A long hold has helped me tremendously…now I’m tapering again

[[Ma...]]

    I’ve seen lots of posts about people doing long holds (a month or more) both positive and negative experiences.  I just wanted to share my experience because it may help someone.  I started to taper 1mg of Clonazepam last July and my first cut was a big one to .75 mg.  I really tried to tough it out in spite of the insomnia and anxiety I suffered.  I continued to cut smaller for the next several months but still too fast, eventually down to .375 before the bottom fell out in November.  I was sleeping very little and my blood pressure was really high.  I felt awful every day.  Stupidly ended up taking a few rescue doses of Xanax.  
    My psychiatrist suggested going back to a higher dose so I grudgingly updosed back to 0.5 in late November.  I threw away all the Xanax I had.   It took almost 6 weeks but around early January I felt better than I had since I started my taper of Clonazepam, now on half my original dose.  My sleep has gone back to normal (7-8 hours) as has my blood pressure (was 140’s/90 now back to my normal 110/70). 
   I have just started to cut again, this time a small 5% cut to .475mg and am doing well.  I’ll stay here for another week and see how I feel.   know a lot of people will say I’m still a ways from getting off and they’d be right, but for me at least, getting stable for 10 weeks really really helped.  I will be much more cautious about the rate I cut at going forward and not make it a race.  But the fact that I’m down more than halfway and feeling better than when I started tells me I can do this and not be miserable.  My brain is slowly adjusting but it IS adjusting.  Yours will too.  

[[je...]]

I'm so happy you're doing better now! 5% sounds really good. I couldn't tolerate 10% cuts. So I just had to accept it will take some time if I wanted to be functional. You made some awesome progress. Congrats and good luck for the rest of your taper!