Benzos

[billsy]

Hi all....i am trying 2 come off V`s and have decided 2 try Stilnox being (supposedly) non addictive and that....gonna c how it goes

[northbelle]

You mean valiums right?? I have never heard of STILNOX. Wow I hope it is something that helps you..so when did you stop using them?? How long you been taking them...this is a great place to get support..lots of caring folks here with lots of esperience!!!
BEST of sobriety to you!!!
love northbelle

[Done_With_It]

I'm not familiar with benzos but wanted to welcome you to SR! More will be around soon, like North said this is a great place to get support!~~

[Lizrox]

Stilnox is a sleeping pill like Ambien.

Best of luck to you..!!!

[AngelMagic7]

Stilnox is very additive too as I was on them for 4 months.
My doctors didn't even want to give me more for the second month and only gave them to me as a last resort as I was only getting about 2hours sleep a night and that was if I was lucky.

They helped me get my sleeping pattern back but I was still waking up when I was on them.
When the doc's stopped giving me them I had to do the rest my self and sort my sleep out.

So I guess they could help you to start with but you'll have do be strong and do the rest you're self.

Just be leave in you're self and the rest will come.

You can do it
xXx Angel

[Ten Chips Down]

Billsy -

Stilnox *IS* Ambien, or zolpidem. Will not help you d/c Valium in a safe way at all, oh no sir.

Consult a real physician for this.

Welcome to the forum.

Ten

[EricPaul]

Originally Posted by billsy

Hi all....i am trying 2 come off V`s and have decided 2 try Stilnox being (supposedly) non addictive and that....gonna c how it goes

Have you read the Ashton Manual? You can find slow taper schedules for diazepam/valium withdrawals in the manual. Click on the link to see sample schedules. For help with a schedule you can go to the benzo forum.

http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzsched.htm

http://benzoisland.org/index.html

Here is a FAQ from benzoisland about stilnox/ambien.

Is ambien a benzo ?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ambien (zolpidem) belongs to a class of medicines that effects the central nervous system, called sedative hypnotics. Zolpidem is closely related to a family of drugs called benzodiazepines. These drugs cause sedation, muscle relaxation, act as anti-convulsants (anti-seizure), and have anti-anxiety properties. Zolpidem has selectivity in that it has little of the muscle relaxant or anti-seizure effect and more of the sedative effect. Ambien is indicated for the short-term treatment of insomnia and treatment should generally be limited to 7 to 10 days of use.

More Information on the "Z" drugs (zolpidem, zopiclone, zaleplon):

Ambien / Stilnoct / Stilnox (zolpidem), Zimovane / Imovane (zopiclone) and Sonata (zaleplon) are chemically different from benzodiazepines but have the same effects on the body, act by the same mechanisms and may cause equally dreadful withdrawal problems. They are sometimes referred to as "half benzos" because they target the GABA-A receptors. Like benzos they should not be prescribed for more than a week or two.

Ambien and Sonata (like the benzodiazepine Halcion, triazolam) have a very short half life (2 hours) so where people are taking a normal therapeutic dose Ashton recommends that the drug be stopped immediately. If w/d symptoms occur she recommends a course of Valium (diazepam) which should be tapered gradually. Because Zimovane / Imovane (zopiclone) has a longer half-life (5-6 hours) Ashton recommends a staged crossover to Valium before attempting to taper.

The reference to zolpidem withdrawal may be found near the bottom of this page of the Ashton Manual (last paragraph): http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzcha02.htm

"In my experience, the only exception to the general rule of slow reduction is triazolam (Halcion). This benzodiazepine is eliminated so quickly (half-life 2 hours) that you are practically withdrawn each day, after a dose the night before. For this reason, triazolam can be stopped abruptly without substitution of a long-acting benzodiazepine. If withdrawal symptoms occur, you could take a short course of diazepam starting at about 10mg, decreasing the dosage as shown on Schedule 2. The same approach applies to the non-benzodiazepines zolpidem and zaleplon which both have half-lives of 2 hours.

Ambien / zolpidem Monograph at RxList.

Ambien - Unsafe

"Ambien (Zolpidem) shares some pharmacologic characteristics of the benzodiazepines. In contrast to the benzodiazepines, which non-selectively interact with all three known omega-receptor subtypes; zolpidem preferentially binds to the omega-1 receptor and shares some pharmacologic characteristics of the benzodiazepines. Should there be any doubt that even though this is not classed as a benzodiazepine the medication, Anexate (flumazenil) will stop all activity of Ambien within minutes - the same activity it has on benzos meaning there is definite cross activity. The FDA restricts Ambien use for a maximum of 7 to 10 days because of rebound insomnia and tolerance. There are numerous reports of increased withdrawal symptoms after use or discontinuance of Ambien."

--

Is Ambien a Benzodiazapine?

April 8, 2002

The whole argument turns on semantics and your definition of what is or is not a benzodiazepine.

If you define a benzo by its chemical structure, a benzene ring attached to a seven-sided diazepine nucleus, well then, no, Ambien is not a benzo.

But that strikes me as a rather transparent linguistic maneuver. Think about this example. You tell a child not to walk over a line. He subsequently jumps over the line, and then insists that he didn't break your rule because he did not in fact walk over the line, he jumped over it. In a literal sense he is correct. But we feel that he is attempting to deceive us, and we can see right through it. He has ended up on the other side of the line, regardless of how he got there.

I think the analogy is fairly clear with Ambien and the benzodiazepines. No, Ambien does not literally have a benzene ring and a diazepine nucleus. But it does act at the GABA BZD1 receptor complex just like a classical benzodiazepine. It gets to the same place, so to speak, albeit with a different chemical structure.

So, from the standpoint of a chemist Ambien is not a benzodiazepine, but from the standpoint of a patient's nervous system it is a benzodiazepine.

It is particularly annoying to me that the marketing folks at Searle have leveraged this little word game to make Ambien seem more innocuous to prescribing physicians and sleep disturbed consumers.

--

Zopiclone (aka Imovane, Zimovane) is a cyclopyrrolone and although not a benzodiazepine it targets the GABA-A receptors and causes similar problems to benzos.

Related drugs are zolpidem (aka Ambien, Stilnoct, Stilnox), an imidazopyridine and zaleplon (aka Sonata) a pyrazolopyrimidine. Sometimes these drugs have been referred to as "half benzos" because of their specific mode of action.

A newer drug called eszopiclone (Estorra) will soon be unleashed on the world. It is just more of the same kind of trouble.

These drugs are effective for a very short period of time but like benzos are also highly addictive. People continue to take them - not because of any therapeutic benefits but because of the dreadful withdrawal symptoms when they try to stop them.

--

Excerpts from Prof. Heather Ashton's speech at the Maine Benzodiazepine Conference in Bangor Maine on October 12, 2005. NB that Lunesta aka eszopiclone, a cousin of the three Z drugs: zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone (Zimovane) and zaleplon (Sonata), and it is being marketed as safe for long-term use.

"These are not chemically benzodiazepines but they bind to GABA
receptor complexes which are close to or actually coupled with
benzodiazepine receptors. They are said to be more selective, binding
mainly to the a1 GABA receptor subtype which mediates the hypnotic
effects of benzodiazepines. In practice they are not all that
selective and have much the same actions as benzodiazepines. In the
UK, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), which
advises the Health Service on optimum drug use, recommended that Z
drugs should be used for short-term treatment only (2-4 weeks) and
then only as second line treatments after benzodiazepines. They
concluded that the Z drugs produced the same therapeutic and adverse
effects as benzodiazepine hypnotics, including tolerance, dependence
and abuse, and were also more expensive.

"As a clinical example, a psychiatrist recently asked my advice about
the nursing sister he was helping to withdraw from lorazepam (Ativan).
She developed quite severe withdrawal symptoms as the dosage was
lowered and had trouble sleeping. To help her, the psychiatrist
prescribed zopiclone (Zimovane) to take at night. She found that this
drug completely relieved her withdrawal symptoms. In fact, it was so
successful that she started taking zopiclone in the daytime as well.
She ended up taking zopiclone six times a day as well as at night,
ending up with a total dose of over 40mg/day (the recommended dose is
7.5mg at night). The psychiatrist was chagrined to find that he had
merely replaced one form of addiction with another.

"There are a number of cases in the literature of such escalation of
dosage with zopiclone, followed by dependence and withdrawal symptoms
on stopping. There are also an increasing number of cases reported of
misuse and abuse of high doses of zolpidem (Ambien). This can result
in hallucinations and psychosis and is reminiscent of the adverse
effects of triazolam (Halcion), the short-acting benzodiazepine
hypnotic now banned in the UK.

"Now eszopiclone [Lunesta] is being promoted for long-term use and the
manufacturers report trials lasting two weeks to six months of its
hypnotic effects. They report little tolerance or loss of efficacy
over these periods and a low incidence of rebound insomnia or anxiety
(3.7%) on stopping. Euphoria was noted in high doses, suggesting an
abuse potential. I remain sceptical of these results which involved
relatively small numbers of subjects with various types of insomnia.
I am not convinced that eszopiclone is all that different from
zopiclone, apart from its potency, and I think it would be prudent to
limit it to short-term use until proved otherwise."

"There is a basic pharmacological principle that any drug which acts
on intrinsic body receptors will cause adaptive changes in these
receptors if used chronically. This is because the body is programmed
to restore homeostasis if its internal environment is disturbed. For
every drug action in the body there is an equal (as far as possible)
reaction which tends to restore the status quo. This mechanism
underlies the development of drug tolerance and dependence and also of
withdrawal reactions if the drug is stopped. It applies not only to
benzodiazepines but also to non-psychotropic drugs like b blockers.
For example, B blockers such as propranolol are used to slow the heart
and lower the blood pressure. If these are suddenly stopped there is
a rebound of increased heart rate and raised blood pressure. We
accept that tolerance and withdrawal reactions occur with
benzodiazepines, barbiturates and all the hypnotic and sedative drugs
that have gone before. We even understand much about the molecular
mechanisms involved - which I won't go into here. There seems no
reason to believe that these reactions will not apply to Z-drugs.

"I suspect that the Z-drugs will undergo the fate of many newly
introduced drugs - a fate that is becoming all too familiar."

[windysan]

Always talk to a real doctor who has knowledge of this class of drugs before doing anything. Best get a second opinion too. Actually read the pamphlet that comes with the pills. Good luck with it. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Get the advice of a doctor.

[Ten Chips Down]

Originally Posted by windysan

Always talk to a real doctor who has knowledge of this class of drugs before doing anything. Best get a second opinion too. Actually read the pamphlet that comes with the pills. Good luck with it. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Get the advice of a doctor.

Yup I would like to do a gentle weigh-in on that. Eric your posts are laden with what for the average forum-goer can seem labyrinthine, sinuous, ultimately confusing novella-length cut & pastes. Cut & pastes, cut & pastes, cut & pastes. This is not a personal dig at you; please believe me. I really have nothing invested in whether you "like" me or not (you've made those sentiments clear enough ) but I just cringe when I see your insistent DIY cut-and-paste tapering and other advice on every benzo topic that comes up.

Ten

[windysan]

Originally Posted by Ten Chips Down

Yup I would like to do a gentle weigh-in on that. Eric your posts are laden with what for the average forum-goer can seem labyrinthine, sinuous, ultimately confusing novella-length cut & pastes. Cut & pastes, cut & pastes, cut & pastes. This is not a personal dig at you; please believe me. I really have nothing invested in whether you "like" me or not (you've made those sentiments clear enough ) but I just cringe when I see your insistent DIY cut-and-paste tapering and other advice on every benzo topic that comes up.

Ten

Done With It went off on one of the benzoukphobes once for cut/pasting entire books here. I love that girl.