Disinhibition vs. CNS Depression in Benzos

[seep]

Read this 3 weeks ago and got to thinking,

Is it possible to condition one's own fight-or-flight response, with benzos, so that disinhibition is not rendered useless by CNS depression? In other words, is it possible to use benzos to enhance social, sexual and physical performance (instead of just run-of-the-mill anxiolysis)?

I am on a regimen of alprazolam 1 mg tid and Adderall 10 mg tid. I'm also a fairly-active lifter. On workout days, I had been withholding my customary a.m. 2 mg alprazolam dose until after the workout, for obvious reasons: my workouts involved very heavy lifts and I didn't want to risk ataxia. Lately, however, I'd been encumbered by anxiety during my morning workouts--I ruminated over how others at the gym were viewing me, and I tended to fail my lifts and abort each workout due to incipient panic attacks and paranoid ideations/delusions of reference.

So for the past 2 weeks, I've taken 1 mg alprazolam before workouts to ameliorate the exacerbated anxiety. I co-administer 10 mg Adderall and 17 grams of SAN's Fierce (a mixture of various creatines & arginine/ornithine/glutamine/alanine/caffeine/tyrosine). To my surprise, ataxia seems totally absent and I'm getting a paradoxical surge in muscular power, evidenced by my ability to lift progressively heavier weight for more sets with shorter inter-set recovery times. Today, for instance, I squatted 315 lbs for 3 8-rep sets, then did the same on dead lift, then cruised right into power-jerking 225 lbs for 3 sets of 6. I could go on, but my point is that the pre-workout alprazolam seems to be having a paradoxical performance-enhancing effect: subjectively this presents as an almost libidinal desire to attack the bar and go on a physical rampage in defiance of gravity.

So I'll rephrase my initial question: when a certain stimulus makes physical disinhibition overcome CNS depression in the effects of a short-acting benzo, and psychomotor excitation is acheived, is the suppressed fight-or-flight response breaking through in a healthy and manageable way? Can a person stimulated in such a way have "the best of both worlds," i.e. physical, social and sexual disinhibition with intact judgment? Can anyone propose a social experiment that would, by this mechanism, help me become desensitized to my social and sexual anxieties/apprehensions/phobias? Has this been investigated in a clinical setting?

Sorry for the length of this post.

 

[AfterGlow]

no.

 

[Enlitx]

Is there a reason you made that post so convoluted and bombastic? It sounds like you tried to type up a formal proposal to a physiology professor, given the vocabulary and phrasing.

Anyways, as to your questions, what exactly do you mean by healthy? Inducing the GABA system doesen't cause any oxidative stress, raise blood pressure, etc... so what exactly are you worried about? Are you worried that your lack of inhibition will result in too much muscle exertion?

The second part of your question is confusing, but I will try to answer part of it.
You can't dampen the activity of cells with inhibitory molecules and expect to have the same amount of judgment, especially since judgment and inhibition are intrinsically linked.

If I am not mistaken you are asking if there is an experiment to replicate the effects of benzod as to create a permanent change in behavior, specifically disinhibition? They wouldn't call s benzo a "band-aid" if there was.

 

[seep]

Is there a reason you made that post so convoluted and bombastic?

Post-workout endorphin rush makes me run my mouth. You should hear me on heroin.

"Healthy" = what is normal for people without severe anxiety disorders. The mechanism (ForF) in people with these disorders is so hair-triggered that life without exogenous regulation is untenable. It is primarily activated by social and sexual settings (causing, for instance, the paradox of simultaneous sexual excitement and impotence). It occurred to me that the gym was an ideal environment to experiment with various methods of managing anxiety: the gym incites violent muscular action & social interaction, and there are many gorgeous females dressed in small clothing.

So yes: benzos not as band-aids but as facilitators for cognitive-behavioral modification, because of the incidence of paradoxical aggression. This sentence from the French abstract was of particular interest to me:

"Meta-analysis has shown that use of benzodiazepines generates aggressiveness more frequently than it reduces it."

 

[Enlitx]

Going to the gym will help anxiety, as evidenced by the recent article that dealt with cardiovascular excercise and post-workout anxiety. This is a result of the chemical changes that occur after physical exertion, but I have no idea how to actually change thought patterns to manage anxiety, I am not a psychologist.

You are going to find it very difficult to sustain any cognitive-behavior changes that were induced while on a benzo unless you are constantly on them. Some studies have found that benzos use actually exacerbates anxiety when use is discontinued.

 

[seep]

You are going to find it very difficult to sustain any cognitive-behavior changes that were induced while on a benzo unless you are constantly on them. Some studies have found that benzos use actually exacerbates anxiety when use is discontinued.

Thanks man. This is the zero-sum game that's dogging me right now. I self-medicated for years with IV heroin or methadone and that got me nowhere. Nor did alcohol. Nor cocaine. But (and maybe I'm just high, but) but, I'm psyched about the potential of a benzo to enable a person to alter his neural architecture by methodically exposing himself to stimuli and conditioning himself to respond appropriately to these stimuli, thereby strengthening and weakening the relevant synapses. The goal is long-term potentiation that'll survive the discontinuation of the benzo and allow for healthy social functioning and overall improvement in quality of life.

The beauty of cognitive-behavioral modification is that it sidesteps the complicated endeavor of neurochemical regulation and allows a person to actually re-arrange the furniture in his brain. But it is damn-near impossible if the person is not already motivated and functional. If the person, on the other hand, is so high-strung that he lapses into psychosis when confronted with stimuli, modification will fail. So the idea is that benzos can help steady the developing monkey just enough so that he doesn't fall off the tree while learning to get to the berries.

 

[AfterGlow]

That's ALWAYS been the way benzos were intended to be used... not as long term pharmacological solution but as a short term anxiety relief so that psychological and behavioral therapy could effectively get at the root of your problem.

The beauty of cognitive-behavioral modification is that it sidesteps the complicated endeavor of neurochemical regulation and allows a person to actually re-arrange the furniture in his brain. But it is damn-near impossible if the person is not already motivated and functional. If the person, on the other hand, is so high-strung that he lapses into psychosis when confronted with stimuli, modification will fail. So the idea is that benzos can help steady the developing monkey just enough so that he doesn't fall off the tree while learning to get to the berries.

 

[seep]

AfterGlow: true.

Where I work, many of the op's have been scripted benzodiazepines for years. #1 reason I see it prescribed: to quell obsessive thinking so that sleep is easier to initiate. I got into an argument with a doc last week who prescribes nearly all his patients 30 mg temazepam qhs. He does it so they'll keep coming back.