Help with a titration plan - too quick?

[[IC...]]

I have a current titration plan that drops Valium down in 0.5mg amounts every week or 2 depending on how I feel. So may take up to 6months if I do 0.5mg and stay at that for 2 weeks before dropping down. But I seem to be sensitive to changes and only recently being on 5.5mg began to experience withdrawal symptoms and my psychiatrist put me back up to 6mg for a week again before dropping down again. My plan is going out the window. I don't want to go down in extremely small amounts, but wondering if 0.5mg is too much to jump down. I have not been a long term user, only 8weeks in hospital it took to take hold. Perhaps complicated by an initial drop down of 50% every 3 days in hospital and I became really sick in withdrawal and ended up back on the original dose of 10mg with my psychiatrist. So now on 6mg hold. I know my doc is really happy for me to take the lead and go down according to how I feel. I am wondering if this 0.5mg per 2 weeks is too much or should I just handle the withdrawal symptoms as a I drop down and hold until things get better. I need your ideas please.

[[...]]

Well, you seem to have strong symptoms so I'd say your dependency is strong despite the short usage.  It might be that the .5mg bites you are taking are too big for you.  It may go a lot smoother if you take small bites.  The extreme of this idea is to take a tiny bite every day and if were me that is what I would do.  This does not mean slower as you will taper according to how you feel either way, but it will be more tolerable.

[[Di...]]

Sorry, I just need to completely understand the method you are using. When you say you have a "titration" plan, are you using a liquid to reduce your dose? A titration reduction means that someone is using a liquid to reduce their dose and usually they do that by making very small daily cuts. If you are doing one-off tablets cuts of 0.5mg that is called a "cut and hold" taper. 

 

This just my opinion, but I think that if you are on 6mg, and you are cutting 0.5mg every week, that is too fast. Every 2 weeks might be better, but you really need to gauge how fast you can taper by how your body reacts. If you go faster than your body will allow you will end up paying the price for it. Getting off a benzo fast is not always the best course of action.

 

Also, the lower your dose gets the smaller you often need to make your cuts. Some people can continue to make the same sized cuts as their dose gets lower, but a lot of people (myself included) have to make their cuts smaller and smaller as their dose gets lower and lower. I know that probably isn't what you would prefer to hear, but sadly it's the way it has to be sometimes.

 

I understand that you haven't been on valium for long, but even 8 weeks is at least double the time that is recommended we should be on a benzo. Don't feel bad about that. The reason the majority of us are here is because we were allowed to take benzos much longer than the recommended maximum of 2 weeks.

 

[[IC...]]

Hi Diaz-pam, yeah I think because I'm new I'm getting confused. Need to spend some time just reading posts.  However, I have just done some experimentation and I can cut these tablets into 0.025mg with ease and reasonable accuracy. So that may be the way to go.

I have realised this may not be the right forum as this is not liquid taper, but I thank you all for the replies. Never before have I had this problem and felt so vulnerable and scared from failed attempts. I still can't believe that Valium can take hold within 8 weeks. 

[[Di...]]

No problem. It can take a while to wrap your head around all the jargon that gets used here. After all, this is a completely unknown territory for most of us when we first arrive here. It certainly took me a while before I began to feel like my brain wasn't going to explode…lol…

 

What sized tablets are you using? With 2mg tablets usually the smallest you can cut them is 0.5mg. With 5mg tablets it’s 1.25mg and with 10mg tablets it's 2.5mg. Basically the smallest you should cut your tablets is in quarters, because after that the cut is just too unreliable. Even quartering isn't ideal, but I certainly wouldn't go any smaller than that.

 

If you do want to go smaller, and you don't want to use a liquid method, you could get yourself a set of jewellers or milligram scales which you can buy on amazon or ebay (I think the Gemini brand is the one I hear people using the most). That way you can make those dry cuts a lot more accurately.

 

[[IC...]]

I do have 2mg tablets but successfully cut the 0.5mg quarter in half again to make 0.025mg, no mess perfect cut. Just wondering since this is all really experimentation, how long to stay on at 0.025mg cut? Will it depend on how I feel? 1 or 2 weeks? Any recommendations?

[[Di...]]

I would suggest at least a week and then see where you are, and maybe hold for another week if everything seems okay. For some people it can take up to a week before they feel the effect, and the effect can be non-linear, meaning that the effects can go up and down a lot over a period of time.