Is this what Clonazepam/Klonopin is meant to feel like?

Hi everyone,
I’m after some advice from those who’ve experience with this. I’ve been experimenting with Clonazepam, since I have a flight coming up, and I haven’t flown for a number of years, and I’m a nervous flier anyway, and I have never flown with MAV!

So, I started with .125mg, and felt nothing. Then, the next weekend I tried .25mg and still felt nothing, really. And last weekedn I tried .375mg and seemed to feel nothing for a couple of hours, and then felt really tired, like I just wanted to crash-out and almost sleep. The constant dizziness/disequilibrium I suffer from might have been subdued I guess, but the overwhelming feeling was really just one of tiredness! Is this what it feels like for anyone else?

I was thinking of trying .5mg this weekend (the flight is next week), but I’m not sure really - I guess I expected to feel somehow calmer, without the extreme tiredness…? [BTW, I’m also on 80mg Topamax and 2000mg Gabapentin]

Thanks for any experiences or advice you can share,
tony.

Sorry to bump this, but just wondered - flight on Friday - anyone out there have any experiences to share? Did Clonazepam feel like this for you - see post above (make you feel sleepy, etc)?
Thanks for any shared experiences!
Tony.

Hi
I take klon daily at the .125 dose… I feel nothing from ur but my dizziness is helped. It’s just part if my cocktail, and I do notice I feel worse if I don’t take it. It’s subtle. If I took more I would feel tired. I will also point out that all benzos hit GABA and so does gabapentin. So you might just be getting more GABA to really notice a difference.
It is not unusual for doctors to prescribe .5 mg tabs 3x daily for anxiety issues. So there’s a big window of dosing.
I fly all the time with no fall out. The only fall out is from time changes that are significant, but I try to keep on schedule despite my location.
Kelley

I took Klonopin for a short time about 8 years ago to treat a tinnitus issue long before I had any MAV issues so I don’t know what it does to dizziness. All it ever did to me was make me extremely tired and made me sleep like a log. It was very hard to wake me up–I slept through a lot of alarms if I didn’t give myself enough sleep time.

The Klonopin never helped me much. The tinnitus issue was mostly resolved (after about 6 years of fighting it) through fixing some massive sinus/tonsil infection/congestion issues that I had. The Klonopin did allow me to sleep though, which the tinnitus had been preventing, so I guess that was good!

Hi.

I have .5mg tablets. I break them in half and a full half will put me to sleep for about 5 hours. If I take a half and break off 1/3 of it and take the 2/3 piece of the half (hope that made sense) it will reduce the bobble-head feeling/disequilibrium, reduce or get rid of excessive tinnitus and make me just feel like “I’m okay” - not drugged or stoned, just level. It is possible for me to have a bad panic attack on the 2/3 piece but I generally don’t get that and the underlying anxiety that I always feel is gone. I don’t take this on a regular basis though because I just don’t feel sharp enough to drive more than local errands - I wouldn’t get on a highway for example.

It is very helpful when I fly. I hate flying - well, I hate flying for hours and then landing - I used to parachute jump so I would rather jump out. :slight_smile: It does help keep the MAV symptoms either at bay or low level when I fly or go to a big movie theatre.

If I can’t sleep due to nightmares or palpitations I will take one half of the tablet to help with sleep. I’ve tried the entire .5mg tablet and always sleep about 10 hours - which I don’t like.

It took me a while to figure out how much would take care of what but it’s a valuable tool for MAV for me.

Molly

Hi all,
thanks so much for the replies - it’s really appreciated :slight_smile:

Kelley - good to hear from you - haven’t ‘spoken’ in a long time! Thanks you for the GABA info - that’s really useful, and makes complete sense. If I’m on (as I am now) 2200mg of Gabapentin, then I see your point! It’s also good to know that you can fly all the time without any issues - thank you for that!

Jamie - that’s interesting (re. the tiredness, but no other effect). I seem to be getting that at .375mg, but yet feel nothing in particular, effect-wise, at .125 or .25mg. I don’t mind feeling zonked-out for the flight (as I’m a nervous flier that’d be fine!) but there’s also my wife and two children to consider!! :wink:

Molly - that’s also interesting, that .25mg will put you to sleep for about 5 hours. I’d love to time it so that I sleep for the duration of the flight! :wink: Amazing that you used to parachute jump! Thanks for letting me know about the 10 hours sleep on .5mg - I know we’re all different, but it’s useful to hear what other people have found. I also found that, with the tiredness at .375mg, it also took at least a couple of hours for the effect to kick-in; like there was quite a delay…

Thanks again for all your replies :slight_smile:
Tony.

The dr told me that 0.5 mg valium is better for flying than clonazepam because it is shorter acting. Clonazepam has the longer half life and is for day to day, if you want that, and the dosage should be a lot less. That dosage is just for vertigo, not anxiety.