Is tolerance withdrawal REAL?

[[wa...]]

I kinda know that tolerance w/d IS indeed real, but I just need reassurance.

 

My psychiatrist said that there is no such thing as tolerance w/d when i explained to her what kind of symptoms i get when i try to "stabilize" or stay at certain dose (aches, mostly head/neck/lower back; pressure in head/jaw/neck, motion feeling etc etc). She said that those are the symptoms that can occur when tapering, but not if one is staying at the same dose. Well, i disagreed but didn't want to argue...

 

It's a bit tricky cause i get the same symptoms when i taper so I guess i cannot be 100% sure, but my experience tells me that it is very true. Many times during my taper i have actually found that a new cut makes me feel better in a way, as if my body is expecting it. It has been over 3 weeks since my last cut now, and i get more aches and pressure and other "nerve symptoms" than i usually do. i thought i could just stick to my current 0.875mg for awhile but it seems that i just have to make the tiny cuts every 2 weeks or so or my tolerance symptoms start hitting me.

 

Another thing my psychiatrist said when i tried to explain to her why i so desperately need to get off this sh*t: "Your dose is so small (at the time 1mg) that you really don't need to worry about it!" So basically her advice was just to stay at 1mg and not worry about it!!! OMG, i would love to not worry about it! I just happen to suffer the nasty symptoms every single day, how could i not worry..?

 

I would love to hear opinions and experiences, especially from those tapering clonazepam.

[[da...]]

In my situation, there is very much so tolerance withdrawal!!! I was going through it for the past few weeks. I seem to have hit a decent window right now. It was the reason I made the first cut. I figured, I'm already in pain, might as well start the process. I don't advise it, I'm not a doctor. I'm sure others though will definitely confirm tolerance.

[[pi...]]

Hello wantalife,

 

Tolerance is in fact a reality.  I had reached tolerance on the clonazepam and my pdoc told me my symptoms did indeed sound like that, but his solution was to add more doses of the benzo.  I didn't listen however and continued to have many many symptoms.  I also had many medical tests because no one knew what was wrong with me. They all came back normal.  I was also told that because of my low dose that I could: stay on the dose forever or stop any time with no problems.  Everyone is different and because I have always been hypersensitive to meds, even before benzos I only took childs doses of medications, I don't fit into the mold as far as medication guidelines go. I don't think many of us do.

 

I did find a doctor who agreed that the meds were making me sick.  I did c/o to valium because reducing the clonazepam was just to difficult for me.  Others have tapered directly from clonazepam.  You have to listen to your body and do what is most comfortable.  Have you looked into liquid titration? I don't know much about it since I didn't take that path but you might look on the tapering boards.

 

Clonazepam is pretty strong and 1 mg is not a small amount. But tapering is doable abd being free of the drug is a great reward. Hang in there, you are on the way to better health and healing.

 

Hugs,

 

pianogirl

 

 

[[Nu...]]

The phenomenon of tolerance is well known. I thought that your psych may respond to a mainstream medical article on benzos that is not necessarily "anti benzo" ...just regular practitioner-based discussion, so I quickly looked one up.

 

TOLERANCE

 

"Tolerance to all of the actions of benzodiazepines can develop, although at variable rates and to different degrees. Tolerance to the hypnotic effects tends to develop rapidly, which may be beneficial in daytime anxiolysis but makes long-term management of insomnia difficult.17 Patients typically notice relief of insomnia initially, followed by a gradual loss of efficacy.18 Tolerance to the anxiolytic effect seems to develop more slowly than does tolerance to the hypnotic effects, but there is little evidence to indicate that benzodiazepines retain their efficacy after four to six months of regular use.19,20 Benzodiazepine therapy is often continued to suppress withdrawal states, which usually mimic symptoms of anxiety. Dosage escalation often maintains the cycle of tolerance and dependence, and patients may have difficulty discontinuing drug therapy."

 

American Family Physician

Addiction: Part I. Benzodiazepines—Side Effects, Abuse Risk and Alternatives

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/0401/p2121.html

 

There is also the phenomenon of interdose withdrawal or a rebound syndrome in between doses which is also widely recognised. That is why docs go for longer half life drugs.

 

When I was presented with such illogic in the past by "experts" I was puzzled as well, since it contradicted my own experience. I later learned about tolerance and inter dose w/d phenomena  and it all made sense. You know, if you take this out of the context of the psychiatric, and put it into some drug addiction context, like imagining what people on those addiction shows exhibit, it all makes more sense too. For some reason, which I have asked my own psychiatrist (who agrees with me), why do medical professionals and esp psychiatrists treat benzos and other psychotropic drugs they prescribe to their patients as if they were different from street drugs and prespcirtion drugs used by "addicts"? ......"this is not addictive" "you are not feeling withdrawl, it is your anxiety" there is no withdrawal from this drug" etc etc.

 

Anyway, hope you find this helpful.

nuala

[[Me...]]

Colin has just written this thread today

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=9706.0

[[of...]]

The word "tolerance" gets thrown around to mean a lot of different things, and sometimes it's confusing. I also think a lot of people believe a lot of things about "tolerance" that are simply wrong.

 

In one sense, everyone is in "tolerance" once their total dose goes below the level needed to keep them out of withdrawal. For example, I began my taper from 25mg., but my actual tolerance threshold (the dose below which I experienced significant withdrawal) was closer to 20mg. So, in the broadest sense, I was "in tolerance" from 20mg. down to zero. But that isn't a definition that has a lot of practical utility or significance. A lot of people--particularly Ashton fundamentalists or others that believe we should taper based on some canned objective schedule regardless of how we actually feel--are fond of mentioning "tolerance" as if it was some dragon that is going to swoop down and eat us if we go any slower than they think we should be able to cut. It's bull-dookey. It *is* possible to go "too slow" in the sense that we could go faster without getting into a situation where symptoms are getting progressively worse. It is also possible to hold for so long that we start having more symptoms, rather than less symptoms. But there is no dragon. If someone holds too long and starts actually feeling worse, it will stop as soon as they start gradually tapering again. There is no "sudden catastrophic event," this is subtle stuff, and easily remedied by beginning to taper again (after a loooong hold), or speeding the taper rate a little if one has been crawling along out of fear, when they could have been going faster than that without experiencing a corresponding increase in symptom if they would have tried.

 

Bottom line, you cannot go wrong in this if you:

(a) start out reasonably stable;

(b) continuously monitor your body's subjective response to dose reductions, stopping/slowing down whenever symptoms, taken as a whole are getting progressively worse.

 

Just remember that the "optimal" taper rate (i.e., the fastest taper rate that you individually can sustain without experiencing an overall progressive deterioration in your condition) will probably *change* over time. Thus, if you get slammed and wind up cutting a taper rate from 10% to 5% at some point, that does *not* necessarily mean your "optimal" taper rate is going to *remain* at 5% for the duration. This is not a linear process. The optimal taper rate is a moving target, and it takes periodic, cautious experimentation with the taper rate to locate it. My actual taper rate varied between a low of about 5% and a high of about 15%, but I always used the exact same test to decide what the rate would be: how fast can I do this without experiencing a progressive deterioration in my overall condition? Some people get so scared when they get a symptom spike that they have no problem slowing the taper rate, but then when they are feeling better they are too shell-shocked to try speeding it up again to see if things have changed and they can now handle the faster rate. They taper slower than "optimal," and the price they pay for doing that is a longer taper, and ultimately a longer period of time before they reach full recovery. In my view, while by no means ideal, this "problem" is worlds better than going faster than your body can handle just because some arrogant know-it-all thinks you "ought" to be going faster because that's what he did, and if you don't you'll be a victim of "tolerance." It's a load of crap Leeandy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continuously strive to find and maintain that sometimes-elusive "optimal" taper rate--we should. There is no reason to take one day longer to complete a taper than what is actually necessary to prevent progressive deterioration in our condition.

 

I don't know if you are going slower than you need to or not. It sure doesn't sound like it, because you seem to be going through a rough patch. Is speeding up going to make that better or worse? I seriously doubt it would make it better *right now*, and I would give odds that it would make you worse if  you tried it *right now*--you sound like you're in a bad patch *right now*. But I can't know that with any certainty unless you try it *right now*, which sounds like a bad gamble *right now* to me. I know that in my case, I would only try speeding up when I was really stable--not in the middle of a rough patch. That doesn't mean I waited until I was in the middle of a window where I felt almost normal for days at a time, because those were pretty rare. I would try speeding up when I'd been cruising along with about the same pattern of symptom intensity for a week or two--no signs of overall deterioration.

 

Hope that helps. Fear of future events plagues many of us during withdrawal. Most of the future horrors I wasted so much energy worrying about never happened, and when occasionally one did happen I always got through it far better than I feared. Stay in today, and choose carefully who you listen to.

 

There is a school of thought in benzo recovery that treats this thing like everybody were the same. They think that if we would all just follow their canned taper schedule we'd be fine. When people listen to them and get sick as hell, they typically respond that we are not to worry, because "healing really only begins once we are benzo free." They are WRONG. It does not work that way. People adapt to benzo dose reductions at very, very different rates. Yes, if we cut significantly faster than our optimal taper rate we will indeed be sick as hell until long after we reach zero, and if one believes that "healing only begins after we are benzo free" your ultimate clinical course will be consistent with that viewpoint, because there sure won't be any evidence of healing until well after you reach zero.

 

My point is that it doesn't have to be that way. If we start out stable and always remain pretty close to our "optimal" taper rate, we can indeed experience the reality of healing on the way down, and much more after we hit zero. In my case I had almost zero symptoms by the time I got to zero, and they were gone entirely within two weeks of reaching zero. That is faster than most people reach full recovery (although my taper speed was also slower than most people--not a coincidence), but it does illustrate the truth of what I am saying.

 

"Healing" is largely just neuroadaptation. If we start out stable and reduce our dose gradually, the body can and will adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. Unfortunately it is slow and seems to be characterized by weird peaks and valleys that often seem to make no sense, but it is happening. However, if we ignore these warning signs and "just keep cutting" because some arrogant idiot thinks we should be going as fast as he did, the body loses the capacity to efficiently adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. It is overwhelmed, and responds with a deluge of intense symptoms. If  we then continue to cut all the way down, we are so far behind by the time we hit zero that the body can take a very, very long time after that point before homeostasis is restored.

 

To me, it's really just common sense. Use yours, and don't "over-think" this. You are smarter than most of the people giving you advice anyway, and I do mean that.

 

Best,

-tom

 

Not my words,  but I think it's good.

[[bl...]]

I'm a super-skeptic when it comes to any information I read about; however, yes, tolerance withdrawal is real. It's real with ANY substance which causes physical dependence.

 

What happens with any substance that causes physical dependence is two-fold:

 

1. your liver becomes better at more quickly getting rid of a substance it is repeatedly exposed to by developing enzymes to do that. In the case of Xanax, these are Cytochrome P450, if I recall.

 

2. the neurotransmitters in your brain are produced in lower amounts (GABA, in this case), and also, grow less sensitive to the neurotransmitters there at the receptor level (GABA again here).

 

All medications or substances which cause dependence DO cause tolerance w/d meaning that, once dependent on any substance to the point that the neuroreceptors cease "caring" about, or responding to, the neurotransmitter present -- be that GABA, or endorphins (such as with Opiate dependence) -- this can cause side effects even though the substance is still consumed. You would need to then consume more of that substance to have the same impact. That's why people wind up smoking four packs a day, for example.

 

I've personally had little bad to say about being on benzos. I don't really understand from personal experience what people are talking about when they say they had side effects from taking benzos. I've had some dry eyes and mouth and a little trouble with my concentration. But nothing else. And I've taken a metric ton of these things. But, I do know that the worst symptom that I've had is feeling like the benzos stopped working the same way after time. I honestly know that I can take like 4 mg. of Xanax, even though I'm prescribed 1 mg. doses (and am tapering from there), and almost ignore the feeling completely. Meanwhile, that 1 mg. I'm prescribed feels like sugar water these days. And I'm having a lot of panic attacks as a consequence since I take this for panic disorder. That's new.

 

At any rate, I'm tapering down (since Feb 25) and hoping that I can live without taking these things. Not because I'm morally opposed. I'm not. Not because I am anti-medication. I'm not. But because I'm tired of being dependent on a health care system which treats me like crud for taking a legal medication. Also because I don't really want to increase my dose further. I think it's already high enough. If I'm having tolerance withdrawal symptoms and being treated like crud for taking medication, it's time for me to get off the medication. I'll probably wind up taking it on a much more cautious and limited basis again in the future for situational anxiety -- plane flights, getting in front of a crowd of 200 people and giving a thirty minute speech, that kind of thing, the day someone passes away -- mind you. It was fantastic for that. I should have avoided taking it daily though. Especially for sixteen years.

[[pr...]]

I'm a bit of a nerd so I always feel when this subject comes up that I need to point out that by definition tolerance withdrawal (or relative withdrawal, Colin's term, which I like) is something that you can't really say is happening during a taper.  By definition it's something that happens when you're taking your dose as scheduled; once you start tapering you can't say if it's tolerance withdrawal or just regular withdrawal.  That's just the definition of actual "tolerance."

 

HOWEVER:  I have often seen this phenomenon where people feel better with a cut, then hold, then after a while start to feel worse, then need to cut again and feel better with the cut.  This may be a manifestation of some kind of tolerance withdrawal type thing, or it might be another phenomenon that's unique to a tapering situation.  Personally I think it's more of a reaction to the medication itself, but I can't say.  But I do want to say YES YOU'RE NOT IMAGINING THINGS.  I've heard so many other people describe this phenomenon that I know it does happen.

 

I just hate to see people toss around the term "tolerance" so much, because I see so many people push their tapers too fast, or continue cutting in the face of bad symptoms, because they've been told they are "in tolerance" when what's really happening is they are just tapering too fast. And when that happens people can really get into trouble.

 

The difference is, when people are tapering too fast, they usually do NOT feel better when they make a cut.

 

So just to reiterate:  I don't like to hear the term "tolerance" used during a taper, because I've seen it used wrongly so often to push people to cut faster when what's really happening is they're cutting too fast to begin with.  But I do see this phenomenon where people stabilize after a cut, then after a while feel worse, and only making another cut makes them feel better again.  I don't know if it's tolerance or if it's some other thing happening. 

 

The key is to listen to your own body and symptoms.

[[Me...]]

yes tolerance is 100% real and can come with awful sx's.  I tapped my dose a lot, then i decided to go back up.  I was on higher dose than ever before.  I thought this would ease my sx's.  It did.....for a day or two.  Then tolerance w/d came in.  WOW.  It was worse than anything I'd ever experinced.  I lost complete control of my impulses and my depression became very serious.

 

I would definatly go along with what the members said above.  There is some good info for sure

 

take care

[[wa...]]

 

However, if we ignore these warning signs and "just keep cutting" because some arrogant idiot thinks we should be going as fast as he did, the body loses the capacity to efficiently adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. It is overwhelmed, and responds with a deluge of intense symptoms.

 

 

I think this is exactly what happened to me last fall. The summer was "ok" when i made 2% cuts every 5-7 days. Then in August i wanted to pace up thinking "i want this to be over soon". Boy was that a mistake!! My symptoms soon become too much to handle (i was down to 0.6mg when i had to updose to 0.75mg and later to 1mg).

 

It has been very difficult to accept that i am one of those who need years and years to get off. I started this process over 2 years ago. But now i know that going super slow and listening to my body carefully is the only way out for me.

 

Thank you for the excellent reply

 

 

[[os...]]

The word "tolerance" gets thrown around to mean a lot of different things, and sometimes it's confusing. I also think a lot of people believe a lot of things about "tolerance" that are simply wrong.

 

In one sense, everyone is in "tolerance" once their total dose goes below the level needed to keep them out of withdrawal. For example, I began my taper from 25mg., but my actual tolerance threshold (the dose below which I experienced significant withdrawal) was closer to 20mg. So, in the broadest sense, I was "in tolerance" from 20mg. down to zero. But that isn't a definition that has a lot of practical utility or significance. A lot of people--particularly Ashton fundamentalists or others that believe we should taper based on some canned objective schedule regardless of how we actually feel--are fond of mentioning "tolerance" as if it was some dragon that is going to swoop down and eat us if we go any slower than they think we should be able to cut. It's bull-dookey. It *is* possible to go "too slow" in the sense that we could go faster without getting into a situation where symptoms are getting progressively worse. It is also possible to hold for so long that we start having more symptoms, rather than less symptoms. But there is no dragon. If someone holds too long and starts actually feeling worse, it will stop as soon as they start gradually tapering again. There is no "sudden catastrophic event," this is subtle stuff, and easily remedied by beginning to taper again (after a loooong hold), or speeding the taper rate a little if one has been crawling along out of fear, when they could have been going faster than that without experiencing a corresponding increase in symptom if they would have tried.

 

Bottom line, you cannot go wrong in this if you:

(a) start out reasonably stable;

(b) continuously monitor your body's subjective response to dose reductions, stopping/slowing down whenever symptoms, taken as a whole are getting progressively worse.

 

Just remember that the "optimal" taper rate (i.e., the fastest taper rate that you individually can sustain without experiencing an overall progressive deterioration in your condition) will probably *change* over time. Thus, if you get slammed and wind up cutting a taper rate from 10% to 5% at some point, that does *not* necessarily mean your "optimal" taper rate is going to *remain* at 5% for the duration. This is not a linear process. The optimal taper rate is a moving target, and it takes periodic, cautious experimentation with the taper rate to locate it. My actual taper rate varied between a low of about 5% and a high of about 15%, but I always used the exact same test to decide what the rate would be: how fast can I do this without experiencing a progressive deterioration in my overall condition? Some people get so scared when they get a symptom spike that they have no problem slowing the taper rate, but then when they are feeling better they are too shell-shocked to try speeding it up again to see if things have changed and they can now handle the faster rate. They taper slower than "optimal," and the price they pay for doing that is a longer taper, and ultimately a longer period of time before they reach full recovery. In my view, while by no means ideal, this "problem" is worlds better than going faster than your body can handle just because some arrogant know-it-all thinks you "ought" to be going faster because that's what he did, and if you don't you'll be a victim of "tolerance." It's a load of crap Leeandy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continuously strive to find and maintain that sometimes-elusive "optimal" taper rate--we should. There is no reason to take one day longer to complete a taper than what is actually necessary to prevent progressive deterioration in our condition.

 

I don't know if you are going slower than you need to or not. It sure doesn't sound like it, because you seem to be going through a rough patch. Is speeding up going to make that better or worse? I seriously doubt it would make it better *right now*, and I would give odds that it would make you worse if  you tried it *right now*--you sound like you're in a bad patch *right now*. But I can't know that with any certainty unless you try it *right now*, which sounds like a bad gamble *right now* to me. I know that in my case, I would only try speeding up when I was really stable--not in the middle of a rough patch. That doesn't mean I waited until I was in the middle of a window where I felt almost normal for days at a time, because those were pretty rare. I would try speeding up when I'd been cruising along with about the same pattern of symptom intensity for a week or two--no signs of overall deterioration.

 

Hope that helps. Fear of future events plagues many of us during withdrawal. Most of the future horrors I wasted so much energy worrying about never happened, and when occasionally one did happen I always got through it far better than I feared. Stay in today, and choose carefully who you listen to.

 

There is a school of thought in benzo recovery that treats this thing like everybody were the same. They think that if we would all just follow their canned taper schedule we'd be fine. When people listen to them and get sick as hell, they typically respond that we are not to worry, because "healing really only begins once we are benzo free." They are WRONG. It does not work that way. People adapt to benzo dose reductions at very, very different rates. Yes, if we cut significantly faster than our optimal taper rate we will indeed be sick as hell until long after we reach zero, and if one believes that "healing only begins after we are benzo free" your ultimate clinical course will be consistent with that viewpoint, because there sure won't be any evidence of healing until well after you reach zero.

 

My point is that it doesn't have to be that way. If we start out stable and always remain pretty close to our "optimal" taper rate, we can indeed experience the reality of healing on the way down, and much more after we hit zero. In my case I had almost zero symptoms by the time I got to zero, and they were gone entirely within two weeks of reaching zero. That is faster than most people reach full recovery (although my taper speed was also slower than most people--not a coincidence), but it does illustrate the truth of what I am saying.

 

"Healing" is largely just neuroadaptation. If we start out stable and reduce our dose gradually, the body can and will adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. Unfortunately it is slow and seems to be characterized by weird peaks and valleys that often seem to make no sense, but it is happening. However, if we ignore these warning signs and "just keep cutting" because some arrogant idiot thinks we should be going as fast as he did, the body loses the capacity to efficiently adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. It is overwhelmed, and responds with a deluge of intense symptoms. If  we then continue to cut all the way down, we are so far behind by the time we hit zero that the body can take a very, very long time after that point before homeostasis is restored.

 

To me, it's really just common sense. Use yours, and don't "over-think" this. You are smarter than most of the people giving you advice anyway, and I do mean that.

 

Best,

-tom

 

 

 

One of the best posts i have read on here, fantastic... i also find prhiannon´s posts are always spot on also, i´ll be saving this as it is a good read.

 

Thanks Tom.

 

 

[[wa...]]

The word "tolerance" gets thrown around to mean a lot of different things, and sometimes it's confusing. I also think a lot of people believe a lot of things about "tolerance" that are simply wrong.

 

In one sense, everyone is in "tolerance" once their total dose goes below the level needed to keep them out of withdrawal. For example, I began my taper from 25mg., but my actual tolerance threshold (the dose below which I experienced significant withdrawal) was closer to 20mg. So, in the broadest sense, I was "in tolerance" from 20mg. down to zero. But that isn't a definition that has a lot of practical utility or significance. A lot of people--particularly Ashton fundamentalists or others that believe we should taper based on some canned objective schedule regardless of how we actually feel--are fond of mentioning "tolerance" as if it was some dragon that is going to swoop down and eat us if we go any slower than they think we should be able to cut. It's bull-dookey. It *is* possible to go "too slow" in the sense that we could go faster without getting into a situation where symptoms are getting progressively worse. It is also possible to hold for so long that we start having more symptoms, rather than less symptoms. But there is no dragon. If someone holds too long and starts actually feeling worse, it will stop as soon as they start gradually tapering again. There is no "sudden catastrophic event," this is subtle stuff, and easily remedied by beginning to taper again (after a loooong hold), or speeding the taper rate a little if one has been crawling along out of fear, when they could have been going faster than that without experiencing a corresponding increase in symptom if they would have tried.

 

Bottom line, you cannot go wrong in this if you:

(a) start out reasonably stable;

(b) continuously monitor your body's subjective response to dose reductions, stopping/slowing down whenever symptoms, taken as a whole are getting progressively worse.

 

Just remember that the "optimal" taper rate (i.e., the fastest taper rate that you individually can sustain without experiencing an overall progressive deterioration in your condition) will probably *change* over time. Thus, if you get slammed and wind up cutting a taper rate from 10% to 5% at some point, that does *not* necessarily mean your "optimal" taper rate is going to *remain* at 5% for the duration. This is not a linear process. The optimal taper rate is a moving target, and it takes periodic, cautious experimentation with the taper rate to locate it. My actual taper rate varied between a low of about 5% and a high of about 15%, but I always used the exact same test to decide what the rate would be: how fast can I do this without experiencing a progressive deterioration in my overall condition? Some people get so scared when they get a symptom spike that they have no problem slowing the taper rate, but then when they are feeling better they are too shell-shocked to try speeding it up again to see if things have changed and they can now handle the faster rate. They taper slower than "optimal," and the price they pay for doing that is a longer taper, and ultimately a longer period of time before they reach full recovery. In my view, while by no means ideal, this "problem" is worlds better than going faster than your body can handle just because some arrogant know-it-all thinks you "ought" to be going faster because that's what he did, and if you don't you'll be a victim of "tolerance." It's a load of crap Leeandy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continuously strive to find and maintain that sometimes-elusive "optimal" taper rate--we should. There is no reason to take one day longer to complete a taper than what is actually necessary to prevent progressive deterioration in our condition.

 

I don't know if you are going slower than you need to or not. It sure doesn't sound like it, because you seem to be going through a rough patch. Is speeding up going to make that better or worse? I seriously doubt it would make it better *right now*, and I would give odds that it would make you worse if  you tried it *right now*--you sound like you're in a bad patch *right now*. But I can't know that with any certainty unless you try it *right now*, which sounds like a bad gamble *right now* to me. I know that in my case, I would only try speeding up when I was really stable--not in the middle of a rough patch. That doesn't mean I waited until I was in the middle of a window where I felt almost normal for days at a time, because those were pretty rare. I would try speeding up when I'd been cruising along with about the same pattern of symptom intensity for a week or two--no signs of overall deterioration.

 

Hope that helps. Fear of future events plagues many of us during withdrawal. Most of the future horrors I wasted so much energy worrying about never happened, and when occasionally one did happen I always got through it far better than I feared. Stay in today, and choose carefully who you listen to.

 

There is a school of thought in benzo recovery that treats this thing like everybody were the same. They think that if we would all just follow their canned taper schedule we'd be fine. When people listen to them and get sick as hell, they typically respond that we are not to worry, because "healing really only begins once we are benzo free." They are WRONG. It does not work that way. People adapt to benzo dose reductions at very, very different rates. Yes, if we cut significantly faster than our optimal taper rate we will indeed be sick as hell until long after we reach zero, and if one believes that "healing only begins after we are benzo free" your ultimate clinical course will be consistent with that viewpoint, because there sure won't be any evidence of healing until well after you reach zero.

 

My point is that it doesn't have to be that way. If we start out stable and always remain pretty close to our "optimal" taper rate, we can indeed experience the reality of healing on the way down, and much more after we hit zero. In my case I had almost zero symptoms by the time I got to zero, and they were gone entirely within two weeks of reaching zero. That is faster than most people reach full recovery (although my taper speed was also slower than most people--not a coincidence), but it does illustrate the truth of what I am saying.

 

"Healing" is largely just neuroadaptation. If we start out stable and reduce our dose gradually, the body can and will adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. Unfortunately it is slow and seems to be characterized by weird peaks and valleys that often seem to make no sense, but it is happening. However, if we ignore these warning signs and "just keep cutting" because some arrogant idiot thinks we should be going as fast as he did, the body loses the capacity to efficiently adapt to the dose reductions as they are made. It is overwhelmed, and responds with a deluge of intense symptoms. If  we then continue to cut all the way down, we are so far behind by the time we hit zero that the body can take a very, very long time after that point before homeostasis is restored.

 

To me, it's really just common sense. Use yours, and don't "over-think" this. You are smarter than most of the people giving you advice anyway, and I do mean that.

 

Best,

-tom

 

 

 

One of the best posts i have read on here, fantastic... i also find prhiannon´s posts are always spot on also, i´ll be saving this as it is a good read.

 

Thanks Tom.

 

I totally agree! Just read this out loud to my boyfriend and he thought it was great as well.

[[th...]]

Once you start to taper you are going to be in withdrawal.  I don't get how people can "stabilize" when tapering.  If you feel like crap at 1 mg of klonopin then how can you feel fine at .5 mg?