Need Advice and maybe others experiences that are no longer tapering.

[[Ca...]]

Hi, I’m curious as I’ve been diligently following my taper plan very mindfully and listening to my body. I was on Ativan .5 my for a short amount of time never actually took it daily but ended up tachycardic and knew it was causing issues and went off it cold Turkey this was back in January.

Since then I’ve switched over to Valium 5mg but it was split between an AM and PM dose which was compounded into a capsule and I was supplementing with liquid Valium as well to follow a micro taper. I tapered around 10% over the course of each month until August when I hit a nasty bump (ditch) in the road. I think at this point I hit acute withdrawal because prior to I wasn’t having any symptoms really tapering but I got a whole bunch of them at the same time and no matter how long I held they didn’t subside. I ended up consulting with Dr. Jennifer Leigh after developing some nasty histamine stuff which I’m now in a low histamine diet and off of all my supplements. I also was terrified to taper any lower. At this time I was at 3mg, I decided after talking extensively with the nursing coordinator at Gallus Detox Center. They follow the Ashton manual so I was interested in doing a cut in a supervised setting, which I did. I’m at the part of the taper where it’s listed on “Here” doing the 5-10% then getting towards the end and then it looks like 16%, 20%, 25%, 33%, 50% and then off. I did my 16% cut at Gallus and I was surprised how well I did. I held for three weeks and did the 20% cut at home. Same symptoms and things leveled off and then held another three weeks and just did the 25% cut this past week. I wouldn’t say at all I’m symptom free. I am still in a state of withdrawal but I can tell when I cut and then when things level off. 
 

anyway, these are my questions for those who are currently tapered. Im currently at 1.5mg of Valium (.75 AM and .75 PM). On here I’m following the “stepping off table” my next cut would be 33% which is another .5mg. It does say I can hold for 1-2 weeks instead of 3. I noticed once I hit that 3 weeks I start to have a flare up of symptoms after things were already leveled off, I think someone said it was called transient withdrawal, where your body is then used to the taper at that point but it’s not enough to hold back withdrawal symptoms essentially. I could have the terms wrong. If it fine to cut at the 2 weeks mark then. If I follow that pattern I would go to then 1.5mg to 1mg hold another two weeks see how I feel then 1mg to .5mg etc..following the standard table. Questions: how awful is it to drop that morning dose? And how awful is it to jump off at .5mg at the end? Those are my biggest fears at this point and wanted some feedback on that. I question how fast I’m going but it’s following the table and I’ve followed it this whole time and it’s significantly slower the Ashton Manual. I just question going to quickly even if my body feels ok to go down again. I just don’t want to mess anything up and the trauma from going cold Turkey off the Ativan back in January has me spooked, because it was rough. Thank you!

[[ou...]]

Going from 0.5mg to 0mg is no worse than going from 1mg to 0.5mg. You could also consider making 0.25mg cuts going forward.

[[Ca...]]

I thought about that and when I get to .5 twice a day doing it 18 hours then 24 hours so it wouldn’t be so harsh. Thanks for feedback.