General question: a withdrawal symptom now is a result of the intake of the previous how many days?

[[cu...]]

Regarding diazepam in particular, but can also be applied to other benzo's if you know the half life and stable plasma level time.

Half life of metabolites is between 20-100 hours, so let's say 4 days max. Ashton manual says one metabolite (desmethyldiazepam) even has a half life of 36-200 hours (even though other sources say max 100 hours), so max 8 days.
In a research where they gave 10mg dia for a week and then let people quit cold turkey, people had the worst sleep on day 6.
Stable plasma levels are achieved after 7-14 days. So it seems like there is some accumulation up until day 14?
Also read something in the Ashton manual about accumulation in fat. 
And personal differences in metabolism.

So if you get a withdrawal symptom or you want to prevent/minimize them, at how many days of intake do you need to look?
 

Edited April 8 by [cu...]

[[Ma...]]

No way to know for sure because of the long and variable half life as you note and peoples individual biology.  5 half lives is the time to clear it out of your body which could be anywhere from 100-500 hours (roughly 4-20 days). So any symptoms in that window could be WD.  Most people anecdotally seem to notice Valium WD around 7-10 days it seems which makes sense.  This also makes it a smoother taper but also one where people can go too fast when they start feeling confident.  The cuts catch up with them.  This is why you never want to cut before 10-14 days.

Edited April 8 by [Ma...]

[Guest [Do...]]

3 hours ago, [[M...] said:

This is why you never want to cut before 10-14 days.

Hi, i dont understand this, can you explain please?

[[Ma...]]

You need to give your body time to adjust to each new dose if you are cutting and holding at a new dose.  10-14 days is what you should shoot for because otherwise you may not stabilize.