# To Klonopin or not?



## mybrainhurts (Feb 9, 2007)

Hi all, I'm considering going on Klonopin and would like to hear what peoples' experiences have been like; good or bad. It seems like a dangerous drug but I'm feeling desperate.

Thanks.


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## ?real?ity? (Feb 18, 2007)

I am with ya man. In the past I have said to people not to try it because of addiction. But I am running out of options and this sounds like it might help... so I am willing to try this. I feel like a hypocrite now ;p


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## Fant?me (Feb 2, 2007)

I never got addicted. I got months on them at the lowest dosage (.5 a day) and I'd very rarely go beyond 1mg even after prolonged use.

At times its helpful, at times it isn't, but I always found it made me too foggy over time and I just stop to clear my head for a while and most of the time the withdrawal isn't so bad.

Its a mixed-bag this klonopin is.


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## comfortably numb (Mar 6, 2006)

Klonopin or rivotril as it's called up here basically changed my life. I started taking it over a year ago now and it completly took away my dp/dr, brain fog, anxiety and panic attack's.

I had dp/dr and all the rest of it since i was born basically so it's been a miracle drug for me. If it wasent for clonazepam id still be crippled with anxiety and living in a derealization and brain fog induced haze. If you can call that living.

It's not a dangerous drug in fact it's pretty goddamn safe and impossible to OD on it's own for all intensive purposes. The only way it's dangerous is if you drive on it without knowing how it affect's you or if you mix it with other CNS depressant's paticularly alcohol.

The only worry really with clonazepam is the physical dependance it produces. If you take it everyday at a high enough dose over an extended period of time you have to taper off it or risk withdrawal symptoms which can be rather bad. There worse for some people then other's but it's not a good idea at all to just stop taking it cold turkey once you become dependant on it. But clonazepam is one of the easier benzos to taper off due to it's long half life.

It's really no different then ssri's or other anti-depressant's in this regard. I was dumb enough to stop taking effexor a snri cold turkey and i suffered hellish withdrawal symptom's for about 2 week's or longer. Granted the stupid doctor i was seing at the time said that it didnt produce dependance and i didnt know anything about it at the time so it wasent completly my fault.

So i would say give it a try if i was you. The drug gives me no side effect's at all and it still work's as good as it ever did for my dp/dr and everything else. It doesent however work for everyone so if you try it and it doesent work dont get too down about it. Just about every benzo out there is tried for dp/dr and anxiety but this seem's to be one of the better ones but everyone is different.


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## pfpc (Aug 22, 2004)

I was on 2 mg of klono a day and it dramatically reduced my dp/dr, unfortunately it pooped out after 3 months and I had to spend the rest of the year tapering off of the stuff. Very hard to come off of.


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## [rula] (Jan 16, 2005)

noblesse oblige said:


> I was on 2 mg of klono a day and it dramatically reduced my dp/dr, unfortunately it pooped out after 3 months and I had to spend the rest of the year tapering off of the stuff. Very hard to come off of.


3 months is about right...then I had horrible panic attacks and worse dp/dr when I came off of it like 8-9 months later, cuz it takes that long to taper off this stuff. not to mention that all benzos are CNS depressants, and will make you groggy ("benzo hangover") and depressed as hell.

but klonopoison is *not* safe, no drug is. you take the risk and _maybe_ it might improve the quality of your life...or maybe after 13 years of it giving you a decent life you find out that you now have to stop, and that even though you paid the detox clinic 15k you still can have 2 seizures on the way driving home, and then end up with dp/dr that you never had before, all thanks to klonopin. yea, I really don't like this drug :wink: but it's a true story!


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## comfortably numb (Mar 6, 2006)

Well i already had horrible dp/dr before going on this drug so if i ever go off it i probley wont notice a difference in the dp/dr i had before i went on the drug and the dp/dr during withdrawal.

Clonazepam doesent make me groggy at all oddly enough even though im on 6mg's of it a day and im on a number of other CNS depressant's as well. I take it for pain as well as anxiety which is why im on that high of a dose.

In fact clonazepam had an initial stimulant effect on me in the sense that i could actually do things, get out of bed and had motivation for the first time in months if not years. This is not a very normal reaction but some people do get a sort of lift from benzos. Even my doc was suprised at this. I guess it came from having all that dp/dr, brain fog, and anxiety suddenly lifted.

It also had a rather nice anti-depressant and mood stabilizing effect on me as well especially at first but this diminished somewhat over time. It still helps my mood a good bit even the mixed bipolar states i get into from time to time. But at first it prevented them completly as opposed to just stopping them after they start to happen.

There is some evidence that clonazepam has unique effect's on the serotonin receptor's which could account for it's use in HPPD and as a add on in depression http://www.biopsychiatry.com/clonazepam-depadj.htm .



> I had horrible panic attacks and worse dp/dr when I came off of it.
> 
> 
> > I had a similar reaction to carbamazepine even though it's a non benzodiazepine anti-convulsant and i wasent taking it for dp/dr or anxiety at the time. Although i did have rather severe anxiety at the time and i was hoping that it might help it. Fat chance of that happening not only did it make me as sick as a dog so i had to quit cold turkey but i had absolutly horrible panic attacks upon stopping it.
> ...


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## [rula] (Jan 16, 2005)

oh I tapered at turtle speed, and I was never taking high doses, 1mg was my max. at least I only had panic attacks not seizures eh?

well I just came back from seeing my new neuro psychiatrist, and he wants me off my Stupamax ASAP cuz apparently I failed every memory test in the book. I passed them with flying colors before I got on the med 3 months ago. I was noticing even my really bad spelling and grammar on this site, so sad. here we go again, another anti-convulsant, another taper. I'm giving up on meds!


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## comfortably numb (Mar 6, 2006)

[rula] said:


> oh I tapered at turtle speed, and I was never taking high doses, 1mg was my max. at least I only had panic attacks not seizures eh?
> 
> well I just came back from seeing my new neuro psychiatrist, and he wants me off my Stupamax ASAP cuz apparently I failed every memory test in the book. I passed them with flying colors before I got on the med 3 months ago. I was noticing even my really bad spelling and grammar on this site, so sad. here we go again, another anti-convulsant, another taper. I'm giving up on meds!


 Ive heard people say that if you taper off a benzo while using divalproex (depakote, epival) which is another anti-convulsant that it makes the withdrawal from the benzo much easier. Divalproex is a anti-convulsant that works on gaba (though we dont know how) so that makes sense. If your not on the the divalproex to long you should be able to get off it pretty quick without a risk of having a seizure from that drug.

Unfortunatly divalproex and all the valproates is a rather harsh drug for alot of people even though it gives me no side effect's. Have you ever tried that one by the way? You have to have blood tests done regularly to check on your blood levels of the drug but atleast it doesent seem to make people as dumb as a box of rock's like topomax does. You have to taper off divalproex rather slowly though according to my doc because its a rather strong anti-seizure drug.

Im on 3 different anti-convulsant's divalproex, clonazepam and gabapentin (aka morontin) and suprisingly neither one of them is affecting my memory or cognitive skills yet. But im only on a real low dose of morontin so we will see what happens when the dose goes up. Ive heard real weird stories about people on high doses of that.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2007)

I've been on 1mg since august now, and i haven't had the need to go up, like numb its pretty much killed my dp, i still get bouts of it, but it doesn't bother me as much, it makes it so i can live my life, i don't see me coming off of it anytime soon.


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## [rula] (Jan 16, 2005)

comfortably numb said:


> Ive heard people say that if you taper off a benzo while using divalproex (depakote, epival) which is another anti-convulsant that it makes the withdrawal from the benzo much easier.


There was a guy here who tried it, didn't work out so well for him. dunno what's become of him, I think he defected to the land of where all the hardcore med advice seekers go, drbob.org



> Unfortunatly divalproex and all the valproates is a rather harsh drug for alot of people even though it gives me no side effect's. Have you ever tried that one by the way?


moi? no. I'm done with Klonopin forever. I traded it for its sister drug Valium, ya know, invented by the same guy at Roche and probably only tweaked enough to pass as a "new" drug after the patent on V ran out. Hmm, he died at 97, I wonder if he ever took any of his own meds...

well any ways, I really don't get the big hoopla people make here about Klonopin, to me all benzos are the same when it comes to dp/dr...they do NOTHING...anxiety control, that's a different issue. If anything Xanax is my favorite, I feel GREAT on it...for an hour :lol:

I wonder though, you guys who take so many different meds, cocktails, how do you really know what's doing what? like how can you so decisively say it was Klonopin that cured your dp/dr? just curious....


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## comfortably numb (Mar 6, 2006)

[rula] said:


> moi? no. I'm done with Klonopin forever. I traded it for its sister drug Valium, ya know, invented by the same guy at Roche and probably only tweaked enough to pass as a "new" drug after the patent on V ran out. Hmm, he died at 97, I wonder if he ever took any of his own meds...
> 
> well any ways, I really don't get the big hoopla people make here about Klonopin, to me all benzos are the same when it comes to dp/dr...they do NOTHING...anxiety control, that's a different issue. If anything Xanax is my favorite, I feel GREAT on it...for an hour :lol:
> 
> I wonder though, you guys who take so many different meds, cocktails, how do you really know what's doing what? like how can you so decisively say it was Klonopin that cured your dp/dr? just curious....


 Oddly enough i found xanax to make my anxiety worse. It made me cranky as hell and even more moody then i already am. It's one benzo that i really hate.

I do notice a difference between benzos. Clonazepam works the best by far for my dp/dr and my anxiety. Valium is also a great drug for anxiety but for some reason it doesent work nearly as well on my dp/dr. Ativan did absolutly nothing for my anxiety or dp/dr either way. I couldnt get an effect from it even at 6mg's.

As for how i know that clonazepam was the drug that cured my dp/dr well it was really the only one i was on at the time. I was on elavil at the same time for pain and depression but it did absolutly nothing for my dp/dr or anxiety. When i went off it i didnt notice one bit of difference in how well the clonazepam worked. I had also been on elavil about a year before i went on clonazepam.

I was put on the divalproex for bipolar disorder awile ago and i was put on gabapentin for pain control around the same time. But this was all way after i got my dp/dr, brain fog and anxiety under control with clonazepam. So that's how i know that it's the clonazepam and not the other meds that help my dp/dr.

It's been working so far when nothing else did so i have no intensions of going off it. I dont believe in fixing something that aint broke.

That's interesting i did not know that the same guy who invented valium invented clonazepam. I looked it up myself and it was leo sternbach he actually invented benzodiazepines in general because he came up with librium which is the first benzo. But clonazepam is indeed abit different then other benzos. It has actions on the serotonin receptor which most other benzos do not.

Id say he sampled his own meds i mean you would have to in the name of science right?


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