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Flumazenil - a way to reverse benzo tolerance?


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Hello! 

I know that alot of people here going on benzos. Especielly clonozepam. Clonozepam worked wonders for me on a daily basis 2mg/day untill i devoloped tolerance after 6 months. 

And that's the main problem with benzos. Tolerance. But how do we solve tolerance then? Well, i've been looking at a GABAA-antagonist called Flumazenil. 

And there is some pretty intressing facts about flumazenil on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flumazenil

I will quote some of them:

"Epileptic patients who have become tolerant to the anti-seizure effects of the benzodiazepine clonazepam became seizure-free for several days after treatment with 1.5 mg flumazenil. Similarly, patients who were dependent on high doses of benzodiazepines (median dosage 333 mg diazepam-equivalent) were able to be stabilised on a low dose of clonazepam after 7–8 days of treatment with flumazenil."

"Laboratory research studies using tissue cultured cell lines have shown enhancement of the benzodiazepine binding site after chronic treatment with flumazenil where sites have become more numerous and uncoupling/down-regulation of GABAA has been reversed. After long-term exposure to benzodiazepines, GABAA receptors become down-regulated and uncoupled. Growth of new receptors and recoupling after prolonged flumazenil exposure has also been observed. It is thought this may be due to increased synthesis of receptor proteins."

"In Italy, the gold standard for treatment of high-dose benzodiazepine dependency is 8–10 days of low dose, slow infusion of flumazenil.[12] One addiction treatment centre in Italy has used flumazenil to treat over 300 patients who were dependent on high doses of benzodiazepines (up to 70 times higher than conventionally prescribed) with doctors being one of their most common patients."

So basicly what Flumazenil does is to reverse the tolerance. Also growth of new receptors have been observed which i find verry intressing. 

I know this haven't been discussed on this forum before so my generaly question is really, have anybody tried Flumazenil? And if not, do you think this could be a way to use benzo for a long term treatment of HPPD? 

 

 

Edited by Gustav
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Benzos have made my symptoms slightly better but they're no cure, obviously. Also, I got hooked on them and went cold turkey and couldn't sleep for a few months which was a disaster. I think benzos can be useful for stressful situations but I think people need to explore other treatment options before they risk getting hooked. As far as the new growth goes, I know antidepressants do the same thing as well. I think people are better off going with an antidepressant that doesn't worsen symptoms rather than benzos due to the health risks. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Very interesting. I would like to see more of this! I've been on benzos for about 4 months now after a break of about two years. Unfortunately I feel I am getting a bit reliant. Hopefully I'll be able to get off again soon. 

Last time I found that baclofen was very efficient at getting me off benzos. However, it came with a litany of side effects (euphoria, hyper sexuality, made me kinda a jerk, then complete anhedonia followed by brutal withdrawals when I stopped. Got me off drinking though so thats good) so I don't recommend it. I was on 120 mg a day at my max I think but mostly took around 100. 

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17 hours ago, Onemorestep said:

Very interesting. I would like to see more of this! I've been on benzos for about 4 months now after a break of about two years. Unfortunately I feel I am getting a bit reliant. Hopefully I'll be able to get off again soon. 

Last time I found that baclofen was very efficient at getting me off benzos. However, it came with a litany of side effects (euphoria, hyper sexuality, made me kinda a jerk, then complete anhedonia followed by brutal withdrawals when I stopped. Got me off drinking though so thats good) so I don't recommend it. I was on 120 mg a day at my max I think but mostly took around 100. 

Indeed, verry intressing stuff. I can litteraly don't go one day without clonozepam because my symptoms are so freaking extreme. My visual snow actually makes my visual acuity really bad without clonozepam. That's how bad it is. I have the whole package of other HPPD symtoms aswell but nothing is worse then the snow. I thought Lamictal had reduced my snow a couple of days ago but i soon realised that it was just the clonozepam effect that didn't had vanished yet. 

As for Flumazenil i'm trying to get a treatment in Sweden to try and reverse my tolerance or atleast stop it. I don't know now if i'm gonna get the treatment but at this point i'm willing to try anything. 

It's intressing because Dr Goadsby (the leader of the Visual Snow research) requested money for Flumazenil and diazepam for a treatment trial in 2015 from the NHS but was rejected. So i really think we are on to something big here. I actually have a meeting in London with Dr Goadsby in March so i'm hoping to discuss this further with him. 

If the health care in Sweden don't give me Flumazenil i'm going to travel abroad to USA and do the treatment at the "The Coleman Institute". It cost verry much (6000$) but it has a 98% succés rate and as i said earlier i'm willing to try anything at this point. I have even requested a brain surgery from the health care in Sweden (deep brain stimulation) to solve my vision problems. DBS is verry frequantly used for many diseases in Sweden so if Flumazenil dosn't work out i'm hoping for a DBS. 

Edited by Gustav
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