Does insomnia rebound to prior levels with each and every cut?

[[Le...]]

Sup buds,

 

So I'm now at the half way point through my taper from 1.0mg of clonazepam I cut down from 0.625mg to 0.5mg and am thinking this might have been too much. My reasoning for the cut was I've been taking two doses one in the morning and the heavier dose at night to help with the sleep( although seeing as I was taking 3 x 0.5mg on occasion to only be able to sleep 5 or less hours I question how much sedation effect I am getting) I also take it with my mirtazapine which was the drug that seemed to break the 3 week stretch of what felt like 0 hours sleep. Currently on 37.5mg doctor wants me to up it to 45mg but last time I tried that I felt aggressive and wired like I was high on coke so I went back down to 37.5.

 

Anyways my goal was to cut out the daytime dose first and figured due to the half life of the drug by the time I would really feel any rebound effect the night time dose would help me. I had been keeping 0.5mg at bedtime constant while reducing the daytime dose.

 

I'm getting a little long winded here anyway I'll cut to the chase after two of the best nights sleep I have had according to my wrist band fitness monitor that logs your sleep it stated I had spent back to back nights in 2 hours of deep sleep and I only ever keep myself in bed for 6 hours as part of a sleep restriction pattern where you reduce the number of hours in bed to stop associating your bed with wakefulness sleep specialists often implement it. It seemed to really be working as my sleep was increasing slowly but 2 days post making my 0.125mg cut last night even though I felt like I slept through till 5:30am( 4 hours of sleep) according to my sleep monitor thing I spent 0 hours of that in deep sleep.  not even a single minute that's the first time that has happened in over a month.

 

Now I'm really hoping that this due to the cutting and increased withdrawal and not due to the mirtazapine starting to not work for me.

 

Do many of you find this that once you make a cut the insomnia comes back a little bit I'm not yet in such a bad place as to not be sleeping at all like I was before but my sleep over the past two nights has decreased. Is this the norm?

[[MT...]]

Lee, some loss of sleep with cuts is pretty normal, especially if you've had insomnia before. It often drifts back and stabilizes for folks. While I find the sleep monitoring info useful, it's important to also assess how you *feel* you slept. Deep sleep is going to really fluctuate while you go through this. Some of us make it without it. You can ride out whatever happens for you.

[[Le...]]

Lee, some loss of sleep with cuts is pretty normal, especially if you've had insomnia before. It often drifts back and stabilizes for folks. While I find the sleep monitoring info useful, it's important to also assess how you *feel* you slept. Deep sleep is going to really fluctuate while you go through this. Some of us make it without it. You can ride out whatever happens for you.

 

Thanks for your input I'm guessing I should wait until I feel that things have rebounded a little in terms of sleep and mood before I make my next cut even if it's over 2 weeks down the line?

 

Seriously considering doing the daily liquid taper thing just because right now my body feels so sensitive to any changes in chemistry plus I'm not sure how much I trust my digital scale it goes to 0.01 grams but I found the reading at the minute level bounces up and down and doesn't stabilize.

[[MT...]]

It all depends on what level of symptoms is manageable to you, how much you can tolerate, and still have some life.

[[jo...]]

In my case insomnia is getting worse as the dose gets smaller. Also their are supposedly 5 stages of sleep , it is My understanding that drugs prevent us from hitting the deepest stage of sleep as only natural sleep can accomplish that.

 

I went for a sleep study some years ago and chatted with a sleep doc as he explained all this to me. Different drugs affect sleep in different ways. When in the hospital for insomnia they tried Me on ambien for a few nights. Felt like I was under anesthesia not sleep. Woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck not rested at all.

 

I know I went off on a tangent but Your question of rebound IMO would depend on the individual person.

[[Le...]]

It all depends on what level of symptoms is manageable to you, how much you can tolerate, and still have some life.

 

Since cutting my sleep has gotten progressively worse with each day went down from 1.25 pills(0.625mg) of Clonazepam down to 1 pill(0.5mg) I can feel my depression coming right back as well so today realized obviously that cut is too big and increased dosage back up to 1 and 1/8 of a pill.

 

This sucks so much it's really aggravating that doctors are not nearly educated on this stuff enough and don't have the education needed to prevent stories like ours happening. Already have had one year of misery just trying to figure out why my sleep wouldn't come back and now another year of hell to actually taper off and recover possibly longer.

 

How are we supposed to hold down jobs with this going on I can't focus for more than a couple minutes at a time, the intrusive dark thoughts are absolutely unbearable at times and to top it all off Insomnia has to by far be the worst withdrawal symptom I can take the physical pain as long as I could get some shut eye but as soon as you start going days without sleep you believe that your life is coming to an end

[[Le...]]

Update I was bang on when I said I think I cut my dose too much after realizing the cut I made was 20% of the dose I was currently taking it was obvious the cut was too extreme and just reaffirmed my suspicions that this drug has sunk it's teeth into me.

 

Upped by 10% yesterday and immediately started to feel an improvement still feeling a little more anxious but nothing significant last night ended up sleeping the best that I have in months and woke up a mere 10 minutes before the alarm clock was about to go off and it was getting light outside almost a whole 6 hours of sleep and according to my sleep monitor almost a full 2 hours in Slow Wave Sleep!!

 

Will now hold down at the current dose for two weeks and going forward just make sure I'm only ever reducing by a max of 10% of the current dose being taken, likely down the road when figuring out the minute amounts to cut and requiring accuracy I'll probably switch to liquid titration