Daily Micro-Tapering Support Group

[[Fi...]]

Don't worry about it, we can figure it out.  What is your liquid strength?  And what is your current dose?  Your daily dose is a .5mg pill+3.05ml liquid?

 

Liquid strength is 1mg = 1 ml.  Yes, my current daily dose is .5mg pill + 3.05ml liquid.  I am doing a c/h/h, so, this will be my daily dose for 2 more days. 

 

F.

 

Looking at your sig I'm guessing your dose is .805mg... .5mg in pill and .305mg liquid.  So this would make your strength 1ml=.1mg and 5 ticks on the 1ml syringe would be .005mg K.  And you cut this every three days so you're moving at .0017mg a day and 6.2% a month.  Very gentle.

 

That strength is kind of high and hard to work with.  Diluting it 10x to make it .01mg/ml would make things easier.  Each .05ml would become .0005mg and you'd be free to make the daily cut you want and not have to deal with the in-between tick marks.  This will use a lot of Ora Sweet, even with 50% water dilution.  Another option would be to dilute 5x to .02mg/ml to save on Ora Sweet.  This would make each .05ml=.001mg, which still accomplishes the goal, although you'd lose the simple math.

 

How to do this - To dilute 10ml worth of OS .1mg/ml pharmacy liquid to 50ml .02mg/ml add another 15ml OS and 25ml water.

 

Thanks SG - I'm going to sit with this information, and then decide what my best options are.  Simple is what I need, so I can have a better understanding of the processes, and be more in charge of my own taper plan. 

 

Yes, 6.2% a month right now is very gentle....at this rate it will be the end of July before I taper my liquid portion - which means it will have taken me 8 months to taper .5mg, and then I have another .5mg to taper.  It is a bit discouraging and I would like to speed up.  I started my taper doing a daily cut of .005, (5% every 2 weeks), and then slowed it down in Oct to cutting every 2nd day, and then every 3rd day due to some medical issues and work stressors.  My main symptoms have been poor sleep, anxiety, and fatigue, but these symptoms have improved with different strategies and supplements I'm taking, so I feel more confident in moving forward and speeding up.  And as you mentioned previously dosing twice or even three times a day may help with symptoms.

 

I may likely have to look at diluting my compounded K as I get lower in my dose; but to keep it simple right now, what is your opinion on just dividing my dose in half to dose twice a day, and taking uneven doses in the am and pm when the numbers are uneven?  For example 2.95ml divide by 2 = 1.475 - take 1.470 in am and 1.480 in evening. 

 

Thanks once again!  Finnie

 

 

 

 

 

 

[[...]]

I am doing dry cut and hold and taking away .01 a week, tapering Ativan...I still have pretty strong symptoms...I don't want to crossover to another benzo, and I am wondering if a daily taper would help....I would like to stick with dry cutting and not LT because of the adjustment to liquid...would this help do you think?  I am now at .73.  Just need some opinions on this....I will continue on the .01 cut if a daily taper won't be of much help....thanks for your opinions.....Stella

 

.01mg A a week is gradual at your dose.  I think it can help to break that cut up into smaller cuts.

[[St...]]

Thank you sir....can you explain how to do that for me?  I am not good with math at all....do you do a spread sheet or anything?  I dose four times a day.....thank you

[[St...]]

Also, do you think I could cut a little more if I break it up, so the taper would go some faster?

[[...]]

Looking at your sig I'm guessing your dose is .805mg... .5mg in pill and .305mg liquid.  So this would make your strength 1ml=.1mg and 5 ticks on the 1ml syringe would be .005mg K.  And you cut this every three days so you're moving at .0017mg a day and 6.2% a month.  Very gentle.

 

That strength is kind of high and hard to work with.  Diluting it 10x to make it .01mg/ml would make things easier.  Each .05ml would become .0005mg and you'd be free to make the daily cut you want and not have to deal with the in-between tick marks.  This will use a lot of Ora Sweet, even with 50% water dilution.  Another option would be to dilute 5x to .02mg/ml to save on Ora Sweet.  This would make each .05ml=.001mg, which still accomplishes the goal, although you'd lose the simple math.

 

How to do this - To dilute 10ml worth of OS .1mg/ml pharmacy liquid to 50ml .02mg/ml add another 15ml OS and 25ml water.

 

Thanks SG - I'm going to sit with this information, and then decide what my best options are.  Simple is what I need, so I can have a better understanding of the processes, and be more in charge of my own taper plan. 

 

Yes, 6.2% a month right now is very gentle....at this rate it will be the end of July before I taper my liquid portion - which means it will have taken me 8 months to taper .5mg, and then I have another .5mg to taper.  It is a bit discouraging and I would like to speed up.  I started my taper doing a daily cut of .005, (5% every 2 weeks), and then slowed it down in Oct to cutting every 2nd day, and then every 3rd day due to some medical issues and work stressors.  My main symptoms have been poor sleep, anxiety, and fatigue, but these symptoms have improved with different strategies and supplements I'm taking, so I feel more confident in moving forward and speeding up.  And as you mentioned previously dosing twice or even three times a day may help with symptoms.

 

I may likely have to look at diluting my compounded K as I get lower in my dose; but to keep it simple right now, what is your opinion on just dividing my dose in half to dose twice a day, and taking uneven doses in the am and pm when the numbers are uneven?  For example 2.95ml divide by 2 = 1.475 - take 1.470 in am and 1.480 in evening. 

 

Thanks once again!  Finnie

 

That will work.  Just keep alternating the cut between the doses and they will come down together and be even enough.

[[bu...]]

Hey everybody, I had done a LT when I started at 20mg of Valium and it worked fine, but now that I'm at 10mg for some reason I can't switch back to the liquid form.  I tried dissolving 2.5 of my 10mg a day without pulling anything and by day 6 I had horrible symptoms.  So now I'm going to try dry cutting and wanted to see if I could do daily micro tapering.  I have a micro gram scale and wanted to make a schedule that tapers over 6 months.  I also noticed that each pills varies a little bit in weight, so I'm wondering if I should just weigh them all and get an average then work with that weight.  Can anybody help me out please?

[[...]]

Thank you sir....can you explain how to do that for me?  I am not good with math at all....do you do a spread sheet or anything?  I dose four times a day.....thank you

 

Also, do you think I could cut a little more if I break it up, so the taper would go some faster?

 

I'd need to know your pill sizes and weights and if you have a .001g scale.

[[...]]

Hey everybody, I had done a LT when I started at 20mg of Valium and it worked fine, but now that I'm at 10mg for some reason I can't switch back to the liquid form.  I tried dissolving 2.5 of my 10mg a day without pulling anything and by day 6 I had horrible symptoms.  So now I'm going to try dry cutting and wanted to see if I could do daily micro tapering.  I have a micro gram scale and wanted to make a schedule that tapers over 6 months.  I also noticed that each pills varies a little bit in weight, so I'm wondering if I should just weigh them all and get an average then work with that weight.  Can anybody help me out please?

 

Weigh 10 pills all at once to get the average.  That number will be fine to use.

[[St...]]

I have 0.5 pills....we do have a scale.....I am dosing .19 morning, .19 noon, .19 evening and .16 night ,  Is this what you need?

 

[[...]]

How much do your .5mg pills weigh?

[[St...]]

.62

 

[[...]]

.62

 

Do you mean .062g?  That's a light pill and it cuts into your accuracy.  The smallest cut you can make with a scale is .0081mg, which is kind of big for a daily taper.  You'd need to switch to liquid to cut daily.  The best you can do with the scale is cut .001g every few days and rotate the cut through the doses to keep them even.  Depending on the rate either a c/c/h or c/h pattern may work out.

[[St...]]

Thank you so much.....I guess I might have to consider liquid tapering after all.  So if I would want to cut .04 or maybe .05 a month by liquid tapering, how would I do that?

 

[[Fr...]]

Soooo I messed up today, when pouring my doses into my 3 jars for today, I forgot to remove the 1.6ml from the big jar. . . I immediately drank my first dose before I realized this, and then I took .8ml out of both my second and third doses, to equal 1.6ml. I definitely know I shouldn't be doing that on a daily basis but it shouldn't be too big a deal should it?

 

 

[[...]]

Soooo I messed up today, when pouring my doses into my 3 jars for today, I forgot to remove the 1.6ml from the big jar. . . I immediately drank my first dose before I realized this, and then I took .8ml out of both my second and third doses, to equal 1.6ml. I definitely know I shouldn't be doing that on a daily basis but it shouldn't be too big a deal should it?

 

Forget it even happened, you'll be fine.  Not a big deal at all.

[[Fr...]]

word up thanks SG!

[[...]]

Thank you so much.....I guess I might have to consider liquid tapering after all.  So if I would want to cut .04 or maybe .05 a month by liquid tapering, how would I do that?

 

Well, people do cut this way and make it work to stay with dry cutting.  They mix cut days with hold days in a pattern and it works out.  But liquids would free you up to cut daily.  Ativan has several choices for liquids.

[[St...]]

ok, so if I stay with dry, would I start out cutting .001g right away, would that equal about where I am cutting right now?  I am due to cut .01 tomorrow, but instead I would start doing this?  Will it take some adjustment do you think?  I'm sorry, for all the questions, trying to wrap my benzo brain around this...thank you so much for your patience....

[[bu...]]

Hey everybody, I had done a LT when I started at 20mg of Valium and it worked fine, but now that I'm at 10mg for some reason I can't switch back to the liquid form.  I tried dissolving 2.5 of my 10mg a day without pulling anything and by day 6 I had horrible symptoms.  So now I'm going to try dry cutting and wanted to see if I could do daily micro tapering.  I have a micro gram scale and wanted to make a schedule that tapers over 6 months.  I also noticed that each pills varies a little bit in weight, so I'm wondering if I should just weigh them all and get an average then work with that weight.  Can anybody help me out please?

 

Weigh 10 pills all at once to get the average.  That number will be fine to use.

 

OK thank you. 

[[...]]

ok, so if I stay with dry, would I start out cutting .001g right away, would that equal about where I am cutting right now?  I am due to cut .01 tomorrow, but instead I would start doing this?  Will it take some adjustment do you think?  I'm sorry, for all the questions, trying to wrap my benzo brain around this...thank you so much for your patience....

 

When you say ".01", is that scale weight or mg of A?  Wait until you are ready to cut.  Let yourself recover from the previous cut first.

[[bu...]]

Thank you so much.....I guess I might have to consider liquid tapering after all.  So if I would want to cut .04 or maybe .05 a month by liquid tapering, how would I do that?

  Just FYI, the switch to liquid is a non-issue for most folks.  Its the still the same med.

 

But it definitely will make your taper easier and simpler.

[[St...]]

It is scale weight....

 

[[...]]

It is scale weight....

 

Okay.  When you feel ready to cut just begin by removing .001g.  You'll need to decide on a taper rate.  There should be no adjustment as it is the same as you were doing, except you won't be removing it all at once.

[[St...]]

ok.....thank you so very much!!!  I am going to try it......

[[my...]]

Stella Bee,

Just wondering if that .62 you wrote about is really .062 grams as SG suggested.  Are you certain your scale mode is on the little g?  The letters are so small, it's easy to mix up grams and grains, etc....  The only reason I ask, is that most of us who weigh our .5 pills, they average .170-172 grams, thus half a .5 mg pill weighs on average .086 g.  You may want to check to make sure. 

 

mana