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How does music help withdrawal syndrome?


LaurnaT

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The [at] means @  Does that help, Terry?

Get back to me again if you have a problem and I'll give you a different email address.

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Just an fyi, Glo is also dyslexic.....this could be very, very interesting.

 

Wow. Double Wow. Make sure that father takes notes!

 

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10 minutes ago, LaurnaT said:

The [at] means @  Does that help, Terry?

I tried that, and at first it didn't transmit.  I tried again just now and it worked.  Thanks!

2007 - 2008          Paxil and Klonopin

2008 - 2012           Mirtazapine following CT from Klonopin and Paxil.  

2012                       Unsuccessful taper of mirtazapine; reinstated.     

7/2013 - 1/2014   Successfully tapered mirtazapine from 7.5 mg to 0.00.

 

Sertraline (Zoloft) Taper  Aug 4, 2017 - July 18, 2021 - Current dose 0.00

Alprazolam (Xanax)  July 19, 2017 - Nov 15, 2021 0.25 mg.

Began 10% taper  Nov 16, 2021 - 0.25  Jan 11, 2022 - 0.203;  Jan 13, 2023 - 0.0499;  Jan 21, 2024 - 0.0137;  Mar 17, 2024 - 0.0099;  Taper is 96% complete.

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Yes, I think both came through! You are welcome. Let me know if I can help in any way.

Best regards,

Laurna

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Hey Laurna, here's a thing.

 

I study rhythms and entrainment, as it relates to shamanic drumming.

 

One of the things I've noted is how a lot of shamans (and folks in general) work with (and enjoy) what I consider to be harmful rhythms, driving bass, backbeat, "house music" etc.  In my experience, they stir emotions which feels blissful, but it is not healthful.  I got invited to a beautiful cacao ceremony / dance / meditation, but the first 90 minutes would be "house music," and I just couldn't subject my nervous system to that.

 

There are two components to this:  the rhythm itself (usually 4/4 with backbeat - yeah, just gimme that old time rock'n'roll!), and then the bass component.

 

I'll just share a little of my experience:  the backbeat is a contra heart rhythm.  The waltz (3/4) uplifts and soothes the heart.  Some rhythms support the heart, while others drain it.  It may be blissful to "rave all night" to house music, but the energy is drained, not sustained, supported, or enhanced.  It's similar to the way that drinking alcohol feels good while you do it - but there is a price to pay.   Since I developed a post-withdrawal cardiac condition, I am more sensitive than ever.  When I go to the gym, if they are playing the radio (electronica, usually, meant to "pump you up" for a workout), it can actually trigger, induce arrhythmia in my heart.

 

You prefer to work with higher frequencies, and I also wonder about the harmfulness of subwoofers so loud it shakes MY car windows when sitting next to a car with them, or my house windows when the next-door neighbor turns it up.  

Not that "all bass is bad," some of my favourite people are bassists (like my husband) - but it's how it is used - in the composition, as well as in the equipment.  The melody, the rhythm, the volume, and the mix (the mix:  is the bass balanced in the mix or does it dominate?)

Would you care to comment?  The rhythm?  The bass?  Are there harmful components here according to your studies?  

"Easy, easy - just go easy and you'll finish." - Hawaiian Kapuna

 

Holding is hard work, holding is a blessing. Give your brain time to heal before you try again.

 

My suggestions are not medical advice, you are in charge of your own medical choices.

 

A lifetime of being prescribed antidepressants that caused problems (30 years in total). At age 35 flipped to "bipolar," but was not diagnosed for 5 years. Started my journey in Midwest United States. Crossed the Pacific for love and hope; currently living in Australia.   CT Seroquel 25 mg some time in 2013.   Tapered Reboxetine 4 mg Oct 2013 to Sept 2014 = GONE (3 years on Reboxetine).     Tapered Lithium 900 to 475 MG (alternating with the SNRI) Jan 2014 - Nov 2014, tapered Lithium 475 mg Jan 2015 -  Feb 2016 = GONE (10 years  on Lithium).  Many mistakes in dry cutting dosages were made.


The tedious thread (my intro):  JanCarol ☼ Reboxetine first, then Lithium

The happy thread (my success story):  JanCarol - Undiagnosed  Off all bipolar drugs

My own blog:  https://shamanexplorations.com/shamans-blog/

 

 

I have been psych drug FREE since 1 Feb 2016!

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Hi, JanCarol,

How amazing to meet someone with a headstart on the understanding of bass sounds on health!

 

The processing of high-frequency sound and of low-frequency sound into the body is substantially different.  The tiny bones of hearing (ossicles) are specialized to the transmission of high-frequency sound. The muscle of the eardrum responds to low-frequency sound by moving the hammer away from the eardrum to protect the ossicles. The bony surrounding of the middle ear transmits low-frequency sound "directly" to the inner ear. Bone is not negatively affected by low-frequency sound. Our skeletons can handle the roar of a train, the racket of jet engines. However, our ears cannot. To the extent that very loud, low-frequency sound can override that safety mechanism, it can harm the cochlea, which is the "frequency analyzer" essential to understanding the sounds in language. It can damage the vestibular canals, leaving the listener dizzy.

 

Low-frequency sound that overwhelms the middle ear mechanism, which includes the stapedius muscle, prevents the normal function of that mechanism, which is to maintain the dominance of the left, rational brain in the integrative processes of the two halves of the brain. In other words, the mechanism of normal learning is replaced by a damaging assault that forces a reduction in left-brain dominance, which is the route to learning problems and all the mental illnesses that are based in right-ear dysfunction. Frequent assaults of low-frequency sound will negate previous learning -- those pathways created by high-frequency sounds can be obliterated.

 

Of course, most people will experience damaging sound with both ears, so the left ear's normal transmission of sound energy to the right-brain also will be overwhelmed in its normal fluid associations of sensory data and experiences. The nuanced perceptions of logic on the brain's left side and of emotions on the brain's right side will be blunted.

 

The stapedius muscle in the middle ear (both ears, but the right ear normally dominates and co-ordinates both ears) carries a fiber of the vagus nerve network. This gives the right stapedius muscle cybernetic control of the influence of sound frequencies on the entire vagus network: from the production of hormones by glands in the brain to heart rate, respiration,  thyroid production, digestion and organs secreting enzymes into that process throughout the gut. The vagus branches involved in the vocal emission produced by the larynx are longer on the left side of the body than on the right, which makes the right-ear route of sound the more efficient for rational communication, therefore, for the dominance of the left-brain's language production. Thus, loud, low-frequency sound affects the entire vagus network, including how the voice will sound and how rational it can be. I have seen very clear demonstrations of these neurological facts in my son Daniel's involvement in punk rock music, which tends to push his normal brain function towards the bipolar range and simply wrecks his voice to a hoarse growl. I see that as a form of self-harm attached to that bipolar level of cerebral integration. Like other forms of self-harm, people can become addicted to those states of consciousness that allow them to "escape" their awareness of unhappy circumstances.

 

Everything you say about heart rhythms meshes perfectly with Alfred Tomatis's teaching about the ear's neurology. My personal observations of people carrying diagnoses of mental illness corroborate those findings.  When someone's ears are assaulted by a drug (and in my observations, most psychiatric drugs harm not only the brain but the ears) most body systems are negatively affected. Thus, mental illnesses are not just disturbances of cognition, they are syndromes that affect the whole body.

 

You seem to know more than I do about rhythms! And I would love to learn more from you. I don't usually consider the beats unless we are talking about the effects of and dangers of drumming. I think shamanistic drumming is too big a topic to get into here, so you could PM me.  I am concerned about binaural listening that produces binaural beats, which is another topic too long to add to this post! 

 

I hope this helps. If not, keep asking and I will keep digging for answers!

Best regards,

LaurnaT

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On 9/28/2018 at 12:07 AM, JanCarol said:

When I go to the gym, if they are playing the radio (electronica, usually, meant to "pump you up" for a workout), it can actually trigger, induce arrhythmia in my heart.

 

I have to add - at the gym, I am listening to my own music (earbuds, I know, but they are light, and the noise-cancelling is important at the gym), and their music "breaks through" and I feel it in my body and head.  Ugh.

 

I thought of you Laurna, as I was listening to Anonymous4 - an all women medieval a capella group,.  All high frequencies.  I find it restful, even when the theme of the music is not meant to be.

 

I met 2 bassists today - in their 60's - with hearing aids.

When I got my own hearing aids (my right ear was accidentally damaged when I was 8 years old, I can still hear through it, but I wear 2 hearing aids and do a lot of lip reading) - I credit the hearing aids with a lot of my "awakening."  I could hear music, hear the high frequencies that I'd been missing for 20, 30, 40 years.  And - in concordance with what you are saying, I felt like I "trained" my ear to hear those frequencies even when I wasn't wearing my hearing aids. 

 

It's like the hearing aids "taught" my ears to hear better, because my brain was listening for it.  I am 56.  Getting music back into my life (again, the hearing aids are one part of the story - I also managed to get devices to PLAY the music - a new car with great speakers, a portable device, sleep headphones, etc. - I spent my first 10 years or more here in Australia with no music at all because I had nothing to play music on.  It's complicated!)

It's also interesting to me that - in spite of the right ear damage - my dissociative states were never overwhelming.  I was always able to witness them, and speak lucidly about them, and so was never learning impaired or dyslexic.  I have had short attention span - but there are other factors (like recreational drug use when in my 20's) that also contribute to this.  In some ways I credit yoga and meditation with my ability to surf through dissociation without discombobulating - but I struggled with mood control.

 

So - left handed, and a dominant left ear since age 8 - and yet, I was mostly depressed.  This counters what you are telling me about mood / dissociation and left and right.

Or - maybe my deafness in my right ear protected my stapedius from the harmful loud music that I pounded myself with age 15-33? 

This is a little confusing for me.

OK - (briefly) back to rhythm and binaural beats - I have found a lot of "binaural beats" music to be unpleasant, if not disturbing.  I first learned about "harmful" contra heart rhythms when I was with the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  They used it as an argument against "rock 'n' roll."   I didn't believe it at all in 1978 - and I really wanted to listen to Queen, Led Zeppelin, Rush, etc.  It wasn't until I went  deeply into yoga in the 90's that I began to perceive the upward and downward flows of energy. (in yoga, upward is often considered more desirable) I still listen to rock music - but I'm more aware of it, and prefer the music which is more intricate, less repetitive, less dance-based.  I began to learn of the rhythms of 3, 5, 7 & 9 (a lot of middle eastern and Indian rhythms use these metres).  I learned about 4/4 with the emphasis on the first and third beat (instead of the back beat).  Native American music often uses this pattern.  Then, when my own heart developed PVC's, I studied heart rhythms from the inside - what made my heart feel better?  What made it feel worse?   I don't really have many places I can talk about this - like with psych drug withdrawal, it's a realm experience that other people don't believe.

I'm told, "I've listened to loud rock (rap, pop, rave, etc.) all my life and I'm fine!"   But I wonder.  And it escalated in the 90's with the expansion of rap, hip-hop, house, and rave music (and subwoofers, OMG).  I'm all for tribal rhythms and dancing - but with my sensitivities, it becomes harder to find what I consider to be wholesome ways to express this.

I'm not in favour of any psychiatric diagnoses - I think they are all mostly bunk designed for social control and to sell drugs.  However, there are disturbances which hinder people's functioning.  It bothers me to correlate these with only a biological cause (like hearing, or like the EMDR people - eyes)  - our disruptions, challenges, disturbances are complicated.  There are traumas, environment, relationships, poor coping strategies involved, and these must be addressed in order to heal.  However, your techniques are far less harmful than a number of other possibilities.  Like EMDR for the ears.

 

You can PM me here, or find me at my website, below.  I wish I could find a way to convince my family to try your techniques on my nephew (with pretty severe autism).  Instead, Abilify is their choice for controlling his outbursts, he's 11, been on a neuroleptic of some sort since age 8 or maybe before.  But - like I said above, they don't believe me.  Not on the drugs, and not on my other experiences regarding health (like diet and gut health).  So I will watch him grow big, without growing up - and watch his mother's anxiety as she ages and wonders who will care for him.

PS - have you run any of this past Norman Doidge?  He might be interested! 

Edited by JanCarol

"Easy, easy - just go easy and you'll finish." - Hawaiian Kapuna

 

Holding is hard work, holding is a blessing. Give your brain time to heal before you try again.

 

My suggestions are not medical advice, you are in charge of your own medical choices.

 

A lifetime of being prescribed antidepressants that caused problems (30 years in total). At age 35 flipped to "bipolar," but was not diagnosed for 5 years. Started my journey in Midwest United States. Crossed the Pacific for love and hope; currently living in Australia.   CT Seroquel 25 mg some time in 2013.   Tapered Reboxetine 4 mg Oct 2013 to Sept 2014 = GONE (3 years on Reboxetine).     Tapered Lithium 900 to 475 MG (alternating with the SNRI) Jan 2014 - Nov 2014, tapered Lithium 475 mg Jan 2015 -  Feb 2016 = GONE (10 years  on Lithium).  Many mistakes in dry cutting dosages were made.


The tedious thread (my intro):  JanCarol ☼ Reboxetine first, then Lithium

The happy thread (my success story):  JanCarol - Undiagnosed  Off all bipolar drugs

My own blog:  https://shamanexplorations.com/shamans-blog/

 

 

I have been psych drug FREE since 1 Feb 2016!

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Hi, JanCarol,

You have raised many topics! So, here we go! 

1. Yes. Earbuds damage hearing. You should never use them. They place sound too close to the eardrum.

2. I love Anonymous4, although I think the group has disbanded. I tried to reach one of the members who was involved in charitable music therapy in NYC, but she must have stopped doing that because I never received a reply.

3. I have a close friend since childhood who got hearing aids in her early 40s when the kind she needed first were invented. They gave her a completely new lease on life, which I would describe also as spiritual. She became capable of doing and feeling things that had been closed to her. I think you are describing a similar effect when you got hearing aids. A beautiful description by Bella Bathurst, who was deaf for 12 years and got her hearing back through surgery, is "Cherishing the miracle inside my head," from her book A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found, which was in the Toronto Star, Sept. 30, 2018, A11.

 

Recently, my friend got new aids (she's 78 now) and was astonished at how much better she can hear with them. The technology is improving all the time, so be sure to keep in synch with those developments.  She also uses Focused Listening and finds it helpful.

4. "Sleep headphones" is a red flag to me. I know of an autistic woman who kept herself autistic by wearing headphones all night long. You should not use headphones for longer than 2 hours per day for listening to music. Preferably, high-frequency music. The tiny stapedius muscle in the middle ear, which is about 1/8" long, becomes too tired, which reverses the effect of improved tonus that you were trying to achieve. Getting more sound into your head through ambient music is the safer route to go. High-frequency sound packs the greatest energy into each second, so is the efficient way to energize your brain.

5.  If your right ear was damaged at age 8 and you never were dyslexic, your right-brain may have taken over some of the functions that usually are performed in the left-brain. How that would affect mood, which usually is under the control of the left ear, I am unclear. I would need to see your audiogram to venture an opinion.

 

If you look at my website articles on the audiogram,  you will see that there is a lot we don't understand about the information on it. Guy Berard (Hearing Equals Behavior), who collaborated with Alfred Tomatis for a while, explains his discoveries of "peaks" of hyperacusis on the audiogram that are specific diagnostic indicators of depression and of other conditions, such as asthma. I am certain that similar "peaks" -- and perhaps as importantly the valleys between them -- define the behavior patterns we call "mental illness" from dyslexia through mild depression, OCD, bipolar II, bipolar I, schizophrenia and autism. I have seen several people pass through that spectrum while healing from schizophrenia, or through parts of the spectrum when healing from a lesser condition of weak left-brain dominance. Unfortunately, I did not have the means of testing our son's audition during recovery. I ask the schizophrenics I am working with now to get "before" audiograms so we can find out what is happening to the ears before and after treatment. Berard provides examples of such data for suicidal depression in his book (referenced above).

 

However, "being dyslexic" means a lot more than having trouble reading. Like all ear problems, it's a syndrome of physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms.

 

6. Again, I would have to see your audiogram, but severe loss of sound into either hemisphere of the brain can cause depression. Both ears feed both brains, but normally the nerve feeds are disproportionately to the opposite hemisphere from each ear (in a ratio of 5:3). 

 

No, the loud sound you listened to would not be protecting your stapedius muscle! I am not sure how much of your right ear deafness is neural, cochlear, or stapedial. I don't know the extent of your right-ear deafness. Some of that information is on your audiogram. I don't know how you experienced hearing loss at age 8, which might explain some of these anomalies.

 

If you have some hearing in your right ear, Focused Listening might help your attention deficit disorder. I don't think it could reverse your handedness at this age the way it might in a child.

 

7. Your discoveries about rhythms and beats in music affecting your heart are extremely important. I don't know where to send you to report on your discoveries!!! My brief association with the International Association of Music and Medicine suggests there might be someone in IAMM interested in your findings.

 

I strongly suspect your loss of right-ear function is behind your heart arrythmias because heart rate is among the body systems timed through the stapedius muscle's connection to the vagus nerve network (see Tomatis, The Ear and the  Voice, ch. 9). Again, I don't know if you have sufficient right-ear function to correct the situation with Focused Listening.

 

8. The stapedius connection to the vagus nerve network turns most hearing problems into global physical syndromes. If you have not seen a person recover from a serious behavior problem (and I disagree with you on psychiatric labels; the only thing psychiatry seems to do fairly well is label syndromes even though they don't understand the etiologies and cannot cure them) you will find it very difficult to believe me. I get that. Until I saw my son recover from all the symptoms of dyslexic syndrome in 10 days, I was doubtful. It also helped that I was cured of 8 years of chronic fatigue syndrome in 4 days by the same Tomatis Method. However, those healings did not last and it took me 10 years to learn that music could heal schizophrenia, too. And then I did the research to find out how that happens. I also learned that 2 weeks of music stimulation is not nearly enough to recondition a badly damaged stapedius muscle.  I hit the motherlode when I discovered that the right ear normally causes the dominance of the left-brain over the right-brain in their integrative processes. I made that discovery because I focused music ONLY on Daniel's right ear, which allowed me to draw specific conclusions from the results. 

 

The similarities between serious mental illnesses, psychiatric drug damage, Alzheimer's, and stroke appear to center on the issue of inflammation in the brain. The video of a stroke victim (Linda) responding to an anti inflammatory drug injection into her central nervous system show you what a recovery of cerebral integration from Focused Listening looks like. I offer my neurological paradigm to explain what is happening to Linda in this video:

 

9. I met Norman Doidge at the IAMM conference in Toronto a few months prior to the publication of his second book The Brain's Way of Healing. He was the only presenter with any idea that high-frequency sound heals. Low-frequency sound puts people to sleep or creates right-brain states of consciousness, although he probably did not know that. He devotes Chapter 8 in that book to what he was learning from his neighbor Paul Maduale about the Tomatis Method and The Listening Centre (where my learning originated, too).  I presented him with a set of my publications. I never heard from him. However, I probably inadvertently insulted him by suggesting my discoveries dismantle the Cartesian dichotomy, the philosophical notion that the "mind" is separate from the body, which he had decided is correct. Obviously, my paradigm proves that states of consciousness (e.g., "thought" as in "I think, therefore, I am") originate in a physiological process controlled by the stapedius muscle in the ear. 

 

10. Nevertheless, your nephew's parents should read Chapter 8 in Doidge's book. A story of a Tomatis Method healing for autism is detailed there. They could also email me so I can explain to them the differences between adult schizophrenia and infantile schizophrenia (autism).  That Abilify will not improve his autism, even if they think it is making his behavior easier to tolerate.

 

I hope this helps!

Kindest regards,

Laurna

 

 

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HI Ladys ,yous have blown my mind with this discussion,laurna I have visited your site ,I will read it further soon ,very helpful and interesting .

Only the other day I was watching a Hollywood movie trailer and I could feel the excitement rushing into my system but I see it as a manipulation of my senses ,obviously there's so much more to it .never had any idea about any of this .thank you.

Alcohol free since February 2015 

1MG diazepam

4.5MG PROZAC.

 

 

 

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Hi, Powerback,

I'm glad you found my website. I designed it for teaching. The more people know about their ears, the more they will want to take care of them. JanCarol's comment about meeting two 60-year-old bass players both wearing hearing aids almost brought me to tears. Deafness is a global physical disability. Losing any one of the senses is serious and most people have no idea how serious. Psychiatric drugs harm the ears. They harm other body sites, too. But if you look at what the ears do for the brain and body, psychiatric drugs involve a double whammy.

 

And they don't cure anything. I can see the need for them in certain emergencies: a violent psychotic break, for example. But they could be used in minuscule doses, which can be tapered once the ear-healing begins. 

 

Thanks for your response. If I can be of help, let me know.

Kindest regards,

Laurna

 

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12 minutes ago, LaurnaT said:

Hi, Powerback,

I'm glad you found my website. I designed it for teaching. The more people know about their ears, the more they will want to take care of them. JanCarol's comment about meeting two 60-year-old bass players both wearing hearing aids almost brought me to tears. Deafness is a global physical disability. Losing any one of the senses is serious and most people have no idea how serious. Psychiatric drugs harm the ears. They harm other body sites, too. But if you look at what the ears do for the brain and body, psychiatric drugs involve a double whammy.

 

And they don't cure anything. I can see the need for them in certain emergencies: a violent psychotic break, for example. But they could be used in minuscule doses, which can be tapered once the ear-healing begins. 

 

Thanks for your response. If I can be of help, let me know.

Kindest regards,

Laurna

 

Thanks laurna thanks for your offer of help ,your very kind,my mother is deaf in one , its the left ear ,she given no reasons why ,she has terrible sinus issues also,she not on ADs but thyroid and benzos a long time .

I will send your site to her ,bless you ,thanks .

Alcohol free since February 2015 

1MG diazepam

4.5MG PROZAC.

 

 

 

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