I need help with an Ativan taper and I don't know where to start.

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I stupidly reduced my ativan from 0.5 to 0.25 and started to have bad symptoms afterwards. I went back on the 0.5 but I'm still feeling awful. I have a learning disability so all this talk about titration and measurments are really confusing me. Can anyone here help me create a slow ativan taper please? Should I just switch over to valium or should I continue tapering with the ativan?

 

What I've done so far is cut the 1mg pills in half to get a 0.5 but I don't know how accurate it is because I don't have a scale. How would I reduce my ativan slowly and accurately? I really wish I had a doctor or psychologist that could make a taper plan for me but my psychologist is useless. He said I can just go off it. I feel overwhelmed because no one is helping me with a taper. I would be grateful if any of you could help me.

[[Po...]]

Hi Eura,

 

I am so sorry that you are feeling so terrible. There are many people on here who have more experience than I do with tapering, and they will chime in, so keep posting and using this forum.

 

When did you go back up to 0.5? Many benzodiazepines have a long half-life. I don’t feel a reduction until about 3 days after making it. So depending on when you went down to 0.25, and back up to 0.5, it might have thrown your system into an acute withdrawal. I think many people would suggest that you stabilize on the current dose before resuming a taper.

 

I got a digital scale for $10 on Amazon. They are really inexpensive. My 0.5mg clonazepam tablets weigh .2g on the scale. I wanted to reduce my dosage 10% to .45mg daily. So, it weighs .18g on the scale. I like to have my dosage divided in two, morning and evening. I have a bottle of split pill leftovers that I pick two pieces out of that together weigh .18g and put them in my seven day pill dispenser. As long as they weigh .18 together, I am not worried that they are exactly the same.

 

The math and measurements are less important than having my reductions be slowand consistent . I could just base my reductions off the numbers on the scale and say, make it weigh .01 less. Does that make sense?

 

That’s as small as the scale I got will go.

 

I hope this a somewhat helpful.

 

Hang in there, Eura. This is doable.

 

All the best, Pop