Has Anyone Actually Taken the Same Dose of Klonopin or Alprazolam for Several Years?
Question by Dan: Has anyone actually taken the same dose of Klonopin or Alprazolam for several years?
I was looking at drugs given for anxiety and several times I came across where someone would say that they got a tolerance for it and the dose was raised.
Has anyone ever used these for a long time at the same dose or will you eventually hit tolerance?
Best answer:
Answer by Adam Karrsen
Yes, Klonopin for 9 years. No tolerance. This drug will ravage you worse than cocaine. DO NOT take these drugs unless you want to suffer adverse side effects and become addicted.
Answer by Jared
Plenty of people take the same dose of these benzodiazepines for years.
However, everyones biology/brains adapt to the dose. Everyone will develop a tolerance. Which must be met with an increased dosage which only has limiting effect.
The people who do stay on the same, daily, dose — eventually “deal” with the rebound anxiety and withdrawal side effects of ACTIVELY taking the same dose of medication that used to work.
So bottom line, is yes, people take it for years,.. and do not move up in dose. I can attest to this. But no one takes it and doesn’t develop a tolerance to the dose rather quickly.
Bottom line is benzodiazepines are only effective for short term acute use, or sporadic use. Chronic use just isn’t effective as you can’t continue to raise the dose indefinitely — there is a ceiling on the effect of GABA in the brain. Further downregulation of endogenous GABA only makes matters worse.
Now this drug will not ravage you like “cocaine” there is absolutely nothing similar between the two drugs. They work on different systems.. cocaine on dopamine, and benzodiazepines on GABA. However, for some portion of individuals these drugs ARE addicting and they will develop this tolerance, plus enjoy the effects of the medication to the point of doctor shopping and generally getting up to 20-30-40+ mg’s daily of something like Xanax or Klonopin..
It is dangerous to go cold turkey off long term use of benzodiazepines for the main medical reason of seizure threshold — but there is alot of anecdotal evidence that long term benzodiazepine use causes cognitive deficit along with increased anxiety, depression, and so on.
It is strongly advised to find an alternative that is NOT a benzodiazepine for anxiety. Benzo’s are so effective in the short term they are hard to ignore.. but long term they just aren’t worth it for most people.
The good news, is studies have shown they do NOT cause long term permanent brain damage — even with 10-20+ yrs of use. However these same studies HAVE shown they cause neurological, and more specifically executive function/cognitive slowing and disruption over time. Which causes not only the elevated ‘feelings’ of anxiety , obsessions, etc — but also a slowing of working memory, memory recall issues, working memory issues, brain ‘fog’, sleep problems (quality), losing chunks of memory, and on it goes.
The only light in this tunnel is that these effects do go away with time OFF the benzo’s. The bad news is they need to be tapered very slowly.. (months at least ) and the side effects can take up to two years to considerably diminish in some cases. (I’m talking with many years of use.. even at regular levels).
Keep in mind, there are some people who go off them cold turkey and experience nothing of note — and many physicians in the US still haven’t adopted the proper attitude and realization of long term benzodiazepine use that Dr. Heather Ashton so well discovered and studied in the UK in terms of use and tapering one ‘off’… So you will likely get a response from your doctor that they aren’t nearly as “dangerous” so to speak, as I am indicating.
If you understood how the body and more specifically brain works in establishing homeostasis within the neurology .. you would see how it is impossible not to hit a ‘tolerance’ .
I would encourage you to take a look at this information it may shed some light on the issue:
http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/
Take care,
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