Benzo's and "tolerance withdrawal"

[Rafterman]

Although I take benzos daily, I do hope to eventually discontinue them when my health is better. There is some interesting research showing that the herb kava kava stimulates the growth of new GABA-A receptors, which would decrease tolerance and improve tapering attempts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7701051

Hi Invisible J.
I had excellent results with Kava Kava back in the mid-90. I was ordering it directly from Hawaii and it was supposed to be the best stuff available. I was doing psychotherapy at a woman's shelter back in those days and we were always looking for sleep aid's for the women. (And I was always looking for one for myself). Turns out that after about a month I had a few problems with my eyes. Some photophobia, and tearing and overall hypersensitivity. Also, they would appear bloodshot. Could be just a coincidence, but I had read that some people do have eye trouble when on it. Just thought that I would mention it. Regards.

Interesting... thanks for sharing your experience.

My pleasure, I J. To be fair, I should also report that I was in a small minority when it came to the eye problems. Of the perhaps 60 or 70 client's who tried it, only 2 had a similar experience and it worked very well as a sleep aid for the vast majority of them.

---

i had joy to try kava before it was banned of the otc list,think US is still ok for it, and it was great results sleep mood increase but very short acting.

a lot of blame and damage from kava kava happened around 2000s when it became popular many producers to keep up with demand started harvesting leaves stems etc as well,where root is the only safe part of the plant and eventually it lead to quite few cases of people getting liver failure issues thus it brought wide bans on it, but nowadays when control of quality is back some countries started to let it be legal again Germany is example they did it few years back rest of eu put it under blanket ban.

its good compared to many otc alternatives but dont have very much high hopes to do more then that,wish that research will yeald some results on regenerating gaba a.

This is great and interesting information, cmdline. I vaguely remember most of what you said from the past. As I wrote to Invisible Jungle, the vast majority of the client's who sleep had great success with it, and only 2 or perhaps 60 or 70 had eye symptom's. What you say makes perfect sense as an explanation of things went off track with such a promising treatment for insomnia.