Tapering from 0.50mg (now at 0.25mg)

[[ti...]]

Thanks @[je...], as always you’re an invaluable voice of reason. Feeling better already about this. Sounds good

[[ti...]]

Hey @[je...] and other BB community members - I wanted to provide an update on my taper. Since my last post, I dropped from .19 to .18mg starting March 3 and am now at .17mg (been at .17 for 6 days). During this time interestingly the symptom I had been most concerned about--sleep--has gotten significantly better, aside from 1-2 nights has been ~6-7 hours per night. The POTS like symptoms of increased HR from standing, etc. have waned significantly, as have chest pain symptoms. New ones have emerged / others gotten a bit worse - there is still a laundry list of symptoms I am experiencing (some of which have emerged / become more prominent since whatever occurred that night from the restaurant). They still include:

• Cortisol rushes in morning - feelings of increased anxiety / adrenaline - these can vay by the day, they are tolerable but obviously annoying
• Muscle burning (this one is quite mild) - lower body, upper body, and head/neck
• Headaches - both pain and pressure like (pretty mild/tolerable but annoying)
• Anxiety - both thought based and physical, neither are severe but they are noticeable. Both can be alleviated by adjusting environment/activity/being around people, etc.
• Depression - I have had pretty dark/hopeless thoughts, though been staying at my parents and improved over past few days. These come and go, hasn't been much of a shift from past 6-7 weeks / can't really draw that much connection to dose decreases. I am starting to see a therapist to address these - long story short my life was perfectly great/normal then rapidly become really shitty, and will be not great for an indeterminate amount of time until I am off K, recovered from withdrawal, and CNS has stabilized from the other medication stoppages/etc it has been through
• Feel like breathing gets a bit slower - notably this occurs after I have taken a dose, so may be more of a side effect than a withdrawal symptom. I also had a sleep study done and was informed I apparently have mild sleep apnea (only hypoapneas occur) - I am 99% certain I did not have any kind of sleep breathing disorder before all this started and 100% certain getting off K in the long run will improve it, if not make it go away entirely...
• Demotivation / out of it feeling

Still getting visual disturbances these wax and wane over the days too - slight flashes of light, split second dots in vision; annoying head sensations.  There are a solid number more (e.g., sometimes have weird rxn to food--been really focused on eating as healthy as possible though - primarily whole grains, nuts, veggies, fruit, chicken/fish), but perhaps cannot entirely blame benzo as I have been on medical leave / life has been upended past 3 months, had suboptimal sleep, am still probably adjusting to Lexapro (even though held constant dose for past month now and plan to continue doing so), and I am sure still CNS destabilization from discontinuing Zoloft and the other medications I had tried to help with sleep, etc..

A few important items to consider though about all of this.

First, while I am getting quite a few symptoms, I would not say any are intolerable/severe, but rather annoying. They would make doing my current job challenging, but it was challenging/annoying before all of this mess started, and I could likely handle an easier one. There is a reasonable portion of the day I feel somewhat close to normal, and also times I do not. 

Second, since the event a few weeks ago, it has been very hard to track clear improvement/deprovement and find a make X dosage cut then experience Y symptoms for days 2-5, then die down by day 8-9 sort of trend, so I have been tentative about making additional cuts. That said, I feel this drug is clearly toxic to me, not every negative effect is associated with tapering/withdrawal but rather usage, really want to get off (albeit safely) as soon as I can, knowing I will have to face increased insomnia/anxiety issues because that is what it was originally prescribed for... 

Tonight I plan to cut from .17mg to either .16 or .15mg. Any advice on whether it would make more sense to cut to .16 then wait ~4 days to see if tolerable then cut again to .15, or go straight to .15 tonight? Additionally, I welcome any commentary/advice on anything I have mentioned, whether holding or tapering more rapidly than I just said could make sense? It has become abundantly clear I am not in the kind of situation where I make a cut, feel wierd for 1-2 weeks, then feel normal again - I am in a constant state of experiencing at least some 'side effects' / not being myself but know getting off this drug is one further step to my longer term wellbeing.

Edited March 15 by [ti...]

[[je...]]

I’m glad to hear things are going fairly well. The fact that you describe your symptoms as annoying rather than severe is very promising. It seems as if this taper is working for you right now and since you’re making reductions in short succession I would suggest you go down to 0.16. 

I’m hoping symptoms will remain mild for the duration of your taper. 

[[Ma...]]

Hope this is the case for me.  Sleep/insomnia is by far my worst symptom. I’m down to 0.4K, down from 1.0.  It’s crazy how some people seem to improve with some of their symptoms as they go lower and others get worse.  I’ve stopped trying to guess what’s gonna happen and try to just stick to the process and know I’ll get off and heal eventually.  

[[ti...]]

@[je...] - thanks for the advice. My plan then is down by .01mg to .16mg, hold for hopefully no more than ~4 days, then cut to .15mg. @[Ma...] yea this process has been super weird - I feel like I have gotten a very large number of the symptoms (like dozens of them), often at random times--they come and go--but none are at a severe/horrid level, and I strongly suspect once I get lower to like .10-.12 range my sleep is going to go to shit again, but as they say, 'one day at a time;' and yea agreed hope is my primary fuel. 

On a more optimistic note, this entire hellish (slightly over) 3 months is making me appreciate 'the little things' far more than I ever have, and once I make it through and am healed, I am going to treasure every normal day for the rest of my life, far more so than if I had not gone through this.

[[Wa...]]

On 15/03/2024 at 16:03, [[t...] said:

@[je...] - thanks for the advice. My plan then is down by .01mg to .16mg, hold for hopefully no more than ~4 days, then cut to .15mg. @[Ma...] yea this process has been super weird - I feel like I have gotten a very large number of the symptoms (like dozens of them), often at random times--they come and go--but none are at a severe/horrid level, and I strongly suspect once I get lower to like .10-.12 range my sleep is going to go to shit again, but as they say, 'one day at a time;' and yea agreed hope is my primary fuel. 

On a more optimistic note, this entire hellish (slightly over) 3 months is making me appreciate 'the little things' far more than I ever have, and once I make it through and am healed, I am going to treasure every normal day for the rest of my life, far more so than if I had not gone through this.

@[ti...] definitely hear you on that last part. Sounds like you’re hanging in there. Hope things clear up as you get to the lower doses!

[[ti...]]

Hey @[je...] and BB community. So I cut to .16mg, held for 3 days, then last night cut to .15mg. So far since the cut down to .16mg I wouldn't say symptoms have really gotten worse, they have just shifted around. E.g., gone from having worse headaches / muscle burning / depression to now just feeling more on edge, baseline level of anxiousness that isn't great but is tolerable, a bit of elevated HR in morning but more 'with it' than previous days (i.e., less sedated/depressed but a bit more anxious/alert). So really not following a typical cut and hold pattern, and maybe this is a sign some of the symptoms are side effects rather than withdrawal/consequences of dose reduction? Hard for me to put a finger on it. Sleep has continued to be decent, but pretty much always have uncomfortable cortisol rush in the morning. Plan is to take .15mg again tonight, and probably following night although honestly I want off this stuff so maybe if tomorrow is not any worse cut to .14mg. I welcome any thoughts on this. 

Edited March 19 by [ti...]

[[je...]]

Are you currently working?

[[ti...]]

I am not and would rather avoid returning for some time. I think I could do a job right now, in particular one with hours later in the day, but not my old one as it is pretty high stress, has long/unpredictable hours, etc. I have been in a bad spot since this past December when I got hit with delayed onset Zoloft withdrawal, which started with bad insomnia, panic attacks, and insomnia. I tried re-starting Zoloft twice within the span of a week, and both times went very poorly (though in retrospect if I know a bit more like what our colleagues on Surviving AD knew, I would have reinstated at a much lower dose than I did and maybe not be in this situation right now). A little over a week after this started initial psych put me on .5mg/night klonopin and wanted me to start Wellbutrin simultaneously which I had a bad reaction to. He then essentially abandoned me, had to find a new provider, where I remained on just the 0.5mg/night Klonopin (at his suggestion...) until trying Lexapro, which I reacted okay to (except first two nights didn't sleep at all) and started improving in some ways on that (and continued to ramp that dosage up), at which point started reducing Klonopin dose as previously described. I tried multiple additional sleep drugs during this period as the insomnia still sucked (even at .5mg K), including Mirtazapine (once), Trazodone (a few times), Hydroxyzine (used this quite a bit but started to be less effective and have bad side effects), z-drugs (only tried these like 3-4 times, very quickly realizing how bad an idea it was to take while also on Klonopin); I stopped taking any meds in addition to Lexapro, Klonopin and the supplements over 5 weeks ago.

Strangely enough now only taking .15mg K (at a dose of 12mg Lexapro) with magnesium, melatonin, and vitamin D and sleeping better than ever did on .5mg K, and early on in this span of time. I attribute the improved sleep to holding/stabilizing on same dose of Lexapro (which I know took my body getting used to), and being further out from the attempted Zoloft reinstatement, poor Wellbutrin reaction, and cycling of different sleep meds many of which I reacted poorly to. Certainly though it is strange that as I have continued lowering K over the past 2-3 weeks sleep has remained quite good (at least relatively speaking) and not really declined at all. But other symptoms/side effects have come and go within each day, and no two days have really seemed the same. 

Getting on and tapering off of Klonopin has been but one component of this experience, granted the single most stressful part (if only I had been more clued in at the beginning when the psych issued the prescription, told me to take .5mg EVERY night, and said nothing about side effects, risks of extended use, etc.). I know all my CNS wants right now is a break from change, but I strongly suspect K is toxic to me, in addition to causing withdrawal symptoms (if that is possible), so want out as quickly as is safely possible.

[[je...]]

Thanks. I wanted to know how important it is to remain fully functional for a job. I think with your short term use and how you’ve been responding to cuts, you should be okay to keep rapidly reducing. However we never know how deep your dependency is and there is always the risk that these cuts might accumulate and catch up with you setting off worse withdrawal. However if it happens you can always updose. You just need to be aware of the risk. 

[[...]]

If you don’t mind me asking how are you able to taper your dose by such a small margin. I feel like doing that would really help me..

[[je...]]

[[ti...]]

@[...] - I am doing a dry cut with a scale. So I took the average weight of a pill then use a proportion to calculate what to weigh. My .5mg klonopin pills weigh an average of .170g. So to get to .15mg dose for example I do (.15/.5)*.170g = .051g, then split a pill and shave it until reaching that weight. There are many other methods and I do not claim to be an expert also there is a margin of error with this method to be aware of. 

[[ti...]]

Sounds good thanks @[je...]. Also in general what do you think of my case? I more mean the fact I seem to always have some symptoms, they shift, but all has been tolerable/not that bad (but still very abnormal compared to how I felt before, annoying, and distracting from functioning— but not debilitating) as I continue to reduce dose?

Also I assume based on what I heard about your experience you experienced continuous symptoms in addition to insomnia during your taper and never felt fully normal? You would just hold until the symptoms became tolerable for a sustained period?

 

[[je...]]

22 minutes ago, [[t...] said:

Sounds good thanks @[je...]. Also in general what do you think of my case? I more mean the fact I seem to always have some symptoms, they shift, but all has been tolerable/not that bad (but still very abnormal compared to how I felt before, annoying, and distracting from functioning— but not debilitating) as I continue to reduce dose?

It's hard to say because I believe your symptoms are not just benzo related but largely contributed to other psych drugs. And I'm not very familiar with withdrawal from other meds. But in general it seems like you're doing fairly well considering all the meds changes you've been through and the rapid reductions of the Clonazepam.

24 minutes ago, [[t...] said:

Also I assume based on what I heard about your experience you experienced continuous symptoms in addition to insomnia during your taper and never felt fully normal? You would just hold until the symptoms became tolerable for a sustained period?

Yes, you're right, I've never felt normal in three years. I do get windows where for a period of time I feel completely normal, but it will be for a couple of hours, it's not where my symptoms are gone for days and I've recovered fully. Once you start tapering and you've done it for a couple of months, you kind of learn what your baseline for your 'new normal'  or 'tapering normal' is. I also realised my first sign of going off the rails is an increase in intensity in my headaches. Then I needed to stop tapering. It's all about being in-tune with your body, your symptoms. But this comes with time and it's difficult to establish when you're new to tapering.

[[Wa...]]

Nice job tip keep it going 🤝

What dose are you planning to jump at?

@[ti...]

Edited March 22 by [Wa...]

[[ti...]]

Thanks @[Wa...]. How’s it going for you?

Just started .14mg last night so far today has been in line with other days, except maybe 30-45min less sleep last night. I’m really debating that one on the jump dose. I am thinking anywhere between .01 and .05mg. Depends on how things go in the coming weeks as I keep trying to lower the dose. @[je...] any input? I figure too soon to tell. 

Edited March 22 by [ti...]

[[Wa...]]

14 minutes ago, [[t...] said:

Thanks @[Wa...]. How’s it going for you?

Just started .14mg last night so far today has been in line with other days, except maybe 30-45min less sleep last night. I’m really debating that one on the jump dose. I am thinking anywhere between .01 and .05mg. Depends on how things go in the coming weeks as I keep trying to lower the dose. @[je...] any input? I figure too soon to tell. 

It’s okay, I plan to move to .08 Monday. I’ve been thinking about the jump dose quite a bit. Seems like people here have done 0 all the way up to .125. Not sure what peoples deciding factors are for it. My doc suggested .05 which is 10% of the pill. After .08 I will go to .06, depending on how I feel I may just jump there. If I have to go a little bit lower I don’t think it would be the end of the world though

[[je...]]

Most people here jump around 0.025-0.05 mg. It’s based on the Valium equivalent from Ashton’s recommendation to jump. 

[[ti...]]

Okay definitely not staying on this to .01 then. .03 at the lowest for jump dose. 

[[...]]

I'm on1.5 MG klonopin and just want to jump off.

 

100 MG seroquel etc.

 

Is this smart?

[[Pa...]]

[[ti...]]

@[Wa...] Are you feeling better later in taper in some ways? I found some of the adverse effects like slowed breathing and depression are declining as I taper; things in general seem clearer too. 

[[Wa...]]

21 hours ago, [[t...] said:

@[Wa...] Are you feeling better later in taper in some ways? I found some of the adverse effects like slowed breathing and depression are declining as I taper; things in general seem clearer too. 

Yes I did notice the clearer thinking as I got lower. I first experienced this around .15, almost like my brain came back online if that makes sense. Depression also has lifted significantly

[[ti...]]

On 24/03/2024 at 13:49, [[W...] said:

Yes I did notice the clearer thinking as I got lower. I first experienced this around .15, almost like my brain came back online if that makes sense. Depression also has lifted significantly

Good to hear. Trying to find some silver lining in this. Dropped to .13mg last night and continuing at .13mg next 2 days, hopefully can go down to .12mg after that.