Am I wise to plan a slow taper after short term use in my circumstances?

[[Mr...]]

As you can see from my signature, I ended up on clonazepam after the most hellish pregabalin withdrawal and taper ever ( I never stablised). I will have been on clonazepam .5mg for about 8 weeks when I see my doctor in the new year. The plan is to transfer to valium, and I was thinking of dropping 1mg a week until I get to . Is is wise to plan a slow taper? I still haven't recovered from pregabalin withdrawal, (facial twitch, muscle twitching, sound and light sensitivity) I also have tachycardia and POTS anyway plus other medical issues. My main concern is the risk of insomnia, at some points in my pregabalin withdrawal I only slept 7 hours in a week, for a few months on end I slept 2 hours a night. What does everyone think? My thoughts are that although they are different drugs, they both work on gaba receptors, so in a way is my clonazepam use not just an extension of pregabalin withdrawal?

[Guest [ba...]]

A couple of things come to mind...  You may want to wait a little longer before beginning your taper to give yourself a chance to recover more completely from the pregabalin withdrawal.

 

Normally, I'd suggest pushing through your withdrawal pretty quickly since you have only been taking clon for 5-6 weeks, but since you had difficulty and many similar symptoms withdrawing from pregabalin, you might be wise to take it slow.  You may not need to cross-over since clon has a fairly long half-life.  The cross-over adds roughly two months to the process and there's no guarantee that tapering from 5 mg of valium will go more smoothly for you.

 

Finally, insomnia may be an issue for you (it was for me and is for many others).  I got some sleep using doxy (Unisom), but it didn't work very well for quite some time during my withdrawal.  While poor sleep feels pretty bad, it slowly gets better (and people don't die from lack of sleep).  Relax about the whole sleep issue, and sleep will come more easily than if you fret about it.