My Plan: Fast taper then HOLD for months.

[[sl...]]

Background:

Clorazepate for a few months then cold turkey.

No benzos for 4 years. Then start Lorazepam at 1 mg at night for GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) and updosed up to 7.5 mg per day over the course of  9 years on it. (time flies!).

CURRENT SITUATION

Doctors angry at me for updosing, so I want to downdose to 5mg and then 2.5 (my life is complex right now I cannot titrate). I get tinnitus and

see 'glimpses' of light and worry a lot, with fast tapering. But this is 'my style' and I have done it before with clorazapate (first fast tapering then cold turkey). 

Doctor told me I will need 4 full years to do slow tapering, so I am doing it a bit faster disobeying the doctor. I had other doctors asking me to cold turkey when I was on 3mg/day but i didnt want to,as its dangerous.

PLAN

From 7 mg /day down to 2.5 /day (just to sleep) but i plan to hold, possibly for months (at 2 mg/day) and then try titration of some sort when my life is less messed up that it is right now (just relocated). 

 

ps: still have no history tab option on my profile, i also logged out and log back in, still not tab, maybe I need to be older in forum 'days' before I get that tab

PICTURE OF MY TABS ON MY PROFILE

[[Ma...]]

Hi Slowsloth! 
Thanks for stopping by my topic, so I wanted to return the favour.

I guess I’m a bit hestitant about your plan. Can you elaborate on how fast / what timeframe goes with going from 7mg to 2,5mg? And how are you going to taper (tablet/liquid/compound etc)?

Like: a quick taper goes well until it doesn’t and then sh*t hits the fan. And sometimes you can’t undo the damage. So that would be my concern. Also because CT in the past may have sensitized your brain. 

And if sleep and GAD where a problem before, you might want to avoid a huge flare up in those symptoms. 

 

[[sl...]]

I also think my plan may be unrealistic but im carried away by success stories of fast tapering. 

I started like 9 years ago with 1 mg only per day and last 2 years I took 5-7.5 mg/day split in 3 doses per day.

so I am starting taper from 5-7.5 per day with my final aim to skew (not take any benzo morning and noon but limit to before sleep intake).

Doctors told  me to skew the dose i feel most comfortable with, so I told them its the morning dose I can skew and focus on noon and evening(before sleep) doses. So for a while I went from 7.5 to 5 without concrete plan just not taking morning dose as advised by doctors.

I stayed on 5 mg per day split in two doses (noon + before sleep).

Then I started taking half the 2.5 mg evening dose (1.25 instead of 2.5 mg per noon). My final aim is to take a low dose only for sleeping.

For 5 days now I take nothing morning and noon. Only 2.5 before sleep. The overal time of tapering is roughly sleaking 2 months of trying. I think its a fast taper because I am on 7.5 mg/day for quite some time but I often ''forgot'' morning dose (the most ''comfortable'' for me dose to forget, as advised by doctors). In general doctors told me I should limit my benzo intake to like,1 mg per day for life. They didn't advise to stop comlpletely and I would be glad if I can rely only on 1mg to sleep and have no side effects anymore 

- tinnitus

- extra worrying

- visual flashes

- fear of everything including drinking water

- bloating / gastroparesis on worst days

- general feeling of being very nervous all the time and very angry.

- mental breakdowns daily when life gets too difficult

-----

I know from experience that these symptoms will go away at some point or lessen but apparently I prefer a fast taper than titration, maybe this is wrong. I don't now yet how to do titration using water and powdering the pills I am clueless but also right now relocating homes and i find it hard to be organized for titration. I may do that though after I reach 2mg at night dose (the only dose), then it will be hard getting to 1 mg (based on previous taper experiences) so i will need a very slow pace of reduction. For now I will ''hold'' at 2.5 for sleep and maybe I re-instate a tiny dose for noon like 1 mg on rough days with lots of withdrawal symptoms but not daily, would like to use this 1 mg when I feel really bad. Again from my own experience with tapering benzos, if i reinstate any of it, it backrolls me to overal more lorazepam per day and I get annoyed by that.

[[sl...]]

Today I had to do chores and i could not even walk straight on very low dose so I took some in breakfast and decided to do slower taper.

My new plan (from 5-7.5 mg/day lorazepam) is:

1 mg morning

1 mg noon

2.5 mg sleep

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This for about 20-30 days, then remove the morning intake cause usually I can manage that. Then one month of 

1 mg noon

2 mg sleep

--------

Hold this for 1 month or 2 months..

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Then go from 3 mg/day into 2.5 for one month, hold, then 2

And THEN hold 2mg long haul (maybe 3 months). Then start titration (very slow and organized tapering).

From my experience when I go to 2mg/day then I have huge problems with withdrawal. It is the step I dread the most and fail most. My doctor said I dont have to cut off lora completely but I should take 1 mg only per night and no more ideally. He did say it will take years to achieve that but I will try to do it in six months. Possibly though these six months will extend. Even if it takes 1 full year its a lot shorter than the 4 years my doctor predicted. 

[[No...]]

Maybe you should listen to your body and less to watch the calendar? I am not even sure if it is possible to stay on 1 mg in the end, is your doctor sure about this? You are in the beginning as it looks and have a chance to do it right, be careful with  this, make sure you are safe. 

[[sl...]]

Hello, I dropped out of this log but now I start a new attempt to withdraw a bit. One of my doctors said I am on ''pinched high dose'' when I was at 6 mg/day lorazepam. Now I am at 4 mg /day thanks to moving to another country where the lorazepam locally produced is not 2.5 per pill but 2 mg per pill. Took a while to adjust but now I am OK at 4 mg per day.

Well my sleep is disturbed (i sleep about 5-6 hours and not 8 hours) and sometimes my sleep has breaks every 2 hours, but still I consider it a luxury sleeping in total 6 hours. I was taken down to 4mg from 6mg/day abruptly. That happened like six months ago and I still kinda struggle sleep-wise, but in total I am functional, therefore OK...

So my current plan in which I am kinda OK, is the following:

2mg about 3 hours after waking up

+

2mg to sleep

I worry about a relatively high dose to sleep (i used to sleep at 1mg not at 2 mg). I want to reduce it but I know my sleep will become a living hell, so I dont want to 'touch' that yet. I want to continue enjoying normal sleep...

so I will reduce daytime intake, although that cause hand tremors, flu like symptoms (the one I hate in summer time is higher body temperature but now winter is coming so I feel happier about this).

I feel this is the right time to start a new effort to go down to about 1 mg/night (doctors aren't sure I can live without benzos, although that would be ideal, they say I must take anti-bipolar drugs if im going to go off benzodiazepines completely and even going to eradicate benzos will take ''years' they warned me).

I am a fool making BIG PLANS, so I enjoy to visualize my ''success'', I visualize that in one year I am down to 2mg/day (possibly not all of it for sleeping but 1mg daytime and 1mg to sleep). From 12 from now that is, beginning of 2025 Fall, i should be in 2 mg.

then by Fall 2026 I should be in 1 mg or elimination and continue only the anti-bipolarity drug which my doctor claims can help me go off benzos or it ''should'' be the one I will continue for life and not on benzos. Some doctors in my recent past were appauled that I am on lorazepam for 12 years now and question why did this happen when apparently I needed other type of psycho treatment (drugs for bipolar mania).

I hope its not 'too late' to go off lorazepam. I tried to transfer to diazepam with horrible consequences in both attempts so I will stick with lorazepam. I still don't know why both my attempts (with doctor support) to go on diazepma failed so much (in both cases, although taking equal amounts of diazepam as with -stopping- lorazepam, I failed to sleep for 3 days going into pre-shock mode, so my doctor had me return to lorazepam.

I am also going through a rough time in life, my relative who used to help me with little but important money per month for 15 years, he suddenly stopped doing that despite his economic assets growing upwards, he says I ''stole'' his money and not giving back and thats why he stopped suddenly, I applied for both jobs and got rejected by all of them, with only 1 interview, as I am over 40 and lack job experience, and then, the government who gives money to poor people that are jobless, denied giving me even the so called ''guaranteed minimum income'' because I sold my only asset (a house) 4 years ago and they think I am hiding profits from it under my bed or something :/

I lost all that money. Sorry for personal details, I know this is not the right place, but just to show that I am willing to go down on lorazepam while I have tremendous economic stress. The medicines and doctors are FREE or SUPER CHEAP where I live now so I am not complaining for that instead I am grateful for that. But the cruelty by job givers, gov and ''family'' all combined is hitting me a bit. Yet I cannot go on relying on drugs (benzos) , I should go off that and rely on ability to get and hold jobs to sustain myself and stop feeling bad about my family abandoning me financially.

I dont care that they abandoned me but the way they did it (without warning) and that from rumors I hear they are wealthier now than when they used to fully support me (all basic needs met, cheapest tiny studio rental, food, medicines, private doctors back then, now I am on public doctors).

One of my relatives who used to give me money also gave me lorazepam (he is a doctor but not psychiatrist). He used to buy  it without prescription and merely hand it over, along with money. I dont accuse him of getting me high on lorazepam but EVERYONE around me (doctors mainly but also other people) claim that he was wrong to give me as many lorazepam as I wanted and that he is to be blamed for the lorazepam addiction but also for the fact that I didnt have to work ever, and he was meeting all my basic life expenditure needs - nothing luxurious but still its a big luxury knowing you can pay your rent on time, eat plenty of food, pay all yours bills on time, without sweating at a job).

Again sorry for the personal details, but I want to illuminate to other people IF anyone read my log, about who I am in relation to why I abused lorazepam and why I am on it for 12 years.

Edited Wednesday at 01:44 by [sl...]

[[sl...]]

AT  one point,  I was on 10/12 mg lorazepam per day. I feel stupid for doing that to myself but one psychietrist back them told me this is ''totally normal dose'' (about 2-3 other psychiatrists later on strongly disagreed). I think it has to do with where you stand in society and what culture you come from. The psychiatrist who told me its totally fine to take 10 mg/day lorazepam is from a very expensive clinic that only VIPs and very rich people go to.

The psychietrist who told me I am on insane high dose are all from the public hospital sector.

anyways, one psychietrist in a public hospital even asked me to go down suddenly to 6mg/day (from 12mg/day) and also join an NGO for drug abuse. He told me I am a major drug abuser at 12 mg/day whereas the private super expensive clinic doctor said its a totally normal dose. Whom to believe?

I take lorazepam for 12 years roughly, but drugs for bipolar disorder I take only about 4 years now. I don't understand psychiatrists on this issue. I visited psychiatrist every month to take prescription for lorazepam and they never suspected I have bipolar disorder. Never not even once. They did suspect depression and I failed on 3 different antidepressants but never bipolar disorder. Then just before covid-lockdown I had the first prescription of bipolar related drugs, given to me as therapy actually for abusing benzos...

For some time, like 2 years, I was on very high gose without prescription because a doctor relative of mine would simply buy as much as I wanted and give it to me. At some point a pharmacy he is friends with, would give it to me, without prescription. So for 2years I was on high dose without doctor supervision.

Edited Wednesday at 01:41 by [sl...]

[[sl...]]

Oh no I just realized this is not the LOGBOOK area of the forum. So I will start a withdrawal logbook in the relevant forum section. Apologies.