My Benzo Background

[[Cl...]]

I started Clonazepam in mid-January after a bout with covid left me unable to sleep and unable to sit still. If I tried lying down to sleep, I'd get unbelievably agitated within a minute or less, jump up, and have to pace around for 10-15 minutes to calm myself down. I literally spent days without sleeping just pacing around my house and backyard 24 hours per day. It was almost like covid cause akathisia. (This was before I started benzos.)

 

Doctors put me on a low dose of benzos to help with the Covid issues. I was on lorazepam for about a week. I was also briefly on Restoril. But mainly I've been on Clonzepam. I've been on a low dose of Clonazepam every day for 2.5 months. Mostly I was on 0.5mg/day, but some days I tried dropping down to 0.375mg or even 0.25mg. A very small number of days, I went as high as 0.75mg. Bouncing the dose around like that messed me up a lot during the day. But I didn't know that at the time. And I got very little guidance from doctors.

 

I'm also on Gabapentin (since early February). I'm taking 100mg in the morning, 100mg in the afternoon, and 600mg at bedtime. I take 10mg Propranolol each time I take the Gabapentin.

 

Since mid-March, I've been taking 100mg Trazadone at night to help me get to sleep as I started tapering off of Clonazepam. I now see that being on Gabapentin, Trazadone, and Propranalol may not be such a good idea. However, doctors encouraged me to take these before I knew any better. And I was on them before my Clonazepam taper. So I'm not sure I should get off them now. My thinking is whether or not I should have ever started taking them in the first place, I'm on them now, and I shouldn't mess with getting off of them until after I'm well off of Clonazepam. I'm open to other thoughts.

 

I started my benzo taper a few weeks ago. Week 1: I stabilized on 0.5mg Clonazepam per night, no more, no less. That went really smoothly with no issues whatsoever.

 

Week 2: I dropped to 0.375mg/night. I had one night of bad sleep, and then slept fine on subsequent nights. No withdrawal symptoms during the day.

 

Week 3: I dropped to 0.25mg/night. My sleep was ok. Maybe a little rough at first but not too bad. Got a little bit jittery and shaky during the day for a few days. But it was manageable.

 

Week 4: I dropped to 0.125mg/night. In hindsight, I tapered way too quickly. I wish I could rewind time and do 0.25mg/night for at least a month. Over the first week on this dose, sleep has been a huge problem. Bad problems with being jittery, shaky, having to sit in a recliner for hours and hours each day during attacks trying to calm myself down. Several days, I've had several hour bursts of psychiatric problems, maybe like depression episodes, where I just felt hopeless and trapped in the middle of feeling terrible.

 

Luckily, sleep is slowly returning to me. I've now slept at least 5 hours 3 nights in a row in the second week since dropping to 0.125. The depression episodes have been gone for a few days. I still get shaky and jittery, but it's manageable right now. I feel like I'm trending up, which feels fantastic, even if my fingers are shaking and it's hard to type.

 

My plan is to stay at 0.125mg for several weeks. I'm not tapering further until I'm really comfortable on this dose. Then I'll probably taper to 0.125mg every other night for a while, and then go from there to zero.

 

Getting good advice from the medical community has been so hard. My primary doctor tells me, "Just take the full dose of Clonazepam for several months until you're well past the Covid symptoms. It won't hurt you. You need sleep. And if 1 pill won't get you sleep, take 2 pills." He's clueless about benzos.

 

The psychiatric group I work with has encouraged me to get off benzos. But even their advice is terrible. They told me that since I was on a low dose and only for 2.5 months, my taper should just be going from 0.5mg to 0.25mg. Then after a week on 0.25mg I should just go to zero. I can't begin to imagine how awful that taper would have been.

 

My experience is that the "experts" don't really know what they're talking about, and I'm kind of on my own figuring out the best way how to proceed from here. And I'm joining this forum because I'm hoping to get some other opinions about how to proceed.

 

So, given the following:

• I've been on roughly 0.5mg of Clonazepam per day since mid-January.
  
• I've been on 800mg per day of Gabapentin since early February
  
• I've been on 10mg per day of Propranolol since early February
  
• I've been on 100mg per day of Trazadone since mid-March
  
• I've tapered down over several weeks to 0.125mg of Clonazepam, and the last taper was way too fast and made for a pretty nasty week of symptoms
  

 

What do you think of my plan to first focus only on the Clonazepam and leave the other drugs alone? Then stay at 0.125mg until I'm well-adjusted to it, even if that takes several weeks before dropping down to taking the same dose every other day?

 

I'm slowing down this whole taper process. If I don't get off completely until the end of May or the end of June or whatever, that's fine with me. But I do want to be off as soon as safely possible.

 

Then once I'm off, I'll start focusing on getting off the other drugs. Fingers crossed I can be drug free by the end of the summer.

 

I'd love to hear people's thoughts!

 

(I should also mention that I'm a 53 year-old male. Prior to getting covid in early January, I was healthy with absolutely no incidents of psychiatric or neurological problems. No prior issues with anxiety. No neurological issues. I was completely fine until first covid messed me up, and then the benzos messed me up. Btw, I'm pretty sure that the covid symptoms are resolved now, and all I'm dealing with is benzo issues. But the benzo issues and the covid issues I had are so similar, it's hard to know what's caused by what.)

[[Pa...]]

Hello ClintM, welcome to BenzoBuddies,

 

I’m always sorry to hear when members have jumped from the frying pan into the fire with their doctors help, you’re in the benzo fire now and its a nasty place to be.

 

I’m glad you’re going to slow it down but I have to caution you about taking a dose every other day, this isn’t the best way to go about it since this could produce a whip lash effect of symptoms.  Keeping your blood serum levels constant is the better approach so might I suggest you make your doses smaller through either dry cutting a measuring on a jewelers scale or adding water to your tablet to make a solution.

 

You’re right about waiting to taper your other medications until you’re off of the Clonazepam but I’d wait until you’re fully recovered before attempting, short times users of benzodiazepines generally recover in months rather than years so hopefully you can start tapering after that.  I’m told Gabapentin can be challenging so waiting until you’re well enough to take that on would be wise.

 

I’ll provide some links to help you get started on the forum but keep asking for input from those who are traveling your same path.

 

Pamster

Colorado Consortium Benzodiazepine Deprescribing Guidance

 

Planning Your Withdrawal (Taper)

 

Withdrawal Support (during your taper)

 

Ashton Manual symptom list

[[Cl...]]

Thanks for the reply. Do you have a recommendation on a scale? I just looked briefly on Amazon, and I didn't see any that went below 0.001g = 1mg. But I'm already down to 0.125mg which is too small for any of the scales I saw to measure. (I've been cutting 0.5mg pills into quarters, which is super inaccurate, I know.)

[[Pa...]]

The scales you see on Amazon will work for you, we have tricks to help you be more accurate.  When you’re ready you can start a thread on the titration board and someone will drop by to help.  I didn’t taper but from what I’ve read here, using liquid is both easier and more accurate at the low doses but both will work so we have members using both methods.

[[Cl...]]

Awesome! Thanks!