adder,
The right conditions to recover ? They are probably never going to occur ...
There are some health issues that I couldn't get treatment for, and truth is that after all this time I'm pretty much on my own.
I must do what I can do ... whatever that will be.
It's good to hear that about Tranxene, people always recommend Valium. Valium is so short acting.
When the clonazepam (at a dose of 2 mg) leaves the body, the diazepam is barely a match for the withdrawal from clonazepam.
I was foolish enough to go along with a taper by lorazepam, when tolerance/dependence to that drug occurred it just became not taper-able. If that had not happened, I probably would have opted for Tranxene rather than diazepam, but I doubted if Tranxene was strong enough to cover for the withdrawal from both drugs. Lorazepam had much stronger hypnotic, sedative and amnestic properties than clonazepam.
Actually, general (and up to a point, specific) health issues was what made tapering clonazepam so hard. It's just a very 'physical' drug. And how do you taper when you don't have a more or less normal functioning body ? (that's rhethorical)
Would you have any clue if Tranxene could cover for 2 mg clonazepam at 'equivalent' doses ? Did you take the Tranxene once a day ? (of course, you were already at a low dose of clonazepam)
Well, I did mention the
right conditions to taper as they can change a lot, though I can't say I had the right conditions to quit either and even now 2 years after I quit, I still don't have them, any positive change in my life is still only a result of quitting benzodiazepines itself, that is better memory and generally better cognitive functioning, yet it's far from what a normal person experiences and lives like, I'm sure. My life hasn't really improved much since I quit benzodiazepines, the only benefit I have now is that I can somehow study and work, certainly that's a privilege in today's world, but not really what makes you happy/satisfied, so I've been diving deeper and deeper into my psyche/ego to understand what's going on wondering what generally makes people keep going on, what makes them happy. After all happiness or serenity is the state of mind that people chase by default, everything else stems from it. Having gone through my past traumas again I've come to a simple conclusion that you can't really consider the state of your mind leaving the external, basically the external boils down to one's relations with other people, they need to be positive, they need to be reinforcing, without them hardly anything can make you happy, peaceful, serene. Loneliness at its extreme not only makes an extremely sad unmotivated person, but also impairs you cognitively. Quitting any drug is essentially learning, so the more favourable conditions you have to form new neuronal paths, the more likely you are to succeed.
Anyway, as for clorazepate, I'm not really sure whether it would cover for 2mg of clonazepam at an equivalent dose, I don't think there is any reason why it wouldn't, even if nordazepam, its active metabolite, have a lower efficacy at benzodiazepine receptors, its ceiling certainly isn't at an equivalent dose of 2mg of clonazepam. I suppose it's kind of easier to taper off clorazepate because its effects are much milder. I'm not sure if I ever made it down to 0.25mg of clonazepam as I had problems staying at 0.5mg, but that's when I switched to 15mg of clorazepate and then decreased it to 10mg. My psychiatrist wanted me to jump off 0.5mg of clonazepam, I organized some clorazepate for the taper-off myself, so my supply was limited. A single dose of clorazepate lasted considerably longer than a single dose of clonazepam, I didn't really dose once a day, due to limited supply I took another dose when I felt I had to and on average it was probably around every 36 hours or so. When I ran out of it, I didn't really feel my taper was complete, the way I felt wasn't the way I should have felt after a proper taper, I imagined, but I might have been wrong. If you can get it prescribed, then you should get down to 5mg a day if you feel that's necessary. Honestly speaking, I was quite surprised clorazepate substituted so well for clonazepam, I had no worse mental and physical discomfort than at my equivalent clonazepam dose, and when a dose was wearing off, it was much milder and spaced out in time compared to clonazepam wearing off. Perhaps a different ratio in activity at different subunits might explain why clorazepate felt quite refreshing for me when I switched from clonazepam, hard to say.
Like I said, I don't believe there is a 100% painless way to quit benzodiazepines after being dependent on them for a long time, limiting the withdrawal symptoms with proper taper schedule is necessary to diminish neurological complications that may result from abrupt discontinuation, I imagine, but otherwise there will always be discomfort associated with the transition from taking benzodiazepines and then not taking them at all while your GABA and glutamate systems are completely out of balance. Perhaps a partial agonist could both provide some activity and at the same be fixing problems with active conformation of benzodiazepine receptors as flumazenil supposedly does, it could be a way to finish the taper, but I don't think it will be an option any time soon.
I can tell you from experience that my recovery was much faster than I expected, ~3 months after I quit my anxiety was at bearable levels so I could go out, and ~10 months after I quit I was back at the university. If I hadn't taken any drugs during the first few months after quitting, I'm sure I would have been recovering even faster. I did experience similar problems as you do when I was still on clonazepam (like slow movement, lack of energy, hormonal problems, slow thinking, memory problems) and these actually started improving fairly quickly after the first month, what takes much longer to resolve is general anxiety, muscle tremors, and quality of sleep. But generally right now what I'm suffering from are problems that I had before I even started taking benzodiazepines, if I could fix that, I suppose I could almost forget about what my benzodiazepine use did to me. Looking back, it was well worth it to go through all the pain, at least now I can face the real problems, it was virtually impossible when I was on clonazepam.
