Does withdrawal also base off of symptom management?

[[st...]]

Okay, so i'm like 2 weeks now off the last medication I took wich was a low dose benzodiazepine. Thing is, still not well. I keep coming across withdrawal related stuff, I have seen a lot of people who have come off ridiuculously high doses of benzos/antipsychotics/whatever and struggled... but managed overall.

I don't seem to fit in the category of people who can taper. I just cannot figure it out, although at this point would get good symptom relief on just a low dose of something I think. And i'm considering either a low dose of pregabalin or maybe even low dose of risperidone/seroquel.

My question is basically, is withdrawal more than JUST tapering slowly? Are there other factors, like physical/overall mental health that come into play? Me being pretty poor overall health being a bad candidate for coming off at all really at this point. Thanks.

[[Br...]]

Hello @[st...]  I don't think anyone really knows why there's so much variation in how withdrawal affects individuals. I think it's likely general physical and mental health are factors in how one fares during withdrawal.  When we are taking multiple meds and supplements it can make it very hard to figure out what might be causing a difficult withdrawal.  But we do know that tapering too quickly is more likely to cause difficult withdrawal symptoms and that multiple tapers of psych meds are taxing to the central nervous system.  We also know that quitting psych meds of the same type prior to the current withdrawal is likely to set a person up for more severe withdrawal symptoms in subsequent tapers.  This is known as kindling: https://www.benzoinfo.com/kindling/ 

[[st...]]

11 minutes ago, [[B...] said:

Hello @[st...]  I don't think anyone really knows why there's so much variation in how withdrawal affects individuals. I think it's likely general physical and mental health are factors in how one fares during withdrawal.  When we are taking multiple meds and supplements it can make it very hard to figure out what might be causing a difficult withdrawal.  But we do know that tapering too quickly is more likely to cause difficult withdrawal symptoms and that multiple tapers of psych meds are taxing to the central nervous system.  We also know that quitting psych meds of the same type prior to the current withdrawal is likely to set a person up for more severe withdrawal symptoms in subsequent tapers.  This is known as kindling: https://www.benzoinfo.com/kindling/ 

Yeah i'm very familiar with kindling. I'm just to the point where even a small reinstatement is risky.

Gonna try Olly Goodbye Stress gummies.

[[le...]]

On 10/01/2024 at 18:05, [[s...] said:

Yeah i'm very familiar with kindling. I'm just to the point where even a small reinstatement is risky.

Gonna try Olly Goodbye Stress gummies.

I will ask my mom what was in the herbal tea she gave me every night during the beginning of my taper, it put me to sleep everynight

[[Nu...]]

On 10/01/2024 at 13:44, [[s...] said:

Okay, so i'm like 2 weeks now off the last medication I took wich was a low dose benzodiazepine. Thing is, still not well. I keep coming across withdrawal related stuff, I have seen a lot of people who have come off ridiuculously high doses of benzos/antipsychotics/whatever and struggled... but managed overall.

I don't seem to fit in the category of people who can taper. I just cannot figure it out, although at this point would get good symptom relief on just a low dose of something I think. And i'm considering either a low dose of pregabalin or maybe even low dose of risperidone/seroquel.

My question is basically, is withdrawal more than JUST tapering slowly? Are there other factors, like physical/overall mental health that come into play? Me being pretty poor overall health being a bad candidate for coming off at all really at this point. Thanks.

There are definitely inter-individual factors that come into play. These haven't really been studied and elucidated in the literature, but it seems well established that we cannot, at this point, predict how or why people respond so much differently. Everyone's journey is highly individualized.