Any1 take a long hold for a break

[[Ja...]]

That’s me into a 3 week hold at 8mg,I should come down again tomorrow,I’ve so many family commitments though,that’s what’s holding me back

i duno if it’s a good idea to keep holding as well though,any1 just have a hold break,we cancelled a holiday last month because of me withdrawing,we were lucky to get it moved forward to October 

but it’s looking like I’ll still be doing the taper near October still at 1mg drop every 2 week at least,the thought of about a 1mg drop a week is a brutal thought 

so is a long hold an option,im still getting withdrawals symptoms holding but try work around them 

[[En...]]

1 hour ago, [[J...] said:

That’s me into a 3 week hold at 8mg,I should come down again tomorrow,I’ve so many family commitments though,that’s what’s holding me back

i duno if it’s a good idea to keep holding as well though,any1 just have a hold break,we cancelled a holiday last month because of me withdrawing,we were lucky to get it moved forward to October 

but it’s looking like I’ll still be doing the taper near October still at 1mg drop every 2 week at least,the thought of about a 1mg drop a week is a brutal thought 

so is a long hold an option,im still getting withdrawals symptoms holding but try work around them 

Yes I am going on one month hold here. I am going to see how I feel on Monday and continue my taper. I had a  very bad withdrawal this last cut but as you may know I made mistakes. I think it is a good idea to hold until you feel you can continue. It is scary to continue when your last cut was a horrible experience but we need to get off this stuff. 

[[Ja...]]

Eng101 yea I was the same bud with the drop last time,.and it’s a gruesome thought to drop the dose again,a bit of sleeps actually quite nice to,.yea it’s a hard 1 stepping down again bud 

[[Cr...]]

Maybe other people can chime in but I always had a theory when it comes to tapering.

Yes big cuts can be brutal and quickly felt, but another reason people have trouble when they get towards lower doses is because they are already experiencing long-term withdrawal/healing from the cumlination of their previous cuts.

Basically when you do a cut and feel an upsurge in symptoms a few days or weeks later, that is a mini-acute withdrawal. When you go back to baseline after a few weeks the acute wd from that cut has ended... but even if you held your dose from this point you will eventually experience worse days again because your PAWS phase of those cuts will begin. Unlike acute it won't be as rough, but since it's appearance is random it may occasionally stack with the acute wd of your next cut. And that is when people run into the proverbial "brick wall" sometimes and need to hold a month or two.

Say someone gets down from 1mg of klonopin to .25mg after 1 year and then decides to hold. They may still go through the 6 to 24 month withdrawal period to heal the .75mg worth of tempory damage even though they are still on .25mg. Thus people will say "this small amount isn't helping at all! I should just quit c/t"

That is why even when you hold, healing is going on. It is also a reason to keep moving forward whenever you feel capable because the countdown for the healing from your very last cut won't begin until you make that last cut.

It doesn't make sense to speed up your cuts in one sense because you will just be stacking several smaller PAWS withdrawal cuts on top of each other and it will catch up to you. That is still far better than a c/t where you are experiencing withdrawal from 100% of the downregulation all at once.

What do you guys think?

Edited June 6 by [Cr...]

[[Cr...]]

So when people need to do a longer hold than normal, they are not doing so necessarily because the last cut alone caused more intense symptoms, they may actually be waiting out a one month long PAWS wave that finally hit them from a cut they made 4 months ago.

Seem plausible?

Edited June 6 by [Cr...]

[[En...]]

1 minute ago, [[C...] said:

So when people need to do a longer hold than normal, they are not doing so necessarily because the last cut they caused more symptoms, they may actually be waiting out a one month long PAWS wave that finally hit them from a cut they made 4 months ago.

Seem plausible?

@crono do you think a 2 week hold is enough time between cuts or should you wait longer? When you hit the wall as I have is one month hold enough or should I hold longer if I am still having some wave days?

Edited June 6 by [En...]

[[Ja...]]

Crono very well explained bud,I think I’ve went slightly over the drop this time but yea just because of the fear of dropping again

i must be ready though as I’m sleeping 5 hours,I see the sleep as a good indicator,the waking trembles eased as well

most my decisions are family based as I do fear big time of ruining that,but I also know personal health is as important,.there must be a hell of a lot of folk get stuck between decisions because of this 

 

[[Ja...]]

Crono yea I’ve noticed that bad waves creep up on you,.I never thought as it as mabie a paws,.yea it truly is best to get this crap out the system so the real healing begins 

[[No...]]

I am holding 2 months after 50% cut. Before that I was holding 2 months on my current dose but unfortunately updosed for 7 days due to health issues. Now the situation is bad and I am wondering if I just should cut or continue holding..

[[Cr...]]

1 minute ago, [[E...] said:

@crono do you think a 2 week hold is enough time between cuts or should you wait longer? When you hit the wall as I have is one month hold enough or should I hold longer if I am still having some wave days?

In your case you made a larger than normal cut last time so the extra time was definitely in your interest.

Although things are now feeling more brutal, you may now be 100% healed from the first 25% of your original dose.

The theory is that as you add more cuts over the coming months, many of the previous cuts you had in the beginning has had their damage fixed. The problem is everyone is different. And so sometimes your steady 2-week cuts will be adding more repairwork onto the brain when it is still applying the finishing touches to cuts made 12 weeks ago.

You know how even people that tapered off completely can get waves 6 months out? Well imagine if you are 6 months into a taper and a wave hits from the month one cuts? It would be easier not to stack an acute withdrawal on top of that wave by making further cuts.

Again this is all speculation on my part. In your case Eng, you could be fine going forward doing 10% every two weeks. If you want to be more cautious you can do..

10% every 2 weeks

5% every 2 weeks

5% every 3 or more weeks 

It all depends on which one makes this easier for you. First option will obviously have you off the quickest.

[[En...]]

2 minutes ago, [[C...] said:

In your case you made a larger than normal cut last time so the extra time was definitely in your interest.

Although things are now feeling more brutal, you may now be 100% healed from the first 25% of your original dose.

The theory is that as you add more cuts over the coming months, many of the previous cuts you had in the beginning has had their damage fixed. The problem is everyone is different. And so sometimes your steady 2-week cuts will be adding more repairwork onto the brain when it is still applying the finishing touches to cuts made 12 weeks ago.

You know how even people that tapered off completely can get waves 6 months out? Well imagine if you are 6 months into a taper and a wave hits from the month one cuts? It would be easier not to stack an acute withdrawal on top of that wave by making further cuts.

Again this is all speculation on my part. In your case Eng, you could be fine going forward doing 10% every two weeks. If you want to be more cautious you can do..

10% every 2 weeks

5% every 2 weeks

5% every 3 or more weeks 

It all depends on which one makes this easier for you. First option will obviously have you off the quickest.

Makes total sense. That's why when someone does a fast taper they suffer the most post taper. The accumulated PAWS from previous cuts. 

In theory then it is best to hold cuts for 3 weeks or a month at a time to avoid accumulated withdrawal. Or do one or so month holds once every 3 months. 

 

[[Cr...]]

Basically if someone takes 24 months to taper off of 20mg of Valium. When they make that last cut at .25mg or whatever, the healing countdown for the standard 6 to 24 months to full recovery isn't from 20 mgs at that point, it only applies to the .25 mg, with (using speculation) possibly 9.75 mg worth of damage being already further up the healing scaffold and the first 10 mgs worth of damage has already been healed. Then 2 months later, 12 mgs worth of downregulation in total has been healed..etc. maybe ticking up 1 mg every one to two months.

Edited June 6 by [Cr...]

[[En...]]

1 minute ago, [[C...] said:

Basically if someone takes 24 months to taper off of 20mg of Valium. When they make that last cut at .25mg or whatever, the healing countdown of the standard. 6 to 24 months to recover isn't from 20 mgs at that point, it litterally only applies to the .25 mg, with 9.25 mg worth of damage being already further up the healing scaffold and the first 10 mgs worth of damage has already been healed. 2 months later, 12 mgs in total has been healed..etc.

That's why you feel better the lower you go in dose because you have healed some already  

[[Cr...]]

1 hour ago, [[E...] said:

Makes total sense. That's why when someone does a fast taper they suffer the most post taper. The accumulated PAWS from previous cuts. 

In theory then it is best to hold cuts for 3 weeks or a month at a time to avoid accumulated withdrawal. Or do one or so month holds once every 3 months. 

In that theory, holding longer can prevent acute withdrawals from stacking since they are one and done, but what it won't prevent is the acute withdrawal from any 1 cut stacking with PAWs wave.

If you have been doing cuts at pretty regular intervals and percentages, you probably have a good idea as to how long your acute wds from cuts generally last.  

So you don't want to wait too long after you feel stable. Take advantage of feeling good to move forward with your progress.

Edited June 6 by [Cr...]

[[En...]]

7 minutes ago, [[C...] said:

Basically if someone takes 24 months to taper off of 20mg of Valium. When they make that last cut at .25mg or whatever, the healing countdown of the standard. 6 to 24 months to recover isn't from 20 mgs at that point, it litterally only applies to the .25 mg, with 9.25 mg worth of damage being already further up the healing scaffold and the first 10 mgs worth of damage has already been healed. 2 months later, 12 mgs in total has been healed..etc.

You could also feel previous cuts in PAWS one month to another from only 2 week previous cut holds. 

[[Cr...]]

10 minutes ago, [[E...] said:

You could also feel previous cuts in PAWS one month to another from only 2 week previous cut holds. 

Possibly, there is a flaw in my theory though. While acute withdrawal symptom duration should be fairly predictable in tapering, so too should PAWs waves appearance be under this theory.

Say you did one cut a month. If month 4 you experience a rough PAWs wave from your first cut, then the following month should cause a 4th month PAWs wave from your 2nd cut. But again PAWs symptoms are a lot more complicated and random.

The whole point of my speculation is to suggest that healing is still occuring even when holding and that when things get rough, try not to forget the positive perspective as to why they may have gotten so rough.

Edited June 6 by [Cr...]

[[Cr...]]

39 minutes ago, [[J...] said:

Crono yea I’ve noticed that bad waves creep up on you,.I never thought as it as mabie a paws,.yea it truly is best to get this crap out the system so the real healing begins 

PAWS (Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome) is generally a reference to symptoms that appear after the acute phase is over. However it also refers to when the med is completely out of your system as well.

So while technically the term PAWS shouldn't be used until you are finally off the med and past acute phase, I still think it can still occur for portions of the med that has been cut.

If a guy drinks 10 shots of vodka a day for 3 years and then cuts down to just one shot a day, he will go through an acute withdrawal and will most likely experience some PAWs symptoms later on from the 9 shots he stopped using, even though he is still using 1 shot.

 

[[En...]]

Good topic. 

[[Cr...]]

2 hours ago, [[N...] said:

I am holding 2 months after 50% cut. Before that I was holding 2 months on my current dose but unfortunately updosed for 7 days due to health issues. Now the situation is bad and I am wondering if I just should cut or continue holding..

North I will have to look into your history, but the reason we recommend small cuts (around 10%) is because they don't hit as hard as larger cuts. 10% is genuinely seen as the middle ground between speed and symptom toleration.

While making 50% cuts seems like it brings you to freedom quicker, in reality making big cuts can often just lead to longer holds and updosing, thus making the overall length of the taper process much longer than if you did smaller cuts.

[[An...]]

5 hours ago, [[J...] said:

That’s me into a 3 week hold at 8mg,I should come down again tomorrow,I’ve so many family commitments though,that’s what’s holding me back

i duno if it’s a good idea to keep holding as well though,any1 just have a hold break,we cancelled a holiday last month because of me withdrawing,we were lucky to get it moved forward to October 

but it’s looking like I’ll still be doing the taper near October still at 1mg drop every 2 week at least,the thought of about a 1mg drop a week is a brutal thought 

so is a long hold an option,im still getting withdrawals symptoms holding but try work around them 

Hold ! I have held for 2-3 months, and felt so good. Don’t be afraid to hold, I started to laugh and enjoy life in those 3 months. Enjoy food, some waves came and went 

[[Ca...]]

I've been holding at 14 for several months and wish I had never stopped tapering. I am no better and stuck at 14. Hoefully I will be starting a partial liquid taper next weekend.