New here and trying to get off clonazepam

[[...]]

Hi, 

I’m new here and regret to say I have been on clonazepam for 22 years. I had panic attacks and was prescribed the medication, I would have never taken it if I was more informed of the side effects and dependence. At one point I was taking 6mg to help me sleep. 
I have been able to slowly reduce to 1 mg. I feel like I am stuck at 1 mg.

I would love any encouragement or advice on how to continue until I am off of it…

thanks 

[[je...]]

Hi @[...]

Welcome to BenzoBuddies!

You did a great job in reducing your dose. Do you mind explaining why you feel you’re stuck at this dose? Are you taking any other medication?

We’ll be happy to help you. 

[[...]]

I’m am taking supplements, Ashwaganda and 5-HTP. 
I feel stuck because every time I try to go a little lower, I get this weird “jolting awake” thing that lasts for hours or until I take just a bit more to put me at 1 mg. 
Thank you for your support 

[[je...]]

Can you tell me a bit more about how you’ve been reducing your dose? How much of your dose have you reduced in the past year?

[[...]]

I actually started tapering about 2-3 years ago and slowly decreased my dose to less than 1 mg. About a year and half ago, I got bad anxiety for no apparent reason and found myself slowly going back up to 2 mg. I took 12.5mg of Sertraline for about a year after that, I have been off sertraline for 4 months. And have been able to get back down to 1 mg.

 I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I use delta 8 but I think that is what helped me in lowering my dose and being able to fall asleep.

[[je...]]

Can you please give me your doses and the reductions you’ve made in the past three months? I need approximate dates with your doses. I apologise for all these questions but unless we understand your history we cannot adequately help you. 

[[...]]

No problem, I appreciate your help. 
in the past 3 months I was able to reduce from 1.75 to approximately 1.5 by just taking a smaller portion of the 2 mg pill I have. When I felt like I was doing well on that I would go ahead and decrease the amount by kind of scraping some off until about a month ago when I was able to break it in half and take 1 mg. I have then tried to take a smaller dose, as I am tolerating the 1 mg. But whenever I try to lower it… I get the sleep issue and other tolerable symptoms.

[[je...]]

Can you describe your symptoms to me? You say it’s tolerable right? Are you functional?

[[...]]

Some of the WD symptoms I didn’t realize were from decreasing clonazepam, like bright flashes of light in my eyes from time to time, I am not sure if it’s also causing minor memory issues, like forgetting what I wanted to say or struggling to find a word, some dizziness headaches and muscle aches. The symptom that has really kept me at 1 mg is the difficulty falling asleep… it’s like right when I am close to sleep my body jerks awake.

 I am functional, ironically I am a nurse. I am able to spend time with others, I do feel embarrassed when I can’t remember what I was going to say or can’t find a word… this occurs daily even at work…

Thank you 🥰

[[Ri...]]

I’m at 1mg and I’m gonna hang out here for a few months. Got Dr Mark Horowitz book on tapering, Gonna follow his recommend taper the rest of the way down..

[[je...]]

There are two things that stand out to me. If I understand correctly a month ago you went from approximately 1.5mg to 1mg. That’s a 33% reduction. We generally recommend reductions of no more than 5-10%. 

The next thing is that you don’t seem to be getting a consistent dose as you take a smaller portion of your pill but there’s no telling how much you’re actually consuming unless you’re at half a pill right? 

All these factors are less than ideal in tapering and can cause an increase in symptoms. I’m not judging you. I’m just explaining what might be happening. Right now I think it will be best if you hold your dose for a while.

 I do need to mention to you however that insomnia and struggling to fall asleep is unfortunately part and parcel of withdrawal. Sometimes this will not improve as you taper down. During my 3 year benzo journey I’ve fluctuated between 1-5 hrs of sleep and sometimes it can take me more than two hours to fall asleep. I don’t have the jerks but I know many people get them. But let’s see what happens when you hold for a while and hopefully it will improve. Are you able to get 0.5mg pills to taper?

[[...]]

I appreciate your advice and you are correct I am not able to be sure that it’s just 1 mg. I will ask my for doctor for 1 mg dose.

thank you so much for the information and support 

[[je...]]

It will be better if you can get 0.5mg pills.  Going forward reducing from 1mg it is easier with the smaller pills.  

[[...]]

17 minutes ago, [[j...] said:

It will be better if you can get 0.5mg pills.  Going forward reducing from 1mg it is easier with the smaller pills.  

I have an appointment in 2 weeks and I will ask then.

Thank you 

[[...]]

Congrats getting down to 1 mg.  

My max dose was 1.5 mg daily.  I reduced down to 0.25 mg daily over 4 months.  The taper to this point was awful. But for me 0.25 mg and below was unbelievably painful and the worst part of the taper.

I had my psychiatrist prescribe a liquid compounded clonazepam solution once I hit 0.25 mg daily.  The concentration was 0.1mg/mL.  Only cost $40 and I didn't even use the entire bottle.  I went down approximately 0.01mg per day (0.1mL).  The pharmacy gave me a syringe or you could use a TB or 3 mL syringe.

I was pretty steadfast on tapering off so I suffered through it.  I had to go on medical leave as I was basically catatonic and delusional during this part of the taper.  If you went down .01 mg daily that would take you 100 days, which is probably way too fast.  If you follow ashton guideline they would recommend tapering off this dose around 16-32 weeks (1 mg klonopin = 20 mg valium).  So if you went down 0.01 mg every other day you would be off in 200 days or so.  I think the benefit to the compounded formulation is you don't get those big drops every week or so.  Just gradual daily reductions.

Maybe try something similar?

 

 

I should note, I started my 1.5 mg taper using 0.5 mg tablets as they are easy to score.  Then reduced to 0.25 mg dissolvable tablets.  I tried 0.125 dissolvable as well but the drop was too large for me.  So we went to the compounded solution.

Edited March 19 by [...]