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Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

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Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#251

Post by fuzzfactor »

sibeliuss wrote: post #87

As someone with a few family members addicted to Xanax (long term) and have repeatedly bore witness to the destruction, I can say with certainty that it's an evil drug. It's like the person crawls inside a space where they can safely project all of their anxieties onto others. Their problems becomes your problems, a fully projected virtual experience. It's definitely psychosis-like, and I've always wondered if there…

You already had the answer to that for years.

Now here's the answer for mice.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#252

Post by fb03 »

orangepurple wrote: post #151
fb03 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was about to say this. Do you also trigger while trying to exercise? I have had pretty intense panic attacks while trying to work. to the point of having dizziness, weakness, closing throat feelings, the works! Pretty shitty stuff. 15 minutes later, you are absolutely normal and feeling bummed and sometimes embarrassed as well. I would also not wish a panic attack to my worst enemy. What I'm trying to do now is short…

I had those exact symptoms from not eating sufficients amounts of salt combined with not drinking enough water. Now I aim for 7 grams of table salt per day. Low sodium symptoms are indistinguishable from "feeling like you are dying."

In several other occasions, eating a little bit of salt helped as well ahah.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#253

Post by PragmaticPulp »

sph wrote: post #67
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #45

The world of medecine is degenerate. Sustainable, non addictive and non neurotoxic anxiolytics exists: the #1 being opipramol the sigmaergic. emoxypine (which btw cure hangover) and guanfacine are worth mentioning. Maybe beta blockers to some extent. NMDA antagonists such as memantine have side effects but are not neurotoxic to my knowledge and there are milder ones such as mg-lthreonate. afobazole is interesting but…

I have a hard time believing that while the current status quo is suboptimal, there's some little known compounds that are, as you say, revolutionary and with little side effects. Pharmacological research is a constantly moving target, there is no scientific nor economic reason that a supposedly "perfect" remedy remains unknown. Sounds too much like thinly veiled conspiracy, or perhaps they're not as perfect as you'r…

> I have a hard time believing that while the current status quo is suboptimal, there's some little known compounds that are, as you say, revolutionary and with little side effects.

Your suspicions are correct. The parent comment is an example of a trend among people who know just enough about pharmacology to be dangerous: Exaggerating the benefits of less popular medications while demonizing mainstream medications. Add a dose of conspiracy theory ("pharmaceutical industrial complex") and it's a recipe for contrarian exaggeration.

The parent comment strangely missed the actual mainstream, effective treatments for anxiety: SSRIs and Buspirone are widely used for long-term anxiety treatment with significant success. They’re not perfect and you can find horror stories if you search the Internet long enough, but people tend to get fooled into thinking mainstream medications are worse than obscure ones because mainstream medications will naturally have a higher absolute number of negative reviews online than rarely-prescribed medications.

In practice, it would be rare for a doctor in the United States to prescribes benzos as a first-line and long-term treatment for chronic anxiety. They are prescribed for panic attacks and short-term anxiety (e.g. a difficult court case with an end date) but SSRIs are the mainstream treatment.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#254

Post by nostrebored »

shepardrtc wrote: post #109
phenthrowAway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To anyone curious about phenibut: Don't. Just don't. Please. Just a few weeks of usage can cause dependence. It is notorious for causing compulsive redosing. Withdrawal can make you unable to sleep for days, with lingering effects like panic attacks and anhedonia for weeks and weeks. Withdrawal from larger quantities can cause auditory and visual hallucinations and seizures and can even KILL you. Avoiding serious sym…

Phenibut is horrific and should be banned. I thought I could control it, but I couldn't.

Never more than two non consecutive days in a week — this isn’t a mystery.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#255

Post by PragmaticPulp »

rhexs wrote: post #51
anonymoushn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of expect that the psychiatrist spends more time with the patient each month than the pharmacist.

It's sort of a sad indictment of our system, but odds are the pharmacist sees the patient far more than the psychiatrist does.

Comments like these are baffling. Where are people finding these psychiatrists who are blindly writing prescriptions and sending people out the door?

Around here (US location) my medical professional friends are all hesitant to prescribe any controlled substances to more than a certain number of their patients for fear of getting flagged.

Whenever I read these stories of people receiving benzos and other scheduled substances for years with no oversight, I can’t tell if this is actually happening regularly somewhere or if we’re just reading a lot of exaggerated second-hand stories.

I know these things happen somewhere, sometimes but the insinuation that it’s just the norm in American medicine is baffling.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#256

Post by mikepurvis »

ta988 wrote: post #194
mikepurvis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole discussion is making me feel better than ever for choosing cannabis edibles (legal in Canada) to address stress-induced insomnia and other sleep issues for which the root cause was not something I was in a position to immediately address. I take it a few times a week as needed, small doses (2-5mg) and I feel that I am in control of it and could go off any time.

The thing with most addictions is that as long as you are taking a substance and don't try to stop you feel that you are in control. As long as you have not tried to stop you will never know

Fair, fair. I think the main thing is that I'm not taking it in response to a craving, but rather in recognition that my mental state in the early evening is fragile and I'm going to be more susceptible to an anxiety attack when trying to sleep. I'm also well aware of the root causes of my mental state, so if it ever became bad enough that I did feel like I was losing control (upping the dose, taking during the day, etc), then I would treat that as a sign that it was time to start thinking more seriously about exiting the situation that is the main root cause.

I think it also helps that edibles take 60-90 mins to kick in, vs smoking which is pretty immediate gratification.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#257

Post by PragmaticPulp »

ineedasername wrote: post #249

As a PSA, something to be aware of is the stimulant paradox for anxiety due to ADHD. Typically anxiety & stimulants would be a no-go combination, but for folks with ADHD-induced anxiety stimulants can actually help. I know someone whose child was (finally) properly diagnosed with ADHD only after they let their child try a tiny bit of their coffee and there was a significant change. It was the revelation needed to get…

FYI - The idea that stimulant response can be used as a diagnostic tool for ADHD is a myth. No researcher or professional who studies the subject actually takes that seriously.

Nobody should be interpreting their response (or a child’s response) to stimulants as a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. It’s also worth noting they caffeine isn’t an effective ADHD treatment (it had been studied) and caffeine and Adderall don’t actually overlap as much as people seem to think.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#259

Post by PragmaticPulp »

colechristensen wrote: post #174
jimmar wrote: post #66

I took 1 benzodiazepine bill once about 15 years ago and I still remember the effect--instant total relaxation. I remember thinking that it felt too good and that it's something I shouldn't let myself have again. Hearing about its long term effects, I feel somewhat lucky.

The first time I took Xanax I cleaned my kitchen and it went from mildly embarrassing to quite presentable in an hour or two. I could actually execute the things I wanted to do without fighting though ridiculous feelings. I am treated like an addict or ridiculous when I tell doctors I'd rather not "try SSRIs" or a series of strange sedating substances because they're all so afraid of prescribing something with addict…

> I am treated like an addict or ridiculous when I tell doctors I'd rather not "try SSRIs"

If you’re willing to take Xanax but you’re not willing to try SSRIs, you have probably been severely misled about the relative risks of each.

Seriously, the internet misinformation machine is terrible for SSRIs.

One thing to keep in mind when reading online reports of drugs is that they tend to correlate quite heavily with the liking effect of a drug. Patients will rate drugs with rewarding effects significantly higher because they literally trigger the neurons in your brain that say “this is good and you want it now”.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#260

Post by ridgeguy »

coconut08 wrote: post #239
jnovek wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Occasional clonazepam use for panic attacks which are secondary to post-traumatic stress disorder. Never even the tiniest sign of dependence. Sometimes I go months between uses. I am also a chronic pain patient and I worry that benzos are going to get the opioid treatment. There was a period in the mid to late 2010s where patients who depended on opioids for any sort of quality of life were taken off of th…

long term constant exposure to opioids will literally begin cause the pain they purport to solve. If you give a perfectly healthy person with no pain at all opioids for long enough they will be indistinguishable from a person who has an actual chronic pain issue. people should only ever take opioids VERY TEMPORARILY to get through surgeries or other such things. Opioids are not for long term pain management. Same thi…

Not correct, at least for some opioids.

Nearly all opioids present the hazard of dose escalation over time to maintain their efficacy. Hence the dose escalation commonly seen with morphine, oxycontin, etc.

Most opioids, in addition to interacting with mu-opioid receptors (the mechanism of pain relief), also activate NMDA receptors, which enhance pain sensitivity. So for most opioids, there's an adverse dynamic in which analgesic activity competes with nociceptive activity, leading to dose escalation.

Methadone is one of two opioids that don't activate the NMDA receptor system. (The other is dextromethorphan, the OTC cough suppressant.) Methadone has been used very successfully to treat chronic pain, and does not exhibit dose escalation issues. Methadone has slow kinetics and does depress respiration, so when putting patients on it, dosages should be titrated slowly to avoid hazardous or fatal events. This is easily managed in ordinary clinical practice.

A close family member has been treated with methadone for chronic refractory migraines for >20 years. She transitioned to methadone from morphine SR after experiencing the classic need for increased dose. With methadone, she's had no dose escalation, no impairment due to psychotropic effects...it's simply given her a life to live.

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