SF-Determined
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2018
- Messages
- 3
Hi, New user here from San Francisco, nice to me you all!
BACKGROUND Was mistakenly prescribed benzos (ativan then was switched to klonopin) 2 years ago before it was found I had an adrenal issue causing stress hormone surges and not anxiety, now have become essentially addicted. I successfully tapered from 3 mg klonopin + 2 mg ativan per day in June 2017 to .75 mg klonpin per day by Oct 2017, first sort of on my own w/ support from my primary care doc, then later informed by the Ashton manual.
End of 2017 I successfully converted .25 klonopin 3x/day to 5 mg diazepam 3x/day (per Ashton protocol), then tapered to a 3x per day dose of 5/1/5 (11 mg diazepam total) before all hell broke lose - extreme anxiety, massive hypertension, and found myself working my way to 20 mg diazepam.
Last week a psychiatrist added gabapentin and said to taper up to 300 mg 3x/day, that would make the diazepam taper off much easier, then getting off gabapentin would be easier; meanwhile another psychiatrist I spoke w/ on the phone said using baclofen is better. I've read about both, pros and cons ... from reading blog posts both can have issues but either is easier to get off than a benzo proper (I guess gabapentin is a different element of the GABAa receptor, and baclofen is the GABAb receptor ... )
QUESTION I have a question about why the my taper went haywire at 11 mg diazepam, and I noticed in the 4 weeks leading up to it, my otherwise healthy whole food diet includes 4 scoops of whey protein powder in my morning oats & berries, and I'd been eating daily a huge bowl of bone broth w/ lots of mushrooms ... I'm new to the science of this but it appears there's a relation between excitatory glutamate & inhibitory glutamine, and I've stumbled upon blogs that talk about the problems of a high glutamate diet (whey, bone broth, and mushrooms all high in glutamic acid/glutamate). Elsewhere on this blog I saw someone refer to "glutamate kindling" and I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge of whether I inadvertently over-"excited" my GABA-troubled brain w/ these kinds of foods!
Apologies in advance if this was long winded, I appreciate any insight anyone has. I'll post a shorter version of this as well in the place where someone talked about "glutamate kindling." Thank you so much for reading and to anyone who has any guidance!
- SF-Determined
BACKGROUND Was mistakenly prescribed benzos (ativan then was switched to klonopin) 2 years ago before it was found I had an adrenal issue causing stress hormone surges and not anxiety, now have become essentially addicted. I successfully tapered from 3 mg klonopin + 2 mg ativan per day in June 2017 to .75 mg klonpin per day by Oct 2017, first sort of on my own w/ support from my primary care doc, then later informed by the Ashton manual.
End of 2017 I successfully converted .25 klonopin 3x/day to 5 mg diazepam 3x/day (per Ashton protocol), then tapered to a 3x per day dose of 5/1/5 (11 mg diazepam total) before all hell broke lose - extreme anxiety, massive hypertension, and found myself working my way to 20 mg diazepam.
Last week a psychiatrist added gabapentin and said to taper up to 300 mg 3x/day, that would make the diazepam taper off much easier, then getting off gabapentin would be easier; meanwhile another psychiatrist I spoke w/ on the phone said using baclofen is better. I've read about both, pros and cons ... from reading blog posts both can have issues but either is easier to get off than a benzo proper (I guess gabapentin is a different element of the GABAa receptor, and baclofen is the GABAb receptor ... )
QUESTION I have a question about why the my taper went haywire at 11 mg diazepam, and I noticed in the 4 weeks leading up to it, my otherwise healthy whole food diet includes 4 scoops of whey protein powder in my morning oats & berries, and I'd been eating daily a huge bowl of bone broth w/ lots of mushrooms ... I'm new to the science of this but it appears there's a relation between excitatory glutamate & inhibitory glutamine, and I've stumbled upon blogs that talk about the problems of a high glutamate diet (whey, bone broth, and mushrooms all high in glutamic acid/glutamate). Elsewhere on this blog I saw someone refer to "glutamate kindling" and I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge of whether I inadvertently over-"excited" my GABA-troubled brain w/ these kinds of foods!
Apologies in advance if this was long winded, I appreciate any insight anyone has. I'll post a shorter version of this as well in the place where someone talked about "glutamate kindling." Thank you so much for reading and to anyone who has any guidance!
- SF-Determined
