is that when we take benzos they bind to a specific benzodiazepine binding site on the GABA receptor near to but distinct from where GABA binds. This greatly potentiates the effect of GABA when it binds to its site on the receptor. This in turn opens up  chloride ion channels to a much greater extent then would normally occur with GABA binding allowing more chloride ions to into the efferent neuron  . This hyperpolarizes it making the neuron less likely to fire when it is stimulated by glutamate. GABA and glutamate are sort of the yin and yang of the CNS. GABA is inhibitory via its receptors and glutamate is stimulating via its specific receptors. About 80% of all CNS transmission is mediated by GABA or glutamate. I won't get into the others and modulating factors. Since GABA now has a magnified inhibitory effect on the neuron thanks to benzos your body does two things in an effort to maintain homeostasis. It downregulates GABA receptors and the neuron engulfs them as well as alters gene expression to manufacture fewer of them. The second thing that happens is that glutamate as well as other excitatory pathways  such as NMDA are upregulated. When benzos are removed in a taper or cold turkey we have in effect too little chloride going into the neurons from not enough GABA receptor activity causing the efferent nerve to fire too easily when stimulated by glutamate while at the same time we have too much glutamate running around in our poor little fried brains from our bodies earlier upregulation of it in  striving for homeostasis. Our symptoms are due primarily to unopposed excess glutamate activity. Hope this makes sense. Their are some very good review articles on this that have been linked to on other posts. I'm interested in NAC (n-acetylcysteine) and L-theanine for their theoretical abilities to modulate glutamate activity. Excitotoxicity is caused by unchecked glutamate which can actually destroy the neuron. For the vast majority of people this GABA/glutamate balance gradually restores itself. The level of healing or degree of GABA/glutmate balance is directly related to the amount of benzos in our bodies and restoration proceeds throughout the taper. It is not complete for some time after the last benzo is gone. People in tolerance withdrawal, having toxic or allergic reactions need to get off benzos in spite of their symptoms. For the rest of us, IMO most people taper way too fast, particularly at the lower doses. It is possible through trial and error to find that rate of taper which corresponds closely to our individual healing rate allowing the taper to progress with a low level of symptoms. This is what I am doing. You can get into the weeds with receptor subtypes, all the various supplements, etc. but this is the essence of the problem and the secret to having a relatively easy taper. Exercise in particular has a number of favorable effects on the healing process. I should get around to writing about this some time. I believe it has helped me a lot and their is real live science behind exercise to back up the claims.

Bart

 

Hi bart, that was a very good explanation.  I should have jumped at one molecule like your going to do

My Dr. keeps telling me that if my BP gets over 170/130 that I need to take 2 mg Ativan or risk heart attack/stroke.  If that happens I will need to re-taper.  By all rights I should only be at 1.85MG now at 5% every 14 days so I am way over tapered.  Time will tell if I have to do a partial re-instate, stabilize and re-taper. That means another year for me :'(.

Thank you so much Bart, Bird. I am one of those people for whom the drug has turned toxic, only lowering the dose is allowing me any comfort. The symptoms of a more rapid, though not over rapid I don't think, straight to the book Ahston taper are still preferable to the misery of what was the experience of being on a higher dosage.

 

Are you in the sciences Bart? You have a certain ease with the language. It makes perfect sense. So yes of course, the degree to which the body adjusts is dose and time (length of use) related, though for many, very little adjustment is made by the brain and they suffer so few symptoms getting off. That's strange isn't it, that we are in the minority to experience such drastic symptoms when the impact of the brain is so great. We must have some sort of predisposition, well, clearly we do. I wonder what it is... they could learn a lot about anxiety from we the folk with difficulty coming off, the residual impact on the brain being essentially leaving us in a state of hyper arousal, right? I never suffered from anxiety prior to benzos, but I'm guessing I do now, at least for a time.

 

So again, thanks, and please, keep it coming, I'm learning a lot!

m

 

Thank you so much Bart, Bird. I am one of those people for whom the drug has turned toxic, only lowering the dose is allowing me any comfort. The symptoms of a more rapid, though not over rapid I don't think, straight to the book Ahston taper are still preferable to the misery of what was the experience of being on a higher dosage.

 

Are you in the sciences Bart? You have a certain ease with the language. It makes perfect sense. So yes of course, the degree to which the body adjusts is dose and time (length of use) related, though for many, very little adjustment is made by the brain and they suffer so few symptoms getting off. That's strange isn't it, that we are in the minority to experience such drastic symptoms when the impact of the brain is so great. We must have some sort of predisposition, well, clearly we do. I wonder what it is... they could learn a lot about anxiety from we the folk with difficulty coming off, the residual impact on the brain being essentially leaving us in a state of hyper arousal, right? I never suffered from anxiety prior to benzos, but I'm guessing I do now, at least for a time.

 

So again, thanks, and please, keep it coming, I'm learning a lot!

m

Sorry to here you are toxic. If that's the case, from what I've read you should just plow along as fast as you can stand and get it over with. You could try some supplements. Exercise, meditation/yoga/stretching, and a good diet all seem to help. If you can manage it, exercise will probably do you the most good.

Yes, I'm a university professor. My grad schools were in cell biology and then in  pharmacology. I've always worked in the field of cancer biology and therapeutics and actually knew very little about benzodiazepines until I got caught up in this mess. I also have an  interest in health hucksterism and medical quackery as a lot of this is aimed at cancer victims.  I've done some "boning up" on benzos but don't have any clinical experience other than my own. There's not a lot in the literature about benzodiazepine

withdrawal. Some supplements  seem to help a little but I've been surprised that they don't work better at least for me.

Bart

Bird, I am sorry you are in this position, can you not take a BP med to alleviate this sx?

 

Like anything involving neural biochemistry, there is such a variation in responses. In theory, it should hold true that duration of use & dose should somewhat predict the nature of withdrawal, however, here we have people in protracted withdrawal after only 2 weeks so there appear to be paradoxical responses.

 

What is clear is that are a genetic subset who should never be prescribed benzos, other than in life threatening circumstances.