Have you changed from the cut and hold method to microtapering?

[[co...]]

 

oh and yes to the "DLMT" for 7-10+ years is too damn long for MOST people" part (quote is mine) ...my god people i have been on polydrugs for 24 years and i'm not about to spend the same amount of time coming off of them. seriously.

 

It seems a lot of the debate about the DMLT comes from a time long before I was here or tapering.  Thus there is really no point in going back to some of the original contentions.

 

I don't know that a DLMT needs close to 7-10 years in practice.  As I said, I was doing the Ashton type taper after switching over from 1 mg of klonopin a day to 20 mg of valium a day and managed to get down to about 7.5 mg a day in a bit over 4 months.  From 20 mg to 10 mg I was making about a 1 mg cut every 10 days to 2 weeks.  From 10 mg down, I reduced my cut to a .5 mg cut (this was done by quartering a 2 mg valium pill with a pill cutter).  Then the SXS started to become a problem. From there the .5 mg cuts became slower and more painful.  The DLMT was a lifesaver and I an grateful to the wonderful person here who helped patiently explained it to me, as he has helped so many other people on this board. 

 

With DLMT you do go slower to minimize or eliminate symptoms.  But when I read some of the things that other people are going through, that I am not sure I could survive them.  So I  think it is well worth it.

 

I am not going to debate cut and hold vs. DMLT.  People have methods that have worked well for them and get downright defensive when someone else criticizes it.

 

I was kicked off SA because i chose a polydrug LMT with a suspension vehicle instead of the BrassMonkey Micro Taper and was told by the owner/originator of SA that i could expect to receive no help and i was on my own. which turned out to be a good thing cause i came back to BB and have been much more supported ever since.

 

Well, this is by far the best benzo help site on the net--by the hugest possible margin.

[[no...]]

 

I was kicked off SA because i chose a polydrug LMT with a suspension vehicle instead of the BrassMonkey Micro Taper and was told by the owner/originator of SA that i could expect to receive no help and i was on my own. which turned out to be a good thing cause i came back to BB and have been much more supported ever since.

 

Well, this is by far the best benzo help site on the net--by the hugest possible margin.

 

yes i totally agree and also  the best all psych meds help site on the net--by the hugest possible margin.!!!

[[bu...]]

 

With DLMT you do go slower to minimize or eliminate symptoms. 

 

Not to be argumentative, but it is NOT slower, it's just more gradual

 

Instead of make bigger cuts, at longer intervals (cut&hold), you make a series of tiny cuts at much shorter intervals (daily microtaper)

 

I started a C&H from 15mg V, cutting .5mg every 2 weeks.  Each cut caused significant sxs, and as I got lower, the sxs got worse.  At 8.5mg, the sxs were severe, and persisted.  I tried to make the 9mg to 8.5mg cut several times and the results each time were intolerable.  It became very clear to me that the limiting factor in a taper was the size of the cut.   

 

So I gave up until I learned how to make smaller cuts.  And once I learned that, I had very little difficulty tapering off my my benzo.

[[co...]]

 

Not to be argumentative, but it is NOT slower, it's just more gradual

 

Instead of make bigger cuts, at longer intervals (cut&hold), you make a series of tiny cuts at much shorter intervals (daily microtaper)

 

I started a C&H from 15mg V, cutting .5mg every 2 weeks.  Each cut caused significant sxs, and as I got lower, the sxs got worse.  At 8.5mg, the sxs were severe, and persisted.  I tried to make the 9mg to 8.5mg cut several times and the results each time were intolerable.  It became very clear to me that the limiting factor in a taper was the size of the cut.   

 

So I gave up until I learned how to make smaller cuts.  And once I learned that, I had very little difficulty tapering off my my benzo.

 

You are not argumentative at all.  I made a poor choice of words in my original post.

 

Thanks to your posts and your help I have been making tiny daily cuts using liquid valium and doing better than when I was making straight cuts and holding until I went through the SXS and normalized.

 

When I was using cut and hold and had tapered down to 7mg of valium per day, I made a cut of .5 mg per day down to 6.5 mg per day.  I got the .5 mg by using a pill cutter to cut a 2 mg valium pill in quarters.  Within a few days I started to feel worse.  After about 7 days I started to have anxiety attacks, headaches, sleep problems, loss of appetite.  They kept going for a while.  I gradually got to feeling better. About 4 weeks after I made the cut I felt normal enough to made another cut of .5 mg and started the same painful cycle again.

 

Using liquid Valium mixed at a concentration of 1 ml liquid valium with 9 ml water, I was able to make daily cuts of .02 mg of Valium.  The end result was about the same amount of decrease over the same time period, but I did it with much less SXS, making for a much smoother ride.

 

I later found out that valium is not evenly distributed in a pill, so I have to wonder about how accurate of a dose I was getting by cutting the 2 mg pills in quarters.  Then there is the issue of the percentage of my cuts.  If I kept doing cut and holds or .5 mg of valium, as I got to a lower daily dosage those cuts would have represented a much higher percentage to the point where I would have been reducing by far more than the board recommended 5-10% over 2 weeks.  With the daily liquid micro taper I can more easily adjust the amounts of the cuts to match the percentage that I want as I continue to taper down.