"Normal" or sign that I am tapering too fast?

[[sp...]]

Hello!

A bit foggy this morning, but I am sure you all know what I am talking about LOL! Anyway, I am at just 9 mg. and my general sleeping pattern is now at  4.5 to 5.5 hours. I hit the pillow hard at 10 PM with my valium and 3 tryptophan (to help with sleep and depressive effects), but then am awake around 3. Sometimes I manage to go back to sleep for another hour or two. Sometimes not. Is this "normal" at this stage in the tapering process? Or a sign that I am tapering too fast? Should I be sleeping more at this stage?

 

My pdoc does not seem worried. She says to take 3.5 of remeron if I need a night of sleep but don't want to be beholden to anything else. Somedays it's exhausting though.

 

PLEASE NO SCARY STORIES. OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENTS ONLY. THANK YOU!

[[1J...]]

Hi Spiritus - From my limited personal experience, I think that sounds pretty "normal". There were (and are) points in my taper where I wake up between 3am and 5am consistently (Like I don't even have to look at the clock to know what time it is when I wake up).  From what I have read, I think this could be due to cortisol levels being highest during this period of the night.

 

I think WHY you are waking up, and what state you are waking up in is important too. Are you waking up with high anxiety and adenaline rushes that last a while? Or are you waking up from vivid constant dreaming/nightmares? extremely weepy/depressed? Or, are you simply just waking up?

 

If you are waking up in a terrible psychological state and can't get back to sleep because of it, perhaps the taper cuts are catching up with you, and you may need to be cautious. Valium cuts have that weird way of quietly building up on you because of the long half life, so a bit of extra patience is sometimes needed. I learned the hard way.

 

I will qualify this only by saying that I have not been on a dosage of valium higher than 6mg (when I first crossed over from klonopin). And I also have never taken the other medicines (tryptophan/remeron).

 

It all sounds pretty "normal" to me, but you definitely want to remain functional. Maybe a more experienced buddy will be able to shed a bit more light on this for you.

 

God bless you and keep you.

[[sp...]]

I am just waking up, wide awake. I have almost never dreamt since taking benzos (short time relatively), and only seem to do so once and if I fall back to sleep. Thank you for your reply and care and blessing. It means a great deal.

[[al...]]

My sleep was all over the place during w/d. I think the fact that you are getting a few good, uninterrupted hours of sleep is fantastic! Honestly, my sleep patterns have been so varied and without rhyme or reason. There were months where I woke a 6 am every single day...no matter what. There were times when I could not fall asleep until 6 am. There were times when I woke up and went back to sleep every hour for months. Then there was the time when I woke up with severe bowel cramps/anxiety and racing heart every morning and had to go and walk for a half an hour just to calm down. That went on for months. The rest of the time, which was most of the time....I sleep well.  Then I jumped and I had a super hard time falling asleep before 4 int he morning a lot......... And I always get my best sleep between 6-9am. If I miss that 6-9am I am a basket case all day.............and with school starting at 9am...I miss it a lot! lol.

 

I am telling you all this so that you don;t feel bad or worried.......it changed all the time for me and nothing seemed to set it off, it's just healing and w/d...it's par for the course. Just keep at it and enjoy the sleep..........It gets better I swear.......I am now sleeping 6 hours in a row and then going back to sleep for another 3. It's fabulous!

 

Bama.xo

[[sp...]]

Great, thank you Bama. That is reassuring! God bless.

[[sp...]]

Bama--

Are you IN school or a teacher? If the latter, did you maintain your job the whole time?

 

[[al...]]

I did have a part time job for most of my taper. But it was really hard to maintain so I dropped down to volunteering for awhile instead. Then during the last year of my taper (I tapered for 2.5 years due to having 3 drugs to taper from) I went back to college as a mature student. Best thing I could have done to myself to exercise my brain like that. It helped build a lot of confidence that I wasn;t broken. It also kept me distracted and busy.

[[Fr...]]

Hi, Spirit. First, let me congratulate you for being upfront about what you don't want to hear. It's important we do that, since a portion of w/d symptoms are psycho-somatic, which is real enough, but let's face it, we're open to suggestion and added worry won't help our progress. 

 

I am finally falling asleep on my own (unless the .125mg X is helping with that), but I sleep 5 - 6 hours, which I'm calling a win for now.

 

It looks to me like you cut your dose way down on the last taper, and in that case, I think you're doing well. Try to hold to assure yourself less protracted w/d. Slow taper is what Ashton recommends and partly why we're here ... to keep patient vigil together. 

 

 

[[sp...]]

Thank you, Needs Relief.

I am so perplaxed. Why is it that you will be able to taper and "jump" off in just under two months and I am on a slow boat to China after only having been on for seven months? Is it because I crossed over to Valium and now have to play it by 5% of that each time? You seem to have cut by 50% while I only cut by 5%. This whole process has me so damned confused.

[[al...]]

Thank you, Needs Relief.

I am so perplaxed. Why is it that you will be able to taper and "jump" off in just under two months and I am on a slow boat to China after only having been on for seven months? Is it because I crossed over to Valium and now have to play it by 5% of that each time? You seem to have cut by 50% while I only cut by 5%. This whole process has me so damned confused.

 

It is really important not to compare yourself to anyone on here. I have been on this site for years and I can assure you that there is no rhyme or reason to tapering and w/d. In fact a great percentage of people have no symptoms at all and never have to find their way here to BB. I was one of the ones that had a paticularily difficult w/d. I had to go very very slow. I wanted to go on a set schedule cutting every 7-10 days maximum,  and cut at a set time with a set percentage and just stick to it. However my body had other plans for me.

 

I had to updose and/or hold so many times I can't count. I even jumped and had to go back on! It was incredibly frustrating. If I had compared myself to others I would have put added stress onto an already super stressed out body. Which is not what we need to do to ourselves.

 

Sometimes I cut by 5% sometimes I was able to do 25% cuts..........It really all depended. But there is one consistent: If I listened to my body and did a symptom based w/d I did a lot better. As a consequence I was able to go from a housebound w/d to a relatively functional life w/d. I am not saying it wasn't difficult and I was certainly plagued with symptoms but at least I was out and about and participating in life and not housebound. I am not saying everyone can do that...........so don;t compare yourself to me either....just do what your body wants you to do. Take the analysis thinking brain out of the equation and listen to your body and your instinct. This is what my benzo w/d doctor specialist advised me to do....especially because I was one of the hypersensitive ones.

 

I can tell you now, I am 70% less hypersentsitive that I was during w/d. I am almost 3 months post w/d. It does get better. I promise. Bama.xoxo

[[sp...]]

Well, that's what's so frustrating. I was feeling awesome this whole past week and then last night fitful sleep and today, sad and out of it. It's so hard to listen to my body when it does something so unexpected in such a short time...LOL. But thanks, Bama. I know I would have gone crazy had I stayed trying to taper K, as I was already in bad tolerance w/d and didn't sleep for over a month. I will soldier on. But I may hold for a bit. The guy who wrote the benzo book, however, said that if you hold a dose for three weeks or longer, tolernace sets in. Is this true?

'

[[Fr...]]

Spirit, I don't know that I'll be able to jump on my goal. I already moved that once. I'm still at .125mg. And I did probably cut too fast and am having catch-up. I have yet to have a "great week." I had a good Sunday. I have good evenings sometimes. I'm feeling ok, though, and that's what I'm basing it on. When holding, are we supposed to feel practically symptomless before cutting? If so, I'm not close. But I think/hope I will be ready. I don't want to fail, so my goal date is not in ink.

[[al...]]

Goodness no! It is not true. If it was then I would have hit tolerance a million times! Honestly you need to be careful at listening to people who make statements like that. This website, despite the BB teams efforts, is full of people making statements like that. I am not sure what benzo book you read but even the Ashton manual is but a guideline to w/d. It is up to you to use it as a starting point and then tailor it to your needs.

 

Yes it is beyond frustrating to listen to your body when you have so many windows and waves/symptoms without rhyme or reason.  I usually held when those waves became particularly difficult to deal with. When I became housebound for days on end, depressed and unable to cope or simply rundown and feeling discouraged , I held. I once held for 4 months just to get the courage to keep going. I felt so mentally and physically and spiritually broken. I felt rejuvenated and my body healed so much during the hold that the subsequent cuts after that were ridiculously easy. Before that particular 4 month hold I was making micro ridiculously mini cuts and still falling a part. That was why I felt so discouraged. My body had had enough and was telling me so, so I listened and held. And am so glad for every hold I did. And I did a lot of them. I also updosed at least a half a dozen times. All with my doctors encouragement.......He kept saying I had to do what I had to do in order to get off the drugs.....if it meant holds or updoses so be it. Eye on the prize.

 

It is possible to listen to your body in w/d it just takes some practice to know what needing a break looks and feels like. You will get there..........keep up the great work!   

[[va...]]

I have sleep problems all the time.  Sometimes I can't sleep at all, sometimes I keep waking up, and once in awhile I actually sleep for 1 1/2 - 2 days straight.  It's all part of getting off these stupid drugs and healing.  I've always had problems with insomnia though.

 

Don't let it freak you out.  Just ride it through.

 

Namaste.

 

~K   

[[sp...]]

Thank you all. I still don't know my signs well enough yet I guess and because insomnia was what got me into this mess, I am always worried when my sleep is wacky.

[[al...]]

This is a three part article that helped turn me, this lifelong insomniac, into a fabulous sleeper.  http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=78924.0  Hope it helps. Bama.xo