lorazepam withdrawl

[[Pa...]]

Its good to see you reaching out for help again, please don't beat yourself up about not reducing, you've had a lot going on and I'm so very sorry to hear about your friends, this is a terrible time for us all.

 

I'm sure your fantastic support group will be along shortly but I wanted to say hello.

[[wh...]]

Thank you, Pamster, it means a lot, what you said.  I have not slippied up once, but I am ashamed I just stood still.  I have been embarrassed to come back on with no step down to report, but I should have know that you all would be so supportive....... amazing the love and encouragement total strangers can give and I can't thank you enough................... thanks again, Ma'm.  you made my day

[[sl...]]

Hi white river,

I agree with Pamster, there's nothing to be sorry about. Great to see you back here. I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your close friends; I'm relieved to hear that you took care of yourself by keeping things stable with your medication during this stressful time.

 

I remember you're taking four doses per day, one every 6 hours; I think we were talking about them in pill weight and the doses were...

8am: 0.09mg

2pm: 0.09mg

8pm: 0.09mg

2am: 0.07mg

 

1) Is this dosage schedule (by pill weights) correct?

2) Are you still aiming to eliminate the 2am dose first?

3) Are you still wanting to reduce by about 5-6%/2-weeks?

[[wh...]]

yes to number one, I am really having a hard time sleeping, nightmares, crying, and with being solo, once I am up I can't turn my mind off.  so I really don't know if I reduce what it will do....... also I don't know what 5 to 6 % would be going down.  with all the unstable things going on with no break in sight I want to keep it doable as I don't and can't afford to loose more weight and am sick from nerves, not the pills, I am stabilized.  so what do u think?  I hate to ask it of you and normally I would have a better look on things, but I am in unchartered waters, barley hanging on but know I must go forward and I will make it through this, just not as fast as I thought and hard when so much bad and sad happening.  But my determiniation is strong, just don't want a failure as it would be one more thing for me to handle.  not an easy answer to 3 simple questions, for this I am sorry.  :'(

[[je...]]

Hi white river

 

I'm sorry you've been through such a difficult time. We all do what we need to do to get through hard times so you should be proud that you were able to stay at your dose!

 

I'm sure slownsteady will give you some sound advice and options to go forward. Just take it one day at a time.

[[sl...]]

Hi white river,

I understand that your dosage schedule by pill weight is as I remember. I understand that you're having trouble sleeping at night, and that you're struggling with general anxiety and emotional stress at this time. I understand that you don't know what a 5-6% reduction would be; this is the same reduction range we took last time, for comparison. I'm going to keep suggesting this reduction range unless you think it was too much for you to handle last time.

 

Originally I thought we'd have a chance to eliminate your 2pm dose early on, but it sounds like you'd benefit more from having more even blood serum levels; I think sleep is very important.

 

Because of this sleep difficulty, I suggest for now that we focus on taking your dosages down more evenly. In fact, I'm going to suggest we even things out a little by actually upping your 2am dose. It's still an overall reduction; this isn't an updose. Here's what I'm thinking of trying next:

 

Previous total pill weight: 0.34mg

Reduction amount: 0.02mg

Reduction percent: 5.9% (0.02mg/0.34mg)

New total pill weight: 0.32mg

 

New schedule:

8am: 0.08mg

2pm: 0.08mg

8pm: 0.08mg

2am: 0.08mg

 

This new schedule is a 5.9% reduction from your current dose, and will also put a little more medicine at your 2am dose to help you fall back to sleep. My suggestion would be to take this reduction and to hold for 2-weeks or until you at least feel as stable again as you do now.

 

Lastly, I think it's very important to learn how to down-regulate our nervous system without drugs, especially while we're tapering. There are a wide range of tools and techniques to do this, from breath-work, to positive affirmations, to meditation, to hypnosis, and so on. I suggest exploring these online or in books or with a therapist, and practicing them every single night when you're awake. Some will likely not work for you, but some will, and the process of finding these is why I think it's important to keep exploring every night to find what helps.

 

I've found that lying awake at night is the perfect time for this practice. I used to wake up at 1-3am so often, and sometimes never get back to sleep. Now, many months later, I never wake up in the middle of the night, and it's at least in large part from spending countless nights noticing this stress response and learning to calm myself down with a combination of breath-work, visualization, self-awareness, and apathy. Practice really does seem to work for learning and enhancing this skill of relaxation.

 

I really like this article about recovering from insomnia...

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=235100.0

 

Let us know if you think the suggested reduction could work for you, or if you'd like help doing something different. 

[[wh...]]

I am very excited to start my new taper, and will start it this week end as we have lost our nephew this last week end, 42, and its been a tiough week but my determination remains high, as seasalt and yourself, Pamster and I have not heard from jelly ... I hope she is ok, as she usually has encouraging words.  small rural communities in our state have been slammed and we have lost friends but it got pretty personal loosing our nephew.  I have not changed anything from what was given on  my last drop, so I thank God for the strength to hold my own.  I also thank you for not giving up on me, as the others.  to me, thanks the key, to know what you all have gone through or are still going through....... hope.  that's what holds me strong, and I believe I will be fine one day.  I am sorry when I don't at least pop in once every few day, but these are scarry hit in the gut times for our part of the world.  will start afte :thumbsup:r funeral, Sunday.  will touch base mid week.  once again, thank you for all you guys do......................

[[sl...]]

I am sorry for your loss.

 

I think it's important to mention that since the pill weight measurements you are using are so close to the minimum measuring value of your scale, it seems like you might want to consider using filler in the near future.

 

The filler dry tapering process involves buying micro crystalline cellulose, gelatin capsules, and a capsule scoop (or using weighing pans which have a good pour spout such as may have been included with your scale). To get out of the single digit milligram dose measurements (which are IMO significantly inaccurate on a cheap milligram scale), a suggestion would be to mix 9 parts cellulose with 1 part crushed pills by weight. The resulting powder would need to be very evenly mixed. This powder would then contain 10x more pill weight per milligram of medicine than the tablets used to make it, so your 0.08mg doses would now weight 0.8mg, a measurement which is both more accurate to weigh and much easier to safely reduce.

 

There are videos on Bob7's site (www.benzodrytapermath.com) that show the process and tools involved, but I don't suggest using his spreadsheet in your situation as you are doing cut-and-holds and we are trying to keep the math and process as simple as possible for you.

 

If I remember correctly Bob7 uses a spoon and bowl to both crush his tablets and incorporate his powder. I can help generate a batch size that would work for you, describing both the tablets to use and weight of filler. Let us know if this option of using filler makes sense to you and seems do-able in your situation.

 

Lastly, this weekend are you going to change your dosages and schedule to the suggestion I gave or something else?

[[je...]]

Hi white

 

You've been through some very challenging times but it's good to hear you are still determined. You'll get there! It doesn't matter how long it takes, the only thing that matters is that we keep going.

 

Thanks for asking about me, I did respond to your previous post, you've probably missed it:

 

Hi white river

 

I'm sorry you've been through such a difficult time. We all do what we need to do to get through hard times so you should be proud that you were able to stay at your dose!

 

I'm sure slownsteady will give you some sound advice and options to go forward. Just take it one day at a time.

[[sl...]]

Two things just now occurred to me; one is I've been mentioning pill weight in milligrams, which is absurd, since you cannot possibly measure 0.08mg on a milligram scale. And I also was worried about working in the range of single digit milligrams, when clearly 0.08g (aka 80mg) is in the centigrams, so using filler is completely unnecessary at this point IMO.

 

I'm not sure how I got so confused. My taper has been a little rocky recently; opinions on that will probably go up on my buddy blog, but for now I'm sorry for any confusion I caused. The post about considering filler is a mute point, and here is the suggested dosage schedule I created earlier, only now using the correct units of measurement...

 

Previous total pill weight: 0.34g

Reduction amount: 0.02g

Reduction percent: 5.9% (0.02g/0.34g)

New total pill weight: 0.32g

 

New schedule:

8am: 0.08g

2pm: 0.08g

8pm: 0.08g

2am: 0.08g

 

Sorry about that! I hope this helps.