Anyone tried this extra low dose Clonazepam stuff?

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paperdragon
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22 Jul 2016, 2:19 pm

Today I managed to find a box of GABA at last :D I'm stopping my Clonazepam experiment to begin taking GABA. Thanks everyone for your inputs.

Interestingly, in the two days taking low dose Clonazepam 3x a day, I've got enough courage to touch my piano again after more than 5 years and I played IN FRONT OF my parents, which made my dad almost cry. There have been other subtle changes as well. I have therefore the hunch that GABA plays a role in me.


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B19
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22 Jul 2016, 5:47 pm

Good on you, it is moving to read about your music and father. I hope GABA is effective for you also, it may be a more subtle and less sudden effect than Clonazepam.



SweetOnSylvia
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05 Mar 2020, 1:56 am

Hello,
I was on the medicine for seven years, starting when I was sixteen after a traumatic incident and I was hospitalized and they just pumped me full of medicine to get me to calm down. I often react pretty bad to most psych meds, yet, I did not have any adverse effects overtly to benzos. Things actually felt more clear and I could make more sense of my thoughts and could cope with sensory information without overloading as often. I was not diagnosed then and so I still lost all of my friends by a year after I came back to school (this was starting to happen a few years before I went to the mental hospital which could possibly be explained by the sudden complexity of friendships after puberty) and would not be diagnosed with autism (even though I was diagnosed with quite a few other conditions) until almost five years after this. However, by the first year anniversary of being on clonazapam, I started to feel as if my vocabulary was deteriorating-- and I am a writer and writing poetry is everything to me so this would become an incessant anxiety-- and over the years, I would get this feeling that things were making less sense. I began to grow even more distant from my body and even constructed a theory to disprove the existence of the body. I was also starting to have difficulty with memory, with remembering events that had happened in my life since I got on the medicine-- my once bright memory had started to become overwhelmingly fuzzy after being on the medicine for four years)... I also have poor or average visuospatial skills now, according to a test that I just took, but I do not think I had this deficit as a child...

Please do your research. I felt more functional on Clonazapam, so much more funcitonal human and my thoughts made more sense even if my memory was fuzzy... I still have visual thinking, with or without the medicine and would still interpret things I read or things I felt through images-- knock on wood that this stays-- but I am not sure if it is as strong as it was when I was little... I am off the medicine now, am now on the beginning of the third month of withdrawals-- clonazapam withdrawals for long term users like myself can go on for a year or even two years and there is still a chance that your brain will not fully recover... It sucks so much as I was put on it by a corrupt mental hospital that has since shut down-- where I went twice during my adolescent years-- after a sexually abusive incident with a teacher... And now I have brain damage because I got addicted before I even got out of the mental hospital and there were no doctors telling my Mommy that I should not be on this medicine. In fact, there were several doctors-- doctors she had to fight to get me off the lithium which had rendered me into a constant state of elopement-- who were telling her that I needed to be this medicated... Doctors are horrible and clonazapam is wonderful until it slowly destroys all the things that you loved about your brain...


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B19
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05 Mar 2020, 6:03 am

It seems that to use any benzo safely you need to vary the dose, take breaks from it, and stay away from high doses over short or long periods.

Low dose Clonazepam (.5 mg) worked very well for me as long as I didn't take it everyday. If you take it everyday even at a low level for a long long time then your brain starts to down regulate its own GABA level and that can be disastrous if you don't know why it no longer seems to work. The mistake people can make at that point is to increase the dose, which doesn't fix the problem but aggravates it.

In short my benefit from it came from understanding the need for a low dose, the need to vary the low dose. The regime that worked for me was exactly that: eg half of a .5 tablet for a couple of days, .5 for a few days, a day off, a day on, a day off, then back to half of a .5mg tablet and go through the sequence again.

As people are individuals with different starting levels of the neurotransmitter GABA, often low in AS people, informed experimentation may be necessary to find the best personal rotation for any particular person.



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05 Mar 2020, 6:08 am

I use 0.5 mg Alprazolam occasionally as needed.



B19
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05 Mar 2020, 6:11 am

Yes, that's like an insurance policy to maintain the benefit you get from it.



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05 Mar 2020, 6:29 am

I ask for it xanax when my generalized anxiety disorder kicks in to the point that I have total insomnia. Fortunately those episodes are rare.



nick007
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05 Mar 2020, 9:40 pm

B19 wrote:
It seems that to use any benzo safely you need to vary the dose, take breaks from it, and stay away from high doses over short or long periods.

Low dose Clonazepam (.5 mg) worked very well for me as long as I didn't take it everyday. If you take it everyday even at a low level for a long long time then your brain starts to down regulate its own GABA level and that can be disastrous if you don't know why it no longer seems to work. The mistake people can make at that point is to increase the dose, which doesn't fix the problem but aggravates it.

In short my benefit from it came from understanding the need for a low dose, the need to vary the low dose. The regime that worked for me was exactly that: eg half of a .5 tablet for a couple of days, .5 for a few days, a day off, a day on, a day off, then back to half of a .5mg tablet and go through the sequence again.

As people are individuals with different starting levels of the neurotransmitter GABA, often low in AS people, informed experimentation may be necessary to find the best personal rotation for any particular person.
I was prescribed Clonazepam for a tremor disorder that acts up more when I'm anxious. I was taking 1mg 3x a day & then later 2mg 2wice a day & I built up a tolerance after a while & it quit helping with my tremors & my anxiety. I was off Clonazepam for like 5 years & then prescribed it again by a different doc for occasional anxiety situations & it does help my anxiety & tremors now but I only take it on an as needed bases. I'm prescribed point 5(half of one mg) & I cut the pills in half for when I take buses that my be crowded & shopping trips. But I take a whole pill for other situations like my tremors acting up, I'm feeling hyper, my muscles are sore, or I'm having a hard time sleeping cuz of pain or anxiety. I used to go through like one pill a week. We moved a few months ago & the buses on our bus route used to get very crowded sometimes so I started taking half a pill whenever I take a bus which is at least a couple times a week. The buses aen't crowded like they used to get so I'm starting to not always take the Clonazepam when taking a bus.

I take Buspar/Buspirone 2wice a day for my regular anxiety & it helps but I don't think it has an effect on GABA.
I take Neurontin/Gabapentin 3x a day for my OCD & it helps that & I think it's supposed to have an effect on GABA too but I haven't noticed any other benefits with my anxiety by being on it.


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chemicalsandotherpeopleswords
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07 Mar 2020, 4:12 am

It doesn't seem to say *which* autism symptoms it reduced? I may have missed it, I'm tired and tried to skim to find that information.


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chemicalsandotherpeopleswords
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07 Mar 2020, 10:55 am

Okay, less tired, you said it was mice and it says it's mice.


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