Tapering off Prazepam and stopping Zopiclone

[[Al...]]

Hello again buddies,

 

I haven't been able to post for a while since i have been quite sick lately.

 

Since my introduction post I have been able to stabilize my benzo intake down to about 6mg Prazepam and 3.75 Zopiclone nightly. I am not sleeping great though (5-6 hours of poor sleep). I am also experiencing some anxiety during the day, some constipation and gut pain during the day.

 

My doc doesn't want to prescribe me zopiclone anymore - I am running out of it in 4 days. He just wats me to contiue with prazepam so I will have to up the prazepam dosage to cover it.

 

I have prepared a cut and hold tapering plan that starts like this :

 

Week 1 : Prazepam 10mg nightly

Week 2 : Prazepam 9mg nightly

Week 3 : Prazepam 8mg nightly

...

and so on, adjusting duration of the steps if needed.

 

What do you thing about it ?

 

Thank you very much for you support.

 

(Unfortunately I live in France where doctors are in almost complete denial of benzodiazepine withdrawal and are totaly reluctant to help you with the withdrawal - they can just prescribe more. So I will have to do it on my own mostly...)

 

(Please forgive me if my english is bad it is not my native laguage  )

[[...]]

I am not familiar with prazepam, but I looked it up and it has a profile a lot like Valium so using it to replace the zopiclone seems like a good idea.

 

http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/bzcha01.htm#4

 

It's metabolite's half life is listed as 36-200 just like V and it's potency is given as a range from equal to half as potent as V.  It really looks like a good drug to taper, although like I said I know nothing else about it.

 

Given this, to me 1mg steps seem too big and reducing 1mg per week seems too fast.  I'd be thinking more like 1mg per month or less, at least to start to see how I handled it, and reducing by very small amounts, preferably daily.  I'd also liquify the prazepam to make tapering and dosing easy.

[[Al...]]

Thank you SG57,

 

I have stabilized down on 5mg Prazepam. Ditched the zopiclone (was runnig out of it anyway) and even sleeping better on it. Maybe my tolerance is even lower. Who knows.

 

I will take your advice and taper more slowly, I will slow my taper schedule and try reducing by .5 mg every 10 days and also try starting daily liquid tapering (I need to get some supplied for that).

 

Prazepam already exists in France in liquid form, each drop equals .5 mg. But my asshole pdoc doesn't want to prescibe it to me !  I really need to find another one !

 

 

[[...]]

If all else fails, a way to liquify any benzo is to use Ora Plus suspension liquid, so you always have that as an option.

 

Another route is to have a compounding pharmacy make the liquid for you, but I am not sure if they would require the script to read that way or if they just go by the amount of the drug the pdoc prescribes and would allow you to specify liquid or pill.  Perhaps a call to the pharmacy would answer this?

 

I think it is great that you will be doing a daily taper.  Since prazepam seems to be on a par with Valium as far s potency you can probably follow along with the V taperers to get an idea of daily cut.  For V a reasonable starting point is .015-.02mg per day at your 5mg dose.

[[Al...]]

Thanks again SG, I will have to order some supplies off the internet before being able to do a serious daily titration.

 

Here at the pharmacies they only sell plastic seringes up to 10ml. I tried a water titration with that, but it's not very usefull.

 

I will hold on 5mg (hopefully not too long) until I have the supplies to do a liquid taper or find a more cooperative doc willing to prescribe me liquid prazepam.

 

It's really frustrating to be facing so much ignorance about benzo withdrawal. Ironically France has the highest rate of benzo consumers in the world ! Yet doctors are completely unaware of the issues on that. Very troublesome.

[[om...]]

Thanks again SG, I will have to order some supplies off the internet before being able to do a serious daily titration.

 

Here at the pharmacies they only sell plastic seringes up to 10ml. I tried a water titration with that, but it's not very usefull.

 

I will hold on 5mg (hopefully not too long) until I have the supplies to do a liquid taper or find a more cooperative doc willing to prescribe me liquid prazepam.

 

It's really frustrating to be facing so much ignorance about benzo withdrawal. Ironically France has the highest rate of benzo consumers in the world ! Yet doctors are completely unaware of the issues on that. Very troublesome.

 

Is it true that (liquid) prazepam has a very slow onset, that it can take 6 hours before you feel anything? With most benzos you feel effect within an hour. My doc wants to switch me from Tranxène 15mg to (liquid) prazepam for tapering, so I want to know how prazepam will feel in the body.