Cognitive status When benzodiazepine users cease long-term benzodiazepine therapy, their cognitive function improves in the first six months, although deficits may be permanent or take longer than six months to return to baseline.
It sends chemical messages between your brain's neurons. Benzos cause your brain to release dopamine. However, when taken over the long term, the primary effects of benzodiazepines include changes to how your brain releases dopamine.
Following the ingestion of a benzodiazepine, short-term memory is not affected, but long-term memory is impaired. The memory loss may occur because events are not transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory and thus not consolidated into memory storage.
Results: Of the long-term benzodiazepine users, 20.7% could be classified as cognitively impaired across all domains, with the largest effects found in the domains processing speed and sustained attention, and an overall worse performance in women, an effect which appears to be moderated by state anxiety.
When people take benzos for longer than a few months, or when they take high doses of benzos, the brain comes to depend on these drugs. When they are removed, people may experience anxiety, panic, hallucinations, and/or seizures. The safest way to deal with a benzo addiction is to enroll in a medical detox program.
The study concluded that, when cerebral disorder is diagnosed in people who use high doses of sedative hypnotic benzodiazepines, it is often permanent. A CT study in 1993 investigated brain damage in benzodiazepine users and found no overall differences to a healthy control group.
If you experience withdrawal problems from benzodiazepines, you may have some of the following symptoms: abdominal cramps. agoraphobia (fear of situations which feel difficult to escape) anxiety, including physical symptoms such as muscle tension, tight chest, fast heartbeat, sweating, trembling or shaking.
As mentioned before, benzodiazepines are not meant to be used for long periods of time. By using benzodiazepines for an extended time, there is an increased risk of the development of certain health conditions. The amount of time considered “long-term” in regard to benzodiazepine abuse is around three to six months.
Benzodiazepines are widely administered drugs to treat anxiety and insomnia. In addition to tolerance development and abuse liability, their chronic use may cause cognitive impairment and increase the risk for dementia.
feeling dulled and slow. feeling isolated and unreal. feeling cut off from your emotions. feeling irritable and impatient.
This meta-analysis that pooled ten studies has shown that BDZ significantly increases the risk of dementia in the elderly population. The risk is higher in patients taking BDZ with a longer half-life (>20 hours) and for a longer duration (>3 years).
These side effects occur because clonazepam is changing how your brain works and processes information. While many changes in cognition end after clonazepam use ends, damaged or lost memories cannot be regained.
Anterograde amnesia appears a common effect of all benzodiazepines although its onset and duration vary with the particular benzodiazepine, its dose and route of administration. Memory impairments increase with task difficulty.
While the mainstay treatment of acute benzodiazepine toxicity or overdose is supportive care, there is, however, an “antidote” that may be used in limited situations. Flumazenil is a nonspecific competitive antagonist at the benzodiazepine receptor that can reverse benzodiazepine-induced sedation.
You should only be prescribed benzodiazepines for the shortest amount of time possible. Taking benzodiazepines regularly for a few weeks or more can lead to addiction. Doctors recommend that you only take them for 2-4 weeks. Intermittent use may help to avoid addiction.
Although central serotonin neurons are thus implicated in the therapeutic actions of benzodiazepine tranquilizers, it is quite possible that the drugs actually act indirectly to reduce serotonin activity.
Benzodiazepines (BZs) and other GABAmimetic drugs depress gene expression in the brain, including the neuroplasticity-related genes such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), nerve growth factor (NGF), and Fos-genes (Zafra et al., 1991; Huopaniemi et al., 2004).
The neural basis for the addictive nature of benzodiazepines however remains elusive. Here we show that benzodiazepines increase firing of dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area through the positive modulation of GABAA receptors in nearby interneurons.
How Do Benzodiazepines Impact the Brain? Long-term benzo usage can cause what is known as 'uncoupling' of the GABA-A receptor. Uncoupling results in a decrease in the ability of BZs to potentiate the action of GABA on GABA-A receptors and in a decrease in the ability of GABA to potentiate BZ binding.
Oxazepam, temazepam, and chlordiazepoxide which are low potency benzodiazepines are well tolerated with low toxicity levels.
For its high-potency and long-lasting effects, the most potent benzodiazepine is Clonazepam, also known as Klonopin. Other high-potency but short-acting benzos are alprazolam (Xanax), lorazepam (Ativan), and triazolam (Halcion).
You'll usually take diazepam for no longer than 2 to 4 weeks. If you're prescribed diazepam for more than 4 weeks, your dose may be reduced gradually when you stop taking it to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
Most benzodiazepine (benzo) withdrawal symptoms start within 24 hours and can last from a few days to several months, depending on the length of the abuse and the strength of the benzo used.
Symptoms from abrupt withdrawal of long-acting benzodiazepines can commence within a week. Abrupt withdrawal symptoms can last from weeks to months.
The symptoms include depression, anxiety, psychosis, paranoia, severe insomnia, paresthesia, tinnitus, hypersensitivity to light and sound, tremors, status epilepticus, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempt.