Tinnitus and Benzos - My Success Story 3 Years Later

[[DR...]]

I started posting here in the fall of 2020 about my struggles with tinnitus and a subsequent descent into benzo hell.  I have been recovered for over three years now, and it is timely to share my story.

On September 1, 2020, at the age of 65, I came down with a sudden onset of loud intrusive tinnitus (ringing in the ears).  It was not very troublesome for first few days, so I waited a week or so before seeing my GP. He looked at my ears and couldn't see any external problems, but he put me on a 1-week regimen of prednisone, which apparently is the standard protocol for sudden hearing loss (I didn't think I had hearing loss) and tinnitus.  He also referred me to an ENT specialist to evaluate my hearing, and he gave me a prescription for Xanax to help with anxiety and sleeping issues that he said could be associated with tinnitus.  At that time, I wasn't very anxious as I assumed the tinnitus would be temporary, so I didn't fill the prescription.  But as the days went on, I began to feel increasingly anxious with the constant and now louder ringing in my ears.  Two weeks later I met with the ENT who conducted a thorough hearing test.  He said that I had moderate to severe high-frequency hearing loss, probably due to a virus infection - maybe even COVID - and that I would likely have the tinnitus the rest of my life and that I would just have to learn to live with it.  He said there was no cure or treatment for tinnitus, but some of his patients were helped by anti-anxiety and/or anti-depressant medication.  That's when the anxiety really kicked in, so I got the Xanax prescription filled that night.

I started taking 0.25 mg twice per day, per my prescription.  At first it was like a miracle.  With the first dose my tinnitus just disappeared, but when it returned in a few hours my anxiety really started to soar.  Within two weeks I had doubled my dosage to 0.5 mg twice per day, and my prescription ran out before the refill date.  I went back to my GP who agreed to increase my prescription to 0.5 mg twice per day "as needed" for anxiety and sleep.  I am pretty health conscious, so I asked him how much Xanax I can safely take and for how long.  He said that he has patients who suffer from panic disorder that have been on 4 mg per day for years and even decades with no problems, so I felt like my 1 mg/day dose was pretty safe.  During the next month my anxiety, and my tinnitus, got much worse and I started having panic attacks and insomnia, so I started upping my dose again to 1.5 to 2.0 mg/day.  When my prescription ran out, I called my GP and he said he could not refill it early per state law.  This really freaked me out as I felt totally dependent on Xanax at that point.  So, I asked my wife to ask her friend who was on Xanax to "lend" me some until I could get my prescription refilled, which she did.  But I knew I was in trouble by then.

By mid-November of 2020, I had clearly developed a Xanax dependency just to function with a minimum level of anxiety and to sleep, and I recognized that I would continuously need a higher dose to maintain that level of efficacy.  That's when I decided that I needed to get off the Xanax entirely and try to develop some other coping measures.  Wow, what a big mistake.  After two days of cold turkey, I started experiencing horrendous anxiety and insomnia, punctuated by very deep depression.  So, I got back on the Xanax, but at a lower dose (I think I tried not to exceed 1 mg/day).  My anxiety, insomnia, and depression just continued to spiral, so I went back to my GP and told him that the Xanax was messing up my brain and making me sick, and that I wanted to get off of it.  He said I could just stop taking the Xanax, but he was worried about my depression and sleep problems, so he prescribed Lexapro and Ambien.  I kept trying to stop the Xanax on my own, but it did provide some short-term relief so by Thanksgiving 2020 I was now on three psych meds and was still a mess and getting worse.  I wasn't sleeping or eating, and my depression continued to spiral out of control to the point that I was having very strong suicidal ideations.  One day I even called a suicide line, and my wife wanted to take me to the emergency room several times during these dark days.

By mid-December 2020 I had discovered Benzo Buddies and the Ashton Manual for safe benzo withdrawal.  I now knew what was making me crazy and that I had to get off all the psych meds.  I went back to my GP and asked him if he knew about the dangers of benzos and how to safely withdraw from him.  He responded that he had many patients who had been on benzos both short term and long term with no problems.  He said that he never heard of the Ashton Manual.  I told him that felt like I was losing my mind and needed to see a psychiatrist.  He said that it could take months to get into a psychiatrist, and that I should probably stay on the meds until then as he was very worried about my suicidal thoughts.  But he gave me three referrals.  One of the referrals was no longer in practice, and the other two said they were booked until mid-2021. But one of those gave me another referral for a telehealth psychiatrist practice.  I was able to set up a virtual consultation with him in mid-December, and that was the beginning of my recovery.

My first meeting with the telehealth psychiatrist went well.  He was very supportive of my desire to get off all the psych meds, which is unusual for a psychiatrist.  He said that benzo withdrawal after protracted use (months) had to be done slowly over time, but that he was only "vaguely familiar" with the Ashton Manual.  I sent him a pdf copy of the manual and we discussed a stepwise approach to getting off the meds.  The first thing he did is convert me from Xanax to Valium.  I was on about 1 mg/day of Xanax at that point, so he started me on 5 mg/day of Valium.  I had no problems or symptoms with the changeover to Valium.  After being stabilized on Valium for about a week, he had me taper off Ambien over a period of about two weeks.  I was taking 10 mg/night of Ambien, so we cut that down by 1 mg/night.  I believe that the conversion to higher Valium dose really helped me wean off the Ambien, as my sleep was pretty good during this taper.  So, by mid-January 2021, I was done with Ambien - one down, and two to go.

The psychiatrist wanted me to stay on the lower 10 mg/day dose of Lexapro during my Valium taper to manage my depression.  We followed the Ashton taper protocol from the 5 mg/day Valium dose pretty much verbatim.  The Valium taper took about 7 months, with the last doses being weighed micro-chips of the tablets.  I was able to taper off Valium with no adverse symptoms, so by mid-August 2021 I was done with benzos for good!  Then, we tapered off the Lexapro over the next two months by cutting my dose by about 1 mg/week over this period, again using weighed micro-chips of the tablets.  So, by late September 2021, I was free from all psych meds - hell yeah!  Meanwhile, during my med tapers I continued to get psychological counseling on how to manage my tinnitus, which is still with me today, and will be for life.  But it just doesn't bother me much anymore.  As the ENT said, I would learn how to live with it.

So, my take home messages for the Benzo Buddies community are these:

• Tinnitus is a common disorder that affects something like 20% of the population.  For most people, it is not bothersome or intrusive; however, some people (about 10% of the 20%) have very extreme anxiety reactions to it, especially if there is a sudden onset.
• Benzodiazepines do alleviate tinnitus symptoms and associated anxiety for a very short time (a few weeks), but the benefits wear off quickly, and one finds the need to keep upping the benzo dose to get any relief.
• Learning to live with loud intrusive tinnitus requires neuroplasticity, and some studies have shown that benzodiazepines retard the natural neuroplasticity processes needed to adapt to tinnitus.  I believe I would have done just as well or better adapting to me tinnitus if I had never touched benzos.
• I developed a true chemical dependency on Xanax within a month or less, to the point that stopping the drug felt way worse than staying on it, with panic attacks and insomnia quickly setting in with every attempt to stop cold turkey.
• In addition to the biochemical effects of benzos on neurotransmitters, I believe that the feeling be being "trapped" in a drug dependency was a big driver of my depression and sense of hopelessness during the dark days.
• I believe that adding other psych drugs to the mix - in my case Ambien and Lexapro - just further scrambles one's brain chemistry and requires more complicated tapering regimes to get off the psych drug stew.
• Most GPs know nothing about the dangers of benzos, proper dosing, dependency timeframes, or the Ashton Manual protocols for tapering patients off these drugs.  If you read the drug literature, it does say that benzos should not be taken for more than 2 weeks, but most doctors don't tell their patients that and just keep prescribing higher doses.  The Ashton Manual should be a standard read for all medical students.
• Having a supportive and knowledgeable psychiatrist probably saved my life.  I was in a very dark place, and just talking to someone who understood what was making me crazy and giving me hope that there was a way out, was remarkably beneficial in the recovery of my mental health.

I am turning 70 next month and I am in excellent health and on zero meds of any kind.  My mental health is good, and I sleep well.  I look back on my year in benzo hell and I feel for everyone who visits this forum.  Several of the moderators and posters on this forum that responded to me were kind and supportive, and for that I am very thankful.  However, the thing that helped me most was reading the success stories from the thousands of people who have escaped benzo hell.  I hope my success story helps someone else deal with benzo dependency in a positive way.  You can and will FULLY recover if you get the right kind of help and support.

 

 

[[Ne...]]

Thanks for sharing your well written story.  Tinnitus is a lingering symptom for me from my 21 day use of Temazepam.  I am on my 37th month of recovery from CT from this very short term usage with very broken sleep being my other lingering symptom.  There are others in BB that are recovering from very short term use as well.  It is way past due for the medical industry to wake up to the dangers of this drug.  And yes, I have learned to tune out the tinnitus to not even be aware of it most of the time. Enjoy your 70’s!  I just turned 70 as well!

[[Sh...]]

Thank you so much for sharing this ... time to enjoy your life now :))

[[Pa...]]

Thank you @[DR...] for writing your story with a particular focus on tinnitus, we have a number of members suffering with this at the moment.  Your story will offer hope and not only that, the guidance you've included is practical and helpful and I agree about Success Stories, they were my lifeline too.  

[[pi...]]

Hello @[DR...],

What a long journey you had to take , but you did it. It looks like this process motivated you to work on all aspects of your life and health, good for you. Thank you so much for writing such a detailed post, it will help others who have similar issues. I also clung  to Success Stories, it got me through the challenging times. Enjoy your 70’s , I know I am!

[[Rh...]]

Thank you so very much for sharing your story!  I am sorry you went through that, but happy you have recovered!  It is so comforting to know there is life after these horrible drugs and your living proof!

Congrats on making it to the other side and again, thank you for coming back to bring those of us in the battle some much needed hope!

[[B ...]]

On 16/09/2024 at 16:18, [[D...] said:

I started posting here in the fall of 2020 about my struggles with tinnitus and a subsequent descent into benzo hell.  I have been recovered for over three years now, and it is timely to share my story.

On September 1, 2020, at the age of 65, I came down with a sudden onset of loud intrusive tinnitus (ringing in the ears).  It was not very troublesome for first few days, so I waited a week or so before seeing my GP. He looked at my ears and couldn't see any external problems, but he put me on a 1-week regimen of prednisone, which apparently is the standard protocol for sudden hearing loss (I didn't think I had hearing loss) and tinnitus.  He also referred me to an ENT specialist to evaluate my hearing, and he gave me a prescription for Xanax to help with anxiety and sleeping issues that he said could be associated with tinnitus.  At that time, I wasn't very anxious as I assumed the tinnitus would be temporary, so I didn't fill the prescription.  But as the days went on, I began to feel increasingly anxious with the constant and now louder ringing in my ears.  Two weeks later I met with the ENT who conducted a thorough hearing test.  He said that I had moderate to severe high-frequency hearing loss, probably due to a virus infection - maybe even COVID - and that I would likely have the tinnitus the rest of my life and that I would just have to learn to live with it.  He said there was no cure or treatment for tinnitus, but some of his patients were helped by anti-anxiety and/or anti-depressant medication.  That's when the anxiety really kicked in, so I got the Xanax prescription filled that night.

I started taking 0.25 mg twice per day, per my prescription.  At first it was like a miracle.  With the first dose my tinnitus just disappeared, but when it returned in a few hours my anxiety really started to soar.  Within two weeks I had doubled my dosage to 0.5 mg twice per day, and my prescription ran out before the refill date.  I went back to my GP who agreed to increase my prescription to 0.5 mg twice per day "as needed" for anxiety and sleep.  I am pretty health conscious, so I asked him how much Xanax I can safely take and for how long.  He said that he has patients who suffer from panic disorder that have been on 4 mg per day for years and even decades with no problems, so I felt like my 1 mg/day dose was pretty safe.  During the next month my anxiety, and my tinnitus, got much worse and I started having panic attacks and insomnia, so I started upping my dose again to 1.5 to 2.0 mg/day.  When my prescription ran out, I called my GP and he said he could not refill it early per state law.  This really freaked me out as I felt totally dependent on Xanax at that point.  So, I asked my wife to ask her friend who was on Xanax to "lend" me some until I could get my prescription refilled, which she did.  But I knew I was in trouble by then.

By mid-November of 2020, I had clearly developed a Xanax dependency just to function with a minimum level of anxiety and to sleep, and I recognized that I would continuously need a higher dose to maintain that level of efficacy.  That's when I decided that I needed to get off the Xanax entirely and try to develop some other coping measures.  Wow, what a big mistake.  After two days of cold turkey, I started experiencing horrendous anxiety and insomnia, punctuated by very deep depression.  So, I got back on the Xanax, but at a lower dose (I think I tried not to exceed 1 mg/day).  My anxiety, insomnia, and depression just continued to spiral, so I went back to my GP and told him that the Xanax was messing up my brain and making me sick, and that I wanted to get off of it.  He said I could just stop taking the Xanax, but he was worried about my depression and sleep problems, so he prescribed Lexapro and Ambien.  I kept trying to stop the Xanax on my own, but it did provide some short-term relief so by Thanksgiving 2020 I was now on three psych meds and was still a mess and getting worse.  I wasn't sleeping or eating, and my depression continued to spiral out of control to the point that I was having very strong suicidal ideations.  One day I even called a suicide line, and my wife wanted to take me to the emergency room several times during these dark days.

By mid-December 2020 I had discovered Benzo Buddies and the Ashton Manual for safe benzo withdrawal.  I now knew what was making me crazy and that I had to get off all the psych meds.  I went back to my GP and asked him if he knew about the dangers of benzos and how to safely withdraw from him.  He responded that he had many patients who had been on benzos both short term and long term with no problems.  He said that he never heard of the Ashton Manual.  I told him that felt like I was losing my mind and needed to see a psychiatrist.  He said that it could take months to get into a psychiatrist, and that I should probably stay on the meds until then as he was very worried about my suicidal thoughts.  But he gave me three referrals.  One of the referrals was no longer in practice, and the other two said they were booked until mid-2021. But one of those gave me another referral for a telehealth psychiatrist practice.  I was able to set up a virtual consultation with him in mid-December, and that was the beginning of my recovery.

My first meeting with the telehealth psychiatrist went well.  He was very supportive of my desire to get off all the psych meds, which is unusual for a psychiatrist.  He said that benzo withdrawal after protracted use (months) had to be done slowly over time, but that he was only "vaguely familiar" with the Ashton Manual.  I sent him a pdf copy of the manual and we discussed a stepwise approach to getting off the meds.  The first thing he did is convert me from Xanax to Valium.  I was on about 1 mg/day of Xanax at that point, so he started me on 5 mg/day of Valium.  I had no problems or symptoms with the changeover to Valium.  After being stabilized on Valium for about a week, he had me taper off Ambien over a period of about two weeks.  I was taking 10 mg/night of Ambien, so we cut that down by 1 mg/night.  I believe that the conversion to higher Valium dose really helped me wean off the Ambien, as my sleep was pretty good during this taper.  So, by mid-January 2021, I was done with Ambien - one down, and two to go.

The psychiatrist wanted me to stay on the lower 10 mg/day dose of Lexapro during my Valium taper to manage my depression.  We followed the Ashton taper protocol from the 5 mg/day Valium dose pretty much verbatim.  The Valium taper took about 7 months, with the last doses being weighed micro-chips of the tablets.  I was able to taper off Valium with no adverse symptoms, so by mid-August 2021 I was done with benzos for good!  Then, we tapered off the Lexapro over the next two months by cutting my dose by about 1 mg/week over this period, again using weighed micro-chips of the tablets.  So, by late September 2021, I was free from all psych meds - hell yeah!  Meanwhile, during my med tapers I continued to get psychological counseling on how to manage my tinnitus, which is still with me today, and will be for life.  But it just doesn't bother me much anymore.  As the ENT said, I would learn how to live with it.

So, my take home messages for the Benzo Buddies community are these:

• Tinnitus is a common disorder that affects something like 20% of the population.  For most people, it is not bothersome or intrusive; however, some people (about 10% of the 20%) have very extreme anxiety reactions to it, especially if there is a sudden onset.
• Benzodiazepines do alleviate tinnitus symptoms and associated anxiety for a very short time (a few weeks), but the benefits wear off quickly, and one finds the need to keep upping the benzo dose to get any relief.
• Learning to live with loud intrusive tinnitus requires neuroplasticity, and some studies have shown that benzodiazepines retard the natural neuroplasticity processes needed to adapt to tinnitus.  I believe I would have done just as well or better adapting to me tinnitus if I had never touched benzos.
• I developed a true chemical dependency on Xanax within a month or less, to the point that stopping the drug felt way worse than staying on it, with panic attacks and insomnia quickly setting in with every attempt to stop cold turkey.
• In addition to the biochemical effects of benzos on neurotransmitters, I believe that the feeling be being "trapped" in a drug dependency was a big driver of my depression and sense of hopelessness during the dark days.
• I believe that adding other psych drugs to the mix - in my case Ambien and Lexapro - just further scrambles one's brain chemistry and requires more complicated tapering regimes to get off the psych drug stew.
• Most GPs know nothing about the dangers of benzos, proper dosing, dependency timeframes, or the Ashton Manual protocols for tapering patients off these drugs.  If you read the drug literature, it does say that benzos should not be taken for more than 2 weeks, but most doctors don't tell their patients that and just keep prescribing higher doses.  The Ashton Manual should be a standard read for all medical students.
• Having a supportive and knowledgeable psychiatrist probably saved my life.  I was in a very dark place, and just talking to someone who understood what was making me crazy and giving me hope that there was a way out, was remarkably beneficial in the recovery of my mental health.

I am turning 70 next month and I am in excellent health and on zero meds of any kind.  My mental health is good, and I sleep well.  I look back on my year in benzo hell and I feel for everyone who visits this forum.  Several of the moderators and posters on this forum that responded to me were kind and supportive, and for that I am very thankful.  However, the thing that helped me most was reading the success stories from the thousands of people who have escaped benzo hell.  I hope my success story helps someone else deal with benzo dependency in a positive way.  You can and will FULLY recover if you get the right kind of help and support.

Congratulations on your strength and recovery. I’ve been in a similar place and know how hard it is. You are so lucky to have found someone to help after all the dead ends. Most doctors have no clue. I enjoyed your story!

 

B strong 

[[Co...]]

On 16/09/2024 at 23:18, [[D...] said:

However, the thing that helped me most was reading the success stories from the thousands of people who have escaped benzo hell.  I hope my success story helps someone else deal with benzo dependency in a positive way.

Hello @[DR...]. Thank you for returning to BenzoBuddies to update us about your recovery. It is important for members to hear stories such as yours. And your comment, above, says it all, really.

I am happy to hear that life is now good for you. It does not feel this way, of course, during the process - your story will help reassure members actively going through the process.

Please drop by from time-to-time when you think of us.

Take care,

Colin.