Tapering off Ativan Support Thread

[[Ma...]]

Hi Jackie,

 

Thanks.  The way you said it makes sense.  You are doing well also.  I guess we think alike.  I am not sure how its going to go when I get down further, I suppose I am stomping my feet at the moment.  We have both been on here for about the same amount of time.

 

Bart.  Bart.  lol  You do what you need to do, but from what you have written, it appears to me it is going to take you another 5 months to lose .025 V?  What you said is well reasoned.  I am not here to judge but it really does freak me out a bit that it would take that long to get of that small amount of V.  It gets to the point where I truly wonder what effect that amount is having on your body at all.

 

Well we all must do what we feel we need to.  It is such a shame there is not any better data out there that is truly representative of the total population of benzodiazapien withdrawers.  God that would be priceless information.

 

Tonight I went to the pharmacy and picked up another script.  Once again, like a pure ejit, I asked this pharmacist guy about ativan.  Once again he said, "Well you can just cut the pill in half, and then cut it in half again the next week".  He just doesn't have a clue.  Does anyone have a clue?  <<<<< Right there, that is the big bugaboo.  We don't have a clue.

 

The only thing the drug companies and doctors do, is put you on it.  They have no idea how to get you off.  They don't plan on that.

 

 

[[...]]

Nope. About 6 weeks

[[aw...]]

Mairin33: I don't understand what is it that bothers you so much about someone taking a year or two to taper? I don't mean this as a challenge at all--I truly don't understand. I mean, we see what the problem is when people taper too fast, that's the usual situation. I don't hear much about people who have serious problems because they tapered too slowly, although it certainly can be done. There must be something you see in a long taper that I don't see. What is it?

 

jackie brown: "From what Ive read up dosing doesn't always help either." I'd agree. But that does not mean anyone should suffer "unless it is absolutely unbearable and one cant go on". IMO, there is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous about updosing, if it is done carefully. I see a lot of needless suffering due to blanket condemnations of udosing and holding, both of which can be very valuable tools during a taper, I think...when used with discretion.

 

Aweigh

[[at...]]

Mairin33,

 

It is my opinion that fear is the main issue concerning tapering off benzos. Someone explain why it was harder in the beginning than it is now for me to taper? I had bad symptoms in the beginning. I felt that there was no hope in the world and that all the joy in life had vanished...never to return. I obsessed, I doubted everything. I was so afraid of things (I won't even mention it by name because I think it creates fear and is bullshit if you ask me) like the "K" word. My withdrawal in the beginning was extremely, EXTREMELY unpleasant for me. It nearly broke me. I tell you with all honesty, I had severe symptoms.

 

What changed was that I realized that I had to overcome this. There was no choice. I made up my mind that whatever this drug was going to throw at me, I would bear it. The amazing thing was that as I accepted the worst, the fear was mitigated and the symptoms were so too mitigated. This was a very pleasant surprise indeed!

 

Don't get me wrong, benzo withdrawal is nasty. It is real. Trust me, I'm well aware of this. However, let's not make it more than it is. We need to be firing on all cylinders and fear and doubt do not help. They make it much worse than it should be. Think about the type of people we are. Think about the type of drug we were given and for what. What makes us think that our own fear isn't feeding the feedback loop?

 

Anyhow, be strong and don't be afraid.

[[Ma...]]

Hey

 

It doesn't bother me that people take 1 to 2 years to taper.  I guess what bothers me is, "Is that really necessary in some cases."  Or, is it a fear driven thing, where people sometimes drag it out obsessively and unecessarily long.  There seems to be an enormous amount of fear that is driving people, me included.  I guess I don't like all the fear.

 

Like you Atavannie, the beginning of this was pretty horrible for me.  I think I was in a state of really bad excitoxcity from a rather step initial drop, it was not a cold turkey, but after experiencing that I can see where a cold turkey would be utter hell, as that was quite hellish enough for me.  This drug, if you have been on it long enough, needs to be tapered from.  I think we can all agree on that.  It's just the what seems to me, extreme caution, a caution that seems beyond all reason, a caution that is driven by fear and not reason. 

 

I have this fear myself.  I don't like it and I am frustrated with this whole process.  I myself have been doing this for more than a year now.  It took me many many months to get somewhat better from the shock of that drop I took.  That colors this whole experience.  It was a trauma, and the rest of this taper is haunted by that trauma.

 

It is not over yet.  I have yet to get down to very low doses.  I am still in the "therapeutic" range of this drug.  I am starting to feel more interdose withdrawal than I was before.  I cannot, I really cannot speak for those that are down to very low levels.  Because I am not there yet.  It is just very discouraging to me to read some of the taper rates that people have resorted to.

 

Part of it, I suppose, is that I was put on an excessively high dose, which has taken a long time to come down from.  So when I see people taking a year to get off 1 or 2 miligrams of V, that discourages me, as I have come down off 6 mgs of K, and that is equal to 120 mgs V.  So I have come off about 100 milligrams of V equivalent in the same time period it takes a lot of folks to get off 2 or less mgs V.  And I think, OMG, I have come off all of this in about a year, am I gonna get stuck at 2 mgs V equivalent and be trying to get off that for a year?  It is like, I just don't even want to hear that.

 

Right or wrong, these are my feelings.

 

I like what you said Atavanie, about just taking the bull by the horns and just doing it.  There is a certain amount of mind over matter in this.  I don't want to get stuck in the fear to the point that it paralyses me into counting every molecule of this stuff.

[[at...]]

Mairin33,

 

Thank you for the very thoughtful comments. I would totally agree with what you said. We know how bad this can be. It was for me in the beginning. At a certain point, I had to come to grips with the stark realities of the situation. I couldn't go back. When I up dosed back to 2mg from 1.5mg, I quickly realized that things would never be the same. I realized that I had been going through interdose withdrawals for over a year without knowing it. I realized that I could not be on this drug forever because I would have to keep increasing the dose. I accepted the reality of the situation. It wasn't my fault, but here I was and there was nothing I could do about it.

 

This is important. Regardless of the hopelessness I was feeling, I was going to push through anyway. Coupled with the fear caused by experiencing the awful symptoms, the drug itself makes you feel like you have no hope, that you will never get well. I pushed on because I knew I could do nothing else. I had to confront this. It is very important to know that our brains are our reality. When something affects our brains, it alters our reality. Withdrawal from benzos makes that reality hopeless for some. So it is very important to hope against hope, as it were, and taper anyway because your brain slowly begins to get better and hope returns. You see the light at the end of the tunnel finally. It is like waking up from a nightmare. I urge every who feels there is no hope to continue to act as if hope really exists. Your brain is telling you it is hopeless and there is nothing I can say to make you feel otherwise. However, because you have to get off the drugs, which is the reality of the situation, you should hope against hope that you will get better. As you heal you slowly realize that hope was always there all along and that it was the drug screwing with your reality.

 

Fear is a powerful emotion. When you rationally look at the situation, you will find that fear is the main problem in all of this. We had anxiety before the drug and now the symptoms have scared us and that now feeds the fear which is amplified out of proportion by the drug. It is a fear feedback loop. I figure that I can, at the very least, control that fear and remove it from the loop. The funny thing is, and I'm not trying to sugarcoat this, is that once you have controlled the fear, the symptoms are much easier to handle. Literally orders of magnitude better. So this fear thing is real and if you can conquer it, you will have a much better experience IMO.

 

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them.

 

DJP

[[Ma...]]

Just some thoughts.

 

There was a woman on here named Waiting for Relief.  She had been on X once before and had gotten off it.  Then she went on it again, I think 2 mgs.  She did not taper, she went to detox and was taken off in c/t fashion.

 

Ok, here was a middle aged woman, who had completed the process of changing her career.  She had gotten a teaching degree and a teaching job, which she loved.  Over last summer, she decided to go to detox and get off the X.  Afterwards, she went into a bad state of withdrawal, her husband who she loved, could not deal with this, (so much for in sickness and in health, right?) and she had to go live with her sister, who took care of her but WFR was obviously very distraught about both the withdrawal feelings and getting put out by her husband, and on top of that, not being able to keep the job she had worked for so dilligently.

 

I can understand her sense of devastation over the loss of her husband and the job, and also the withdrawal symptoms that she felt were not bearable. 

 

I did listen to her in an offsite chatroom.  What struck me about her, was that she would not be comforted.  She refused comfort and hope.  Her mind was continuously in a state of despair.  She would say things like "This is too much of an insult to the brain".  This woman had no hope that things would ever get better.  So about 9 months after her detox, on Good Friday of this year, she took herself off this planet.  Knowing this woman affected me.

 

What can we learn from WFR?  That hope is important.  She let go of hope.  She REFUSED to hope.  Let's not do that.  It does not lead anywhere good.

 

Hope, courage, faith, are just as important in this journey as tapering.

[[at...]]

So poignant and true.

 

Thank you for the comments, they are the perfect expression of that thought and I could not hope to add more.

 

DJP

[[ra...]]

So I'm going to jump into this shark pit too, as I did the diazepam thread.

 

TL;DR from my other posts, was on lorazepam about .5 TiD, ended up trying to balance Adderall with a blanket of diazapam and lorazepam / alprazolam for break through anxiety.  Which while on Adderall was a lot.  I saw where it was heading, went to my doc, asked for help, literally gave her back all my Ativan and Xanax, and asked for Valium to start a taper.  Note at this point I'd been taking 1-1.5mg Ativan daily for six-eight months.  Note I was on the Xanax for under a week and didn't take much of it.

 

Equipotency says I should have needed 15mg diazepam to cover it, I didn't at the time really consider it a "jump" since I was still on a longer acting benzo, omg was I wrong.

 

I spent the last month in hell, throwing massive amounts of diazepam at it trying to feel normal or stabilize.  After getting up to 50mg diazepam / day and still feeling like hell I came to these forums a lost soul, and was kindly informed that hey, you can't just make that jump, you've been in active lorazepam W/D for a month, and no amount of Valium will cover it up.  So I dug a double hole for myself, now I get to taper off Valium too, but that's life, I'll get through it, and this too will pass.

 

So yesterday I reinstated (/cry) .5 lorazepam TiD and felt human again.  At the time being I'm 20mg diazepam BiD & .5 lorazepam TiD.  I'm going to try to slowly switch to Valium this time, via the Ashton Manual.  My doc's amazing, she's on board.

 

So yeah, there's my intro!

[[aw...]]

Mairin33:

That's a very powerful story. I've been there, as have some of my friends. With just a little bit of hope, you can hold off despair; that's courage, persevering in the face of fear. Without hope, suicide enters the room and makes itself at home. And you are so right, we have a choice, we never have to relinquish hope--the one blessing left in Pandora's box after all the curses had fled.

 

Thanks.

 

Aweigh

 

[[ra...]]

I need some advice please.

 

I made the mistake of a direct jump from lorazepam to diazepam, and for a month I felt insane, angry, hateful, and damn near suicidal.  Though I was on a low dose of Ativan it seemed no amount of Valium would help.  Body chemistry I suppose.

 

Last Thursday I reinstated .5 three times a day, and felt better, almost human again.

 

I've been trying to take the Ativan at 8am, 2pm, 8pm, six hour intervals, with obviously nothing then at 2am.  This morning I woke up with the familiar anger and rage that I haven't felt since the jump.  I dug myself a Valium grave to climb out of in the process, but that's life, and it's just something I'll have to deal with.  C'est la vie.

 

An active poster in the diazepam recovery thread mentioned some people are unable to make the cross between the two drugs, and I should ask here for some help / info.

 

Something else mentioned was that some people have to overshoot their original dosage to bring sanity back, such as from 1.5mg/day to 2mg/day, and then to start from there.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[[at...]]

Rastaman,

 

Up-dosing should be avoided. However, if you are feeling terrible and cannot tolerate the symptoms, up-dosing may help while you stabilize and mentally prepare. I went from 2mg to 1.5mg and had very bad symptoms. I reinstated to 2mg but did not up-dose. It was then a fight to get back to normal which I realized would never be realized while on these pills. I resolved to grapple with the symptoms and, come what may, I was going in one direction. Down and off this drug.

 

Do not give up hope my friend. I felt the same way for a long time. I thought I would never get better. My drug-addled brain would not let me see hope. I could not be convinced. But standing here today on the other side of this nightmare, I can tell you, hope is always there. Head towards that general direction. I promise you it will be there.

 

For me, reinstating brought some relief but it was never the same. The symptoms relented to some degree but were always there. It did allow me to focus my energies, get a plan together, and most importantly, get into the proper mindset for tapering. Mindset is key. I used my reinstatement to prepare for my being benzo free today, this day. It seemed like a defeat at the time but now I know, it was part of that ultimate victory. Good luck and don't be afraid.

 

DJP

[[La...]]

Yayyyyy!!!! So proud of you.....congratulations on being benzo free:) it's my turn next!!

 

Laelani

[[at...]]

Laelani,

 

It is your turn next! I'm very proud of you. I know you will be here too. I know that for sure.

 

You know,

 

DJP

[[ra...]]

ativannie:

 

Thank you for the words of encouragement, hope is the one thing I'm clinging to, I literally have an etched sign that says "hope" on it attached to my desk to remind me there's a light at the end of the tunnel in times of darkness.  After a month of essentially c/t c/o to Valium reinstatement of lorazepam brought back sanity.  I think towards the end, before the direct jump to Valium I was up towards 2mg daily anyways, so dosing .5mg every six hours is going to have to be my starting point.  I still get those moments during the day, but like you, and many others have said, once they start, they don't really abate without up-dosing, which will only make a bad situation worse.

 

I've got a plan, I just need to stick to it.  My plan for now is .5mg lorazepam four times daily, 25mg diazepam at 6am, 20mg diazepam at 6pm.  Like I said I dug myself a Valium grave.  It's a matter of preparing myself for it I think, I'm scared, and for that matter I'm scared of being scared, if that makes sense. 

 

I've heard in the Valium thread that a lot of people have had troubles making the c/o to diazepam from lorazepam, even following Ashton's plan.  Does anyone have any experience they might be able to share?

 

Thank you everyone for your help

[[Ma...]]

HI Rastaman,

 

The only experience I have is being switched from Ativan to Klonopin and back again.  Klonopin is an horrendous drug, stay far far away from it.  It is just too powerful.

 

Not sure how I survived that but I did.  But it was quite a horror for many months.  Different benzos do indeed affect you differently, they are not equivalent in effect.

 

My body is more used to ativan, and ativan does not do the things K did to me.  Hopefully, you will stabilize back on the ativan.  I really don't recommend tapering unless you are somewhat stable, and not in horror land.

 

Not sure what to say but I will just post this and let you see my signature, if you can glean anything from that, good.

 

Mairin

 

[[Ma...]]

Hi Atavanni,

 

would like to know how you are doing now that you are off.

 

 

[[at...]]

Mairin33,

 

Thank you for asking.

 

It has been about 3 days since I went BENZO FREE! and to tell you the truth, it feels good to be normal. I'm getting out more and I feel better about doing it. Not so much a struggle but something I actually want to do. In all honesty, I have been concerned about getting hit by bad symptoms later on down the road. There is still some residual fear which I work hard to suppress. I think the fact that I tapered gradually helps with this fear. I don't think any surprises are in store for me.

 

Things I have noted though: I still cannot concentrate on TV. I'm not a huge TV fan but I did like to watch about an hour a night. It still will not hold my interest long enough to become engaged. Perhaps, this is a question of conditioning now. I do not know. Also, I have always had my bad symptoms at night because that is when I always become afraid. Humans tend to fear the nighttime because it's probably part of some evolutionary mechanism or whatever. For me, the symptoms always hit worst at night because of this fear. So now, I notice that I get this weird numbness in my hands while lying in bed. When this happens, I become a little afraid and I feel the anxiety ballooning up. I do some belly breathing and the problem gets averted. This problem has abated a bit as time has gone by. Further, I have felt under the weather recently. I noticed that I am stuffed up. I'm not sure this is a benzo related problem or not, I think it's that I'm beginning to remember I had allergies before my withdrawal. The magnitude of the benzo withdraw can squelch many of the little things you suffered with before. Guess what? They are still there. Actually, they really don't bug me that much considering.

 

DJP

[[ir...]]

Hi everyone!

Someone posted this thread on my general intro. So I have been on Ativan for 6-7 months for insomnia. I only take one pill a day at night before sleep. I take anywhere from .5-1mg a night. Sometimes on the rare occasion 1.5. This insomnia had been happening since I had a baby almost two years ago. So anyway, I am currently undergoing testing for hormonal things but everything comes back normal. In order to do some of the testing I had to go off the ativan for a few days. So I tapered from 1mg a night to .5 for 4 nights and then nothing. The insomnia has been debilitating. I was trying to just stay off the Ativan as it has been almost a week but I feel awful. Not sure if I tapered too quickly? The psychiatrist said that she generally recommends a slower taper but wanted me to get the testing done. She's recommending reinstating to get some sleep at 1mg and then trying to taper .25 at a time. But I don't know if I want to go back on if I am already off. But I can't go through this bad insomnia. I don't know if the insomnia would be less if I went slower? Or would I just not sleep again because I was tapering slowly? The psych said until the hormones are evened out with something like a birth control pill I will just continue to have trouble sleeping most likely.

 

I also since being on the ativan and since coming off have heard on occasion loud noises at night that wake me up that aren't there. And I jerk awake or think I hear noises as I am falling asleep. I assumed this was a side effect of the ativan but doc says no.

 

So I am not sure what to do. I don't know it I try roughing it out? I am getting 3-5 hours a night of sleep. Or do I reinstate and try to taper more slowly? She is not gojng to give me anything else to help taper.

[[Ma...]]

irenakt,

 

I would just stay off it if I were you.  Benzos are just nothing to mess around with.

 

I was on 1 mg for like a year or so and went off with no problem.  If you think this is bad w/d, I am telling you if you get back on it will be worse.

 

Your insomnia probably is hormonal, and throwing ativan at it is gonna lead you down a very very horrible road in the long run.

 

I got on Ativan because of post-partum issues.  Now 13 years later here I am trying to deal with this.  It is so wrong for them to give this to women because of hormonal stuff.  Next thing you know you will be on anti-phychotics because someone thinks you are crazy, and it all started with pregnancy hormones.  And then by the time you have been through the gamut of these drugs, you will be crazy.

[[ir...]]

Does the insomnia get any better? I have no idea if its withdraw or just insomnia returning that I have due to hormonal stuff. I tried Zyrtec and unisom to get relief and got about 3-4 hours out of it.

[[at...]]

Irenakt,

 

I concur with Mairin33.

 

If you are just experiencing insomnia, thank your lucky stars. It might suck right now but--well let me be as blunt as I can without causing you undo concern because you have no reason to fear this given the low dose and short time comparatively that you have been taking Ativan--compared to the very bad symptoms that have affected us, insomnia isn't as bad as it could be. So, stick with it because you will know if you have the bad symptoms. They come on like a sledge-hammer. If you have these, then you might have to do something different. You probably won't have these symptoms but if you do, this is the right place to be in addition to your doctor's advice which should always come first in making any decision.

 

The insomnia does get better. It's rough at first but it will go away. So congratulations on having a baby! I hope everything goes well and it should. Good luck and don't be afraid.

 

DJP

[[ir...]]

I got so desperate because I was not sleeping at all. I took 1.5 and had horrible reaction. Body kept having jerking movements. Like muscle twitching and spasming for hours and I was still up till 3 and slept till 9. Called psych and she said never take it again she has never heard of this reaction. Can you just stop taking it again like that if you took just one dose? God only knows what else she will recommend for sleep.

[[at...]]

irenakt,

 

Yes, follow your doctor's orders. If you are having insomnia, try something else. I'm of the opinion that few things are as bad as benzos. However, I would not take anything else long term and would gradually decrease dose when you are clear of the benzo. But GET CLEAR OF THE BENZO. You have this opportunity now to do that. Trust us when we say that the bad version of benzo withdrawal is no picnic.

 

Good luck and don't be afraid.

 

DJP

[[Ma...]]

Irenakt,

 

I am sorry that happened, but that is just a taste of how bad benzos can treat you.

 

One thing that I have not seen mentioned on here lately, is hydroxyzine.  Hydroxyzine is an antihistamine that is prescription strength.  It can aid sleep, like any antihistamine.  IT is not addictive or likely to cause any kind of stuff like benzos do.

 

I would really recommend it for insomnia and it can even help anxiety.  In fact it is sometimes used in place of benzos now in surgery and for anxiety symptoms.  Ask your doctor for that.  It has helped me.