Will increasing help me stabilize?

[[So...]]

Since cutting to .75 I truly feel like death, the depersonalization and symptoms of feeling crazy are ynbareavle and I was wondering if going back up to 1 mg and coming off more slowly would help, I don't know how much longer I can do this

[[NJ...]]

It should. But maybe go up to .875 rather than 1 mg. I would highly, highly suggest you make much smaller cuts. I cut just 3 percent every 3 weeks in the beginning and I could feel every cut. Smaller cuts more often I am finding is better. If you are dry cutting I would recommend getting a scale so you can make the smaller cuts. Good luck.

[[Ca...]]

I beleive its best to taper slowly by sx and hold as need be...

But if you truly think you are beyond that now... well, probably...

I also think it best to minimise other meds, where possible, to avoid any confusion... -but keep eating healthy, as you do...

-just my thoughts...

[[tw...]]

It will, but you'll still have to go through it all over again. Go back and read your posts and see how well you were doing just a few days back. Are you able to give yourself more time to stabilize? I had a horrible time after cutting my dose from .5 to .375 on 3/12, and today is the first day I feel "better". In fact, I'm having a really good window today! But as you can see, it took 11 days! So my sweet spot after a cut is to maintain it for AT LEAST 10 days, and often 14 days before I felt better.

 

If you HAVE to go up, I suggest not going back up to 1 mg if possible. You've made a lot of progress, and you ARE going a little fast, so if it were me, I'd try and stabilize. I did and I made a REALLY big jump. (and it was torture to get here, and I don't know if I'm even really stable, I just know I feel pretty darn good today.)

 

Go back and read your posts (do you do a progress log?) You may start to see a pattern between "I can't take it anymore" and "I'm feeling better" and that should tell you how long it takes you to stabilize.

 

It's WAY harder as you get under 1 mg. And then, I think, way easier as you get under .25 (but don't get excited and jump too soon either!) Just remember - you are okay. This is going to be over soon (I promise you it WILL be) and it's going to get hard sometimes.

 

The goal is to mitigate your suffering while continuing to press on, without totally ruining all your efforts. You know your body best. But the brain is very powerful, and I know how very hard this is.

[[Tw...]]

At .75 coming down from 3mgs of Klonopin at  literally the same time frame you've been  tapering is where I hit rock bottom and had to find a change bc life became so crazy and I was falling apart on every level. I read into all the tips and methods of tapering and stabilizing and risked all my options to choose doing a crossover from .75mgs of K to 20 mgs of Valium. I did it the Ashton method way, there's an actual chart and it took me a month roughly. I then stabilized in that time and started cut and hold until I felt that need to liquid titration slowly and daily. Now I feel the best (still rough on a daily basis) I have been in a year of tapering roughly. I may have been able to hold on the .75 of K and wait even longer for some relief but I didn't bc I was in such a low spot I was desperate. Hope you find the path that fits you best. Mines been the smallliquid  daily cut and switching to Valium twice daily.

[[So...]]

It will, but you'll still have to go through it all over again. Go back and read your posts and see how well you were doing just a few days back. Are you able to give yourself more time to stabilize? I had a horrible time after cutting my dose from .5 to .375 on 3/12, and today is the first day I feel "better". In fact, I'm having a really good window today! But as you can see, it took 11 days! So my sweet spot after a cut is to maintain it for AT LEAST 10 days, and often 14 days before I felt better.

 

If you HAVE to go up, I suggest not going back up to 1 mg if possible. You've made a lot of progress, and you ARE going a little fast, so if it were me, I'd try and stabilize. I did and I made a REALLY big jump. (and it was torture to get here, and I don't know if I'm even really stable, I just know I feel pretty darn good today.)

 

Go back and read your posts (do you do a progress log?) You may start to see a pattern between "I can't take it anymore" and "I'm feeling better" and that should tell you how long it takes you to stabilize.

 

It's WAY harder as you get under 1 mg. And then, I think, way easier as you get under .25 (but don't get excited and jump too soon either!) Just remember - you are okay. This is going to be over soon (I promise you it WILL be) and it's going to get hard sometimes.

 

The goal is to mitigate your suffering while continuing to press on, without totally ruining all your efforts. You know your body best. But the brain is very powerful, and I know how very hard this is.

 

Thank you so much twinkle, I really appreciate all of your invaluable advice and you always make me feel better, I am almost afraid to feel better sometimes in a sense because I question if it's really real or it is just fleeting and will go away, I really want to believe my brain can heal and today I am sooooo emotional, which is crazy because I have been going in between feeling emotionally blunted in a sense and now once again the floodgates have opened. The feeling of not feeling in your right mind and the depersonalization does that go away? That is what is making me feel the most brain damaged and hopeless right now in a sense because my brain truly feels like it is operating at half capacity.

[[tw...]]

It will, but you'll still have to go through it all over again. Go back and read your posts and see how well you were doing just a few days back. Are you able to give yourself more time to stabilize? I had a horrible time after cutting my dose from .5 to .375 on 3/12, and today is the first day I feel "better". In fact, I'm having a really good window today! But as you can see, it took 11 days! So my sweet spot after a cut is to maintain it for AT LEAST 10 days, and often 14 days before I felt better.

 

If you HAVE to go up, I suggest not going back up to 1 mg if possible. You've made a lot of progress, and you ARE going a little fast, so if it were me, I'd try and stabilize. I did and I made a REALLY big jump. (and it was torture to get here, and I don't know if I'm even really stable, I just know I feel pretty darn good today.)

 

Go back and read your posts (do you do a progress log?) You may start to see a pattern between "I can't take it anymore" and "I'm feeling better" and that should tell you how long it takes you to stabilize.

 

It's WAY harder as you get under 1 mg. And then, I think, way easier as you get under .25 (but don't get excited and jump too soon either!) Just remember - you are okay. This is going to be over soon (I promise you it WILL be) and it's going to get hard sometimes.

 

The goal is to mitigate your suffering while continuing to press on, without totally ruining all your efforts. You know your body best. But the brain is very powerful, and I know how very hard this is.

 

Thank you so much twinkle, I really appreciate all of your invaluable advice and you always make me feel better, I am almost afraid to feel better sometimes in a sense because I question if it's really real or it is just fleeting and will go away, I really want to believe my brain can heal and today I am sooooo emotional, which is crazy because I have been going in between feeling emotionally blunted in a sense and now once again the floodgates have opened. The feeling of not feeling in your right mind and the depersonalization does that go away? That is what is making me feel the most brain damaged and hopeless right now in a sense because my brain truly feels like it is operating at half capacity.

 

Yes, it does very much go away. I promise that it does! I felt like I was beyond help and would never "come back" to normal on both my 2 mg cold turkey as well as my jump from .25 (I basically ended up in the same place) and I thought I was irreversibly brain damaged. I literally became almost child-like and could barely function (it was all I could do to even take a shower...) The thought that I would never be in my right mind again, was absolutely terrifying and a terrible place to be "stuck". It took me about a week to come out of it both times.

[[Lo...]]

Crying helps a lot through this. I am a guy, and I have cried more times through this ordeal than I ever have in my life. Also, I recall you saying you were on Prozac before, and although it worked for me for a number of years, I think it lessened my ability to cry. So when you're off Prozac and in a midst of Klonopin wd, you can imagine all the memories flooding back, all the tears that were not cried out when they were supposed to be cried out. I recall moments in the past when I did cry, and those don't haunt me. The ones that do are the events I should have cried about, but didn't.

 

My father was an abusive alcoholic, and now I realize how much damage he's inflicted on my mother and myself. I thought I was over it as I grew older, but those old wounds stayed with me and caught up with me later in life.

 

I'd recommend looking up a local warmline number, for peer support. These are non-emergency help lines, and it has helped me a great deal when I felt alone and overwhelmed. You don't have to explain the specifics of what you're going through, but you can. Depends on your comfort level. There were so many times when I was crashing down, and would call someone at the line, just to distract myself a bit and get a little infusion of optimism:

 

Here is a site that lists all the numbers throughout the State, so you can find the one that is in your area:

 

http://www.warmline.org/

[[lo...]]

It should. But maybe go up to .875 rather than 1 mg. I would highly, highly suggest you make much smaller cuts. I cut just 3 percent every 3 weeks in the beginning and I could feel every cut. Smaller cuts more often I am finding is better. If you are dry cutting I would recommend getting a scale so you can make the smaller cuts. Good luck.

 

this

[[So...]]

It will, but you'll still have to go through it all over again. Go back and read your posts and see how well you were doing just a few days back. Are you able to give yourself more time to stabilize? I had a horrible time after cutting my dose from .5 to .375 on 3/12, and today is the first day I feel "better". In fact, I'm having a really good window today! But as you can see, it took 11 days! So my sweet spot after a cut is to maintain it for AT LEAST 10 days, and often 14 days before I felt better.

 

If you HAVE to go up, I suggest not going back up to 1 mg if possible. You've made a lot of progress, and you ARE going a little fast, so if it were me, I'd try and stabilize. I did and I made a REALLY big jump. (and it was torture to get here, and I don't know if I'm even really stable, I just know I feel pretty darn good today.)

 

Go back and read your posts (do you do a progress log?) You may start to see a pattern between "I can't take it anymore" and "I'm feeling better" and that should tell you how long it takes you to stabilize.

 

It's WAY harder as you get under 1 mg. And then, I think, way easier as you get under .25 (but don't get excited and jump too soon either!) Just remember - you are okay. This is going to be over soon (I promise you it WILL be) and it's going to get hard sometimes.

 

The goal is to mitigate your suffering while continuing to press on, without totally ruining all your efforts. You know your body best. But the brain is very powerful, and I know how very hard this is.

 

Thank you so much twinkle, I really appreciate all of your invaluable advice and you always make me feel better, I am almost afraid to feel better sometimes in a sense because I question if it's really real or it is just fleeting and will go away, I really want to believe my brain can heal and today I am sooooo emotional, which is crazy because I have been going in between feeling emotionally blunted in a sense and now once again the floodgates have opened. The feeling of not feeling in your right mind and the depersonalization does that go away? That is what is making me feel the most brain damaged and hopeless right now in a sense because my brain truly feels like it is operating at half capacity.

 

Yes, it does very much go away. I promise that it does! I felt like I was beyond help and would never "come back" to normal on both my 2 mg cold turkey as well as my jump from .25 (I basically ended up in the same place) and I thought I was irreversibly brain damaged. I literally became almost child-like and could barely function (it was all I could do to even take a shower...) The thought that I would never be in my right mind again, was absolutely terrifying and a terrible place to be "stuck". It took me about a week to come out of it both times.

 

Thank you so much. I feel like a bit of an outlier here because just because I never really had one set dose, I was prescribed 3 mg a day and only took that for a bit, stopped, and decreased to 2.5 and then decreased to 1.75 which is where I was at for most of my taper, right now my head just feels so bad and foggy I hate it so much, I think what I have is DR and DP which are mental symptoms I thought but I have heard them be described as physical as well. My brain wasn't this foggy when I was on 1.75 but the anxiety was off the charts because I was in tolerance wirhdrawal, the fuzzy head and severe brain fog has only occurred since starting to taper in November off of that dose, I just feel hopeless right now and I feel crazy and just want to feel normal and have a life again

[[NJ...]]

 

 

, I just feel hopeless right now and I feel crazy and just want to feel normal and have a life again

 

I would really suggest that you consider lowering how much you are cutting at one time. It is possible to go through this and feel mostly normal and have a life if you are making smaller cuts. I never feel 100 percent but I am also not avoiding anything and feel mostly normal. I am going very, very slow but if you want to live life while tapering, that at least for me is key. Your percentage cuts have been large, and while we all want to be off I personally think you would benefit from going slower. You can have your life NOW. (I realize some people must rapid taper, others have symptoms no matter what they do, and I do use a support med to help me through).

[[So...]]

 

 

, I just feel hopeless right now and I feel crazy and just want to feel normal and have a life again

 

I would really suggest that you consider lowering how much you are cutting at one time. It is possible to go through this and feel mostly normal and have a life if you are making smaller cuts. I never feel 100 percent but I am also not avoiding anything and feel mostly normal. I am going very, very slow but if you want to live life while tapering, that at least for me is key. Your percentage cuts have been large, and while we all want to be off I personally think you would benefit from going slower. You can have your life NOW. (I realize some people must rapid taper, others have symptoms no matter what they do, and I do use a support med to help me through).

 

Thank you for the advice, luckily I work from home and I can afford to taper more quickly. I don't have kids and I don't have a job I need to be at everyday minus from my computer where I run my own company. I just want to be off and that is what my body is telling me to do, I have felt better today so much so that that even the sun seems to be brighter and I seem to feeling more than I have in a long time.

 

I will suck up the physical symptoms if the mental continue to improve. If lying in bed can help me get better in the next few months and just be off so the real healing can begin that's what I'm going to do, I don't have a year to slowly cut away and just watch the days go by attached to a tranquilizing medication that prevents me from being able to have kids. My window is limited already with my fertility issues. I had a miscarriage while on these meds, my doctor had told me it would be fine to stay on meds during that time and it wasn't at all. I have considered suicide at the idea of spending the next year of my life pulling out my jewelers scale or syringe and tapering, I don't want that life. I want this poison out of me.

 

I had a phone call with the amazing Dr. Jennifer Leigh this morning who is an amazing benzo withdrawal coach and has a wonderful blog about benzo withdrawal and regaining your life. She said that do what your mind tells you to and your body, if you feel that looking at another year long worth of tapering is making you feel depressed or hopeless and you truly feel that you won't begin healing until you are off than that is what you need to do, . There are no studies that we truly heal on the way down or that we heal faster from cold turkeying, I think people need to stop judging other people's method of tapering or throwing out horror stories or worst case scenarios.

 

We all heal differently and so many people have cold turkeyed and started to feel better sooner while others who do need to go slowly to maintain a sense of normalcy in life with kids or a job but the chances that this stuff could give you permanent brain damage the longer you stay on it, how it blunts your emotions, how it makes you gain weight and lose yourself your soul and your creativity, you become a different person and I want the old me back.

 

I truly don't understand how neurologically you can heal at all while ingesting this crap at all. Everybody is different but let's just support eachother and not judge tapering schedules

[[So...]]

I know I need to be off this stuff so my body can really start healing, no studies indicate that we can heal on the way down or that we heal faster if we cold turkey, it is different for each person and I think you need to trust yourself and have confidence in your taper schedule. People continuously doubting or judging your taper decisions is upsetting, I know personally this will work best for me, I would rather go through a few months of hell and then truly start to heal rather then drag it out for a year or more, it's already been four months of tapering and feeling in a fog, the sooner I am off the sooner I can start to heal, maybe call it psychological but if the thought of tapering for a year or more makes you feel hopeless, it's better to get off more quickly and then just knowing that you aren't ingesting that poison everyday can make you feel better.

 

I think to each their own in terms of taper schedule. I don't have kids, but I want them desperately and I know I can't have them until I am off this stuff totally. I think that unless somebody is talking about going cold turkey off a high dose than we should support what they want unless they are asking for taper advice. If somebody is asking for support alone then let's do that.

[[NJ...]]

I did not mean to offend. It sounded like you were struggling and smaller cuts usually mean less struggling. As you said, we all need to do what we need to do. I do know I am healing on the way down, no doubt in my mind.

[[Be...]]

We do heal on the way down or else there would be no need for a taper. 

[[So...]]

I did not mean to offend. It sounded like you were struggling and smaller cuts usually mean less struggling. As you said, we all need to do what we need to do. I do know I am healing on the way down, no doubt in my mind.

 

No I know you didn't at all, I'm sorry, it can just be maddening with the different tapering advice out there and after wracking my brain for months about crossing over to Valium or microtaprring or going to a liquid formula and buying a scale and a syringe and all of this stuff it just made me nuts and it's hard to know who to trust because so many people believe different things in terms of tapering. I just know that the mental symptoms on the way down are brain god and physical issues like sweating and shaking but if I can get through those which are obviously withdrawal symptoms, and power through to getting off that I personally will feel better mentally, just knowing I am off if that makes sense. Everybody is so different though and I am so sorry if I came off as agressive, I was pregnant and had a miscarriage while on this and I blame myself because of these drugs. I just feel so guilty and I just want off now

[[Tw...]]

This is some good stuff here bird. I get what your saying for sure. Truth talk

[[Ge...]]

If you feel like you need to updose then you probably do.  Especially if you don't regularly contemplate this option.  I just updosed.. and I'm hoping for improvement.

[[lo...]]

I know I need to be off this stuff so my body can really start healing, no studies indicate that we can heal on the way down or that we heal faster if we cold turkey, it is different for each person and I think you need to trust yourself and have confidence in your taper schedule. People continuously doubting or judging your taper decisions is upsetting, I know personally this will work best for me, I would rather go through a few months of hell and then truly start to heal rather then drag it out for a year or more, it's already been four months of tapering and feeling in a fog, the sooner I am off the sooner I can start to heal, maybe call it psychological but if the thought of tapering for a year or more makes you feel hopeless, it's better to get off more quickly and then just knowing that you aren't ingesting that poison everyday can make you feel better.

 

I think to each their own in terms of taper schedule. I don't have kids, but I want them desperately and I know I can't have them until I am off this stuff totally. I think that unless somebody is talking about going cold turkey off a high dose than we should support what they want unless they are asking for taper advice. If somebody is asking for support alone then let's do that.

 

There are plenty of similar systems in the brain and body that this can be compared to; you can only build muscle so fast regardless of stuffing your face and working out for 8 hours a day, your hair and nails can only grow at a certain rate, your skin heals itself after cuts at a certain rate... etc etc etc. Those are extremely simple comparisons, but think of the GABA system like that. It can only heal so fast, and it's unfortunately a verrrrrrrrryyyyy slow healer.

 

I'll try to make the direct comparison; you are no better off eating over a certain amount of protein and calories to build muscle in the gym (and it will have "negative side effects" of it's own if you overeat), than you are ripping external GABA supplies (benzodiazepines) from a healing GABA system. It will only catch up at a certain rate anyways, regardless of how much you take away from it, and how fast. So, you might as well slowly remove the GABA supply as your system heals, which will take X amount of time in all scenarios.

 

Does that make sense? I think that was a pretty good analogy. Sure there may not be DIRECT evidence for this specific scenario, but if you compare it to any other system in the body, or in nature really, it makes sense that it would follow the same laws. Trees only grow so fast, you can only absorb food from your intestines so fast, plants sprout out of the ground only so fast, bla bla bla I'm sure you understand I really feel, much like the other poster here, that you might be going too fast, and could potentially be tackling this the wrong way. I've been in your scenario, making infrequent, big cuts, and all of the IDENTICAL problems I was having, went away, with smaller, more frequent cuts, on a much slower taper plan. My moods went from a consistent 0-2/10 to 6ish/10 for the past two months. I'm not agoraphobic anymore, I exercise 5x a week, I'm socializing, I'm dating, all of which were non-existent before. I've been tracking it and journaling frequently.

 

What good is getting off fast, if you're housebound for the next year anyways? It really sucks thinking about how long it may take. But that's another symptom of benzo withdrawal that I had /have too, excessive negative rumination (lifetime OCD doesn't help either haha). Trust me. You're so convinced you need to get off ASAP and that will solve your problems... It's the benzo (withdrawal) tricking you. I can promise that.

 

Anyways best of luck with whatever you choose. Sorry for the wall of text.

[[Ca...]]

Song, Im glad you have found your way, and know what to expect...

Best of luck...

 

[[Ge...]]

I missed your latest post last night.. I guess I was really tired.  Sounds like you made a decision so that good.  People give the best advice they have.. In the end you have to do what you think is the right thing.  Good luck.