coming off clonazepam .5mg

[[Ar...]]

Hi all. I was doing a water taper of .5mg clonazepam. on the 7th day i took out 7ml and noticed there was

a lot of the clonazepam in the syringe. the next day started feeling withdrawal symptoms, i think.

would it be easier to use clonazepam wafers? would it melt in water? making it easier to take out the right amount daily?

 

Thank you.

[[Pa...]]

Are you agitating the mixture before drawing out your dose, and do you draw it quickly after doing this?  The mixture is not a solution because the drug doesn't dissolve so it's important to take these steps in order to get your proper dose.  Are the wafers you're asking about the orally disintegrating tablets?

 

How many days worth of the drug do you make up at one time, we don't have any idea how long its good for so making small batches is a good idea.

 

 

[[Ka...]]

Arty, I could not get my clonazepam to dissolve in water either.  I crushed it and then added it to the water but then shook it vigorously right before I dosed and I took my dose immediately after shaking.  As I recall, I made three days worth at a time.

[[Ar...]]

Yes I was talking about the orally disintegrating tablets. I was wondering if it dissolved in water. Would

It be easier to use then the regular pills.

[[Pa...]]

You will still need to agitate the mixture before ingestion because Clonazepam doesn't dissolve, you can't assume its a solution, only a suspension.  I believe liquid Clonazepam is offered in some countries, but not in the US.

[[sc...]]

This suspension stuff scares me, and is exactly why I've decided not to water taper Clonazepam (I'm on 1 mg/day and just figuring all this tapering stuff out).

 

If you're adventurous here's a link to the solubility of Clonazepam in ethanol:  http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=226782.0

 

I did an experiment with the "Orally Disintegrating Tablets" .25 mg, which come in a box labeled as such, and they dissolved in a tiny amount of 95% ethanol very easily.  Of course there was all kinds of residue left over, but if you dissolved them in a tiny amount of Everclear and then added water then IN THEORY you'd get an actual solution.

 

Personally I wouldn't mess with trying to turn K into a liquid.  I'd either get a very accurate scale, and file or sand the tablets down, or switch to liquid Valium.

 

But if I was going to try to turn K into a liquid I'd make use of Everclear, in the tiniest amounts.

 

I just found out that liquid Valium is available in the United States, so I hope my doctor will allow me to make the switch.  The liquid is 5 mg/5ml. .  Of course you'd combine it with tablets so the tablets would make up the bulk of the dose, and then you'd titrate down with the liquid. 

 

According to the calculator .05 mg K (iow 10% of a .5 mg K) = .75 mg V, so you can see how making very small cuts would be much easier with the liquid V.

 

Clonazepam is also available in .125 mg orally disintegrating tablets.  If large enough, those tablets could make it easier to titrate with the filing/sanding down scale method. 

 

Thanks for letting me think out loud.  After trying to do it the Doc's way I'm a bit traumatized and still stressed about even starting to taper. 

 

 

[[Li...]]

Tip of the hat for educating yourself about the approaches other members have used to taper, scoupier. As you do so, please keep in mind that member-generated content is not fact-checked.  Members are free to post/discuss whatever they wish as long as they adhere to the general forum guidelines.

 

Re: the thread you cited about the solubility of clonazepam in ethanol …

 

Please note that relying on results from experimental solubility studies to inform ‘recipes’ for do-it-yourself (DIY) liquids is risky business.  First and foremost, the goal of these studies is not to develop formulations for liquid medications that are safe and effective for human use.  Secondly, the materials (ingredients), equipment, and procedures used in such studies are not available to the general public. Consequently, ‘kitchen chemists’ cannot expect to achieve the same results. 

 

Here’s another thread you may find of interest ….

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=235642.msg3024609#msg3024609

 

The bottom line is that — in the absence of appropriate laboratory analyses — we simply do not know if adding a small amount of off-the-shelf alcohol to a regular clonazepam tablet (or an orally distintegrating tablet) fully and completely dissolves all of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) in the tablet.  We also do not know what happens when additional water is added to the tablet/alcohol mixture. For example, if some of the API does indeed go into solution, it’s possible that some may precipitate back out of solution when additional water is added.

 

[[sc...]]

Very well said.  It's not knowing how much of the API dissolves that got to me, not to mention, does it stay dissolved when you add water?

 

Filing down pills with possibly unevenly distributed API is bad enough for me.