New K taper. Brain fog has me completely lost on calculations.

[[mo...]]

As the rest of my life has been going lately, I yet again have to publicly say I'm just incapable of doing yet another thing.  I can't figure out a taper schedule for my klonipin. A little background and then a plea for help.

 

I have been tapering my Cymbalta for the past couple of months. I have been reducing by opening the 20mg capsule and removing a bead at a time. I thought this would go much more quickly than it has. As it stands, I am not even halfway through the capsule and it takes longer the lower I go (as many of you know). I got my 2nd coronavirus vaccine shot this past week, so I have remained steady for a week or so and plan to do so, as tedious as that will be to keep counting out beads every day.

 

I have decided that the side effects of the 2mg/day of Clonazepam that I am taking are not something I'm willing or wanting to deal with anymore. Its time to take the leap and start tapering my Klonipin. Symptoms: Fatigue, severe brain fog, I can't feel "good" feelings. I have increased depression to the point of suicidal ideation. <- I am safe, open with these thoughts to my family and doctors. No appetite, though that could equally be from the Cymbalta. Paresthesia (also Cymbalta). Heightened anxiety between doses and I wake up with the shakes. They do go away before I take my meds, however. Just the first few minutes of full body shakes. I have a 5 year old son, we both have ADHD, and its time he gets his active mom back instead of a walking zombie. Sometimes, at my worst, when he hugs me, I feel nothing. This is not ok. He's my world.

 

I am very sensitive to medication, and benzos have been a nightmare for me. I was on 1/4 mg 2x/day for years with no problem, even if I stopped or skipped a dose. Since being on Ativan, then forced cold turkey in the psychiatric unit for 36 hours, then reinstated on Klonipin, my body has become incredibly dependent on these meds. The slightest shift or lowering in dosing has not been successful. My psychiatrist recommended I try taking out 1/4mg at night. I'm fine until the amount in my bloodstream really catches up to me (2 days or so). Then I get swimmy head, severe nausea, body aches - withdrawal. I have to go back up. I have not tried reducing by 1/8 mg.

 

So, please help. Here is what I am taking:  1/2 mg tablet 4x a day. 8am, noon, 5pm and 10pm. My other psych meds are in my sig. I don't plan on touching those or the Cymbalta while I am reducing the K. I'd like to do a dry taper. I have watched Bob7's videos on dry tapering. I understand the technique. I just need help with the numbers. What information do I need to provide?

 

Thank you so much. I will be dancing my pants off if I can even get to 1mg/day, let alone Benzo free. <3

[[sl...]]

Welcome monty81!

 

I'm so sorry to hear you got mixed up in this and are struggling with what sound like over-medication symptoms. You may prefer to taper a bit more quickly in the beginning because of this, but don't forget your nervous system is adapted to the regular tranquilizer overdose and will still require careful tending to get to lower doses while minimizing CNS shock (i.e. severe withdrawal symptoms).

 

Not sure I'll be much help with the math, but I'm also tapering K and I started a script in November last year.

 

I was on 1.5mg/day, tried to quit after 2 weeks but couldn't. I upped to 2mg/day when I had my first withdrawal scare (frightened and depressed ideations and such), just from moving my doses around in the day to new times. Rapid tapered after 2 months of use, at 1/4 speed of doctors instructions, and had to go to the ER two weeks into the taper.

 

Reinstated at 2mg/day. Discovered BB and started a cut-and-hold schedule, which really is quite manageable at first especially since I was up at 2mg/day; it does make life somewhat unpredictable though. I've spent the last two months cutting and holding 1/4 pill reductions twice, then doing two failed daily micro taper attempts (due to ineffective or inflammatory liquid formulas made by pharmacist), but STILL, I am just today now at 1.5mg/day and holding this dose to stabilize.

 

Bob7 has a whole site about dry tapering: https://benzodrytapermath.com/

 

Personally I use: http://benzo.alwaysdata.net because I take most of my four daily doses in pieces of tablets (dry, portable, familiar, cheap), and I take one dose a day with a portion of liquid (also cheap, very easy to accurately measure to small degrees, no electronics); the liquid is where I take my daily reduction. It's called a liquid/tablet hybrid DMT (daily micro taper), and you can create your own similar schedule using the liquid tapering portion of the site. You can also use the same site to create a dry tapering schedule, even if you use filler. Mess around on there and see if it makes sense to you; you'll also get a good sense of how long it takes to taper with the recommended percent reduction range of 5-10%/2-weeks. It's a slow process, but your body will thank you for listening; we can only recover so quickly, and many many people rush and suffer horribly.

 

I can understand why a dry taper would be appealing. There are some hoops to jump through to get a compounded liquid formula you can tolerate (if you can tolerate any of them), or other hoops if you want to make your own liquid with tablets. I explored dry tapering without any filler, and I was too frustrated with the inaccuracies of the cheap mg scales. With a 0.125mg/ml liquid formula (1ml equivalent to 1/4 of a 0.5mg pill) I can taper by 1ml oral syringe with 100 gradations, at 0.00125mg intervals; pretty precise! Of course, I take much bigger cuts usually; somewhere around 1/10th of a ml per day, but I don't have to do the math myself. The site I use sets a schedule up for me, I save the PDF, print it out and I either take the next cut or hold and mark my progress. This way I never get overwhelmed with multiple days of severe symptoms like I would doing a cut-and-hold.

 

Bob7 is around here; he'll help you dry taper if he see's this. Check his site. If you want to DMT, wet or dry, post on the Titration board. In the end you'll have to experiment and decide what works for your lifestyle; we're just here to pepper you with opinions, resources and encouragement.

 

You can definitely do this!