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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

#311

Post by apatters »

nicoburns wrote: post #282
mikepurvis wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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 would argue that taking a drug to cover over something like anxiety is exactly the sort of circumstance that usually ends up with people being addicted/depen…

I wish people would give less medical advice over the Internet, even when it's well meaning. You're sort of right but the reality is that you can't just go find the root cause and "solve" it most of the time.

How do you know a person you're advising over the Internet hasn't already tried?

How do you know they weren't abused as a child, or a veteran suffering from PTSD, or a rape victim or any other number of things where the root cause is probably never going to be fully resolved, just managed.

There's a tragic amount of hate for doctors in this thread, and I really mean tragic because it's going to result in someone out there not getting the help they need, because they think they and the Internet are smarter than a doctor.

The medical profession has the right answer here, which is that in general for serious psychiatric disorders, you use a combination of drugs and therapy in order to get results. Drugs get you immediate results with a higher degree of reliability. Therapy is less consistent, expensive and slow, but when it works the effects are mostly permanent and side effect-free.

Now does the US system over-prescribe drugs and is it fucked up by cost pressures? The answer is way too often 'yes,' but people are conflating this with "doctors are awful."

There are people who need the drugs now as well as people who will need them forever.

There are also worse fates than addiction.

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

#312

Post by tsimionescu »

nootropicat wrote: post #206
r3trohack3r wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to see this side of American medicine while in high school. My great aunt unofficially overdosed on a cocktail of drugs prescribed by a group of loosely coordinating doctors. When she passed, her cocktail included 12 prescriptions. One of her doctors had prescribed her medication to lower her blood pressure while another had her on medication to raise it.

Yes, I have seen something similar happen too - a temporary illnes that most likely didn't need any drugs, prescription for drugs that caused side effects, but then another drug for those side effects and the situation repeated 5 times in total, passing 3 different doctors. The real solution that worked was to stop taking everything. Unfortunately listening to average doctor is a recipe for illness. Doctors belong to…

> Against all 'expert' opinion, I'm pretty on average everyone would be better off trying to cure themselves using information from the internet - or at the very least everyone on hn.

Yes, why would it take more than an internet search or two to diagnose and fix one of the most complex systems known to man? Having people spend half a decade or more studying this is an obvious absurdity, tantamount to slavery!

Beyond the sarcasm, just like you wouldn't expect StackOverflow to help you fix your company's complex bugs, you can't realistically expect to be able to treat yourself if you don't spend a good year or two researching your specific health issues.

Sure, it's a good idea to read about it and not blindly trust your doctor - sometimes they do make mistakes, assume diagnoses without testing, or even actively seek to prevent you receiving the best care for various biases. Sometimes you have a simple issue and the solution is to simply take a targeted medicine or supplement.

But a lot of the time, the problems are complex, and they interact in complex ways with other issues. For a lot of diseases there are no treatments without serious side-effects, and drugs to address those side-effects can have other side-effects and so on. A lot of symptoms are common to many illnesses, so you need a wide array of information to arrive at a correct differential diagnosis (quickly). Sometimes the differences between symptoms are subtle, and you need experience telling them apart.

Not to mention, while classes of life saving medications are highly addictive, so patient's access to them must be carefully managed to avoid making their lives even worse. Benzodiazepines, as in TFA, are a good example.

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

#313

Post by tsimionescu »

pkaye wrote: post #197
r3trohack3r wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to see this side of American medicine while in high school. My great aunt unofficially overdosed on a cocktail of drugs prescribed by a group of loosely coordinating doctors. When she passed, her cocktail included 12 prescriptions. One of her doctors had prescribed her medication to lower her blood pressure while another had her on medication to raise it.

Did she go to different pharmacies? I'd think within a pharmacy system the system would flag drugs that contradict each other.

Especially for someone taking what was clearly a complex treatment, perhaps it was assumed that, say, the drug that increases BP was given for some other reason, and then the drug to decrease BP was given specifically to counteract the effect of the first drug.

Of course, it seems that in this case that assumption (if indeed that happened) was tragically wrong, and instead the cocktail was a product of doctors disinterested in communication. But such complex treatments can be intentionally prescribed.

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

#315

Post by radu_floricica »

phenthrowAway wrote: post #99
shepardrtc wrote: post #29

I was prescribed benzos because of sleeping issues, but I was also taking phenibut at the same time. After about 3 weeks of using large doses of the benzos every night, I stopped taking them, but a year later I still feel pangs of withdrawal sometimes when I get stressed. It took me another 4 months to get off the phenibut and a month or so after that before my sleep returned to normal. There were months where I mayb…

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…

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm sorry, but you fucked up, with the focus being on "you". Phenibut is notorious for building tolerance fast, and having bad withdrawal.

I really really dislike it when people try dangerous things in obviously wrong ways, then act like it's society's fault that they were available. No, it's not. I've tried a lot of things over the years, and I've been properly paranoid with most of them. I'm extremely creative with treating my insomnia but guess what: I have two doctors I check with. I don't care when they laugh at me (like when I told them I'm taking 1/60 mirtazapine pill), or when they shrug. I keep checking for the moments when they say "no, that's a really bad idea", and I keep doing that even if they keep saying nothing for 10 years at a time. Because even one "no, that's stupid" makes it worth it.

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

#316

Post by duvara »

shepardrtc wrote: post #29

I was prescribed benzos because of sleeping issues, but I was also taking phenibut at the same time. After about 3 weeks of using large doses of the benzos every night, I stopped taking them, but a year later I still feel pangs of withdrawal sometimes when I get stressed. It took me another 4 months to get off the phenibut and a month or so after that before my sleep returned to normal. There were months where I mayb…

Just putting this in here. If you are suffering from insomnia, one possible alternative is to look into CBTI (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia). Its one of the only clinically proven non-drug-related treatments for insomnia. If you are struggling, google it and try to find a CBTI counselor to help. Don't try it on your own - its quite challenging. It literally saved my life a few years ago.

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

#317

Post by noduerme »

shepardrtc wrote: post #29

I was prescribed benzos because of sleeping issues, but I was also taking phenibut at the same time. After about 3 weeks of using large doses of the benzos every night, I stopped taking them, but a year later I still feel pangs of withdrawal sometimes when I get stressed. It took me another 4 months to get off the phenibut and a month or so after that before my sleep returned to normal. There were months where I mayb…

I don't think they're meant to be taken that way.

I've had the same bottle of Xanax around for 5 years. It's more like a "break the glass in case of emergency" type thing. Usually reserved for going to funerals or weddings of people I hate, when I can't tie my tie because I'm in a cold sweat. As the kind of alcoholic who never turns down a drink, it surprises me how strongly I don't want to touch diazepam, how little inclination I've ever had to take it recreationally, even though I enjoy it and know it can provide short-term comfort. On a lot of occasions, having the bottle in my pocket just in case has been enough.

Then again, that might be because of how strongly it reacts with alcohol, which is a given in most situations where I'd break out the Xanax...

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

#318

Post by noduerme »

whatshisface wrote: post #214
kayodelycaon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. People are really bad at handling their own medical care. I’m legitimately on 8 different medications and 3 supplements (not including vitamins), per doctor’s instructions. There is no way I’m going to any appointment (including my dentist) without a printed list of everything, including the dosages, instructions, and reason for being on it. Edit: I apologize for the poor phrasing. It comes off being flippant.…

People really are bad at DIY medical care... if only we could found a profession dedicated to doing it for them... I propose we call them, "Doctors," from the Latin word for "teacher," by reference to their role in instructing patients on the things they need to know about their health.

As an aside, what's with all the chiropractors starting cults and self-help websites and running for office calling themselves "doctors" these days? It's like every time I hear about some dirtbag doctor selling a fake covid cure, turns out to be a chiropractor. Chiropractic was a quack gig to begin with, but whatever online university decided to call it a doctoral degree deserves a special place in hell. Still, doesn't fully explain their disproportionate presence in the snake oil business in the past decade.

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

#319

Post by bowsamic »

natly wrote: post #30
glerk wrote: post #19

Benzos are pretty terrible drugs in general. The physical addiction potential and withdrawal people are going through are enough to dissuade me from touching them. For folks dealing with anxiety, I recommend trying propranolol. It is not as powerful, but sometimes it is enough to achieve the desired effect and the side effects are way less severe.

I recommend working out, it helped me a ton with anxiety. It basically cured it (I don't work out much anymore but a short intense few months of hard workouts seems to have almost removed it from my system years afterwards).

Mindfulness meditation totally cured my anxiety. People don’t believe me and say I’m making it up, but it’s true. How do I know? Before if I smoked weed I would panic, now I can have a bong hit and be fine. I don’t think there’s a clearer indicator than that. It was easy to, I just had to learn to mindfully see the moment my anxiety arises and let it go. On the other hand, depression has been much harder to deal with

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

#320

Post by klodolph »

noduerme wrote: post #318
whatshisface wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really are bad at DIY medical care... if only we could found a profession dedicated to doing it for them... I propose we call them, "Doctors," from the Latin word for "teacher," by reference to their role in instructing patients on the things they need to know about their health.

As an aside, what's with all the chiropractors starting cults and self-help websites and running for office calling themselves "doctors" these days? It's like every time I hear about some dirtbag doctor selling a fake covid cure, turns out to be a chiropractor. Chiropractic was a quack gig to begin with, but whatever online university decided to call it a doctoral degree deserves a special place in hell. Still, doesn…

If they're "doctor" it's because they completed a doctorate program, typically a D.C.

All people who complete a doctorate program are entitled to be addressed as "doctor". This includes everything from a Ph.D. (the original "doctor"), to M.D.s and D.O.s (medical doctors), and yes, D.C.

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