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Been on Valium for about 2 months? Taper?

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dammitbobbeh

Greenlighter
Joined
Jun 25, 2015
Messages
13
I'm not prescribed to it or anything. I started off at 5mg every now and then now I take 15mg- 20mg daily for the past two weeks. How would I go about tapering off? What are the withdrawal symptoms?
 
it should be relatively mild considering how long you have been taking it and the dosages.

you could do a week of 15mg, a week of 10mg, a week of 5mg, a week of 2.5mg then go off. i think everyone's different in terms of withdrawal intensity for benzo's so ymmv, adjust accordingly, but stick to whatever regimen you decide on.

the taper plan i described may be longer than it needs to be, but i think it could help with compulsions to increase your dose again if you are reducing your dosage slowly.

im no taper king tho, and i have no experience being addicted to benzos or opiates so someone might have some better info.

it might be better not getting too familiar with the withdrawal symptoms because you might start to expect them all, but anxiety resurfacing is to be expected.
 
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I agree with Mysterie. You're dependence is pretty mild so you don't have much to worry about. You might get some rebound anxiety but if you follow the taper schedule Mysterie suggested it should be minimal.
 
Well I got to taking 15mg, my frequency was once every other to third day throughout the binge. It's been 5 days since my last dose of 15mg, I'm not sure if I should keep going cold turkey seeing how valium has a long half life & the withdrawals (if any) will come within a week. I have some just in case but I just want to be off.
 
If you haven't had any WDs after 5 days you probably don't have a physical dependence.

The long half life of diazepam is more to do with accumulation of diazepam and its active metabolites if you take it for a long period of time.

To put it simply, WDs should start around 8-18 hrs after your last dose, there would be an acute diazepam withdrawal for 5-6 days and you would start to feel better. If you've been taking it for a long time the diazepam and its active metabolites accumulate in your body and that's where the 100hr+ half life comes into play. When this happens the acute withdrawals are followed by more stages of withdrawals as it all starts to clear out of your system. This leads to a protracted fluctuating withdrawal that can last weeks.

It seems you got lucky this time, just be careful, it can cause a long time to cause physical dependence in some people, and you won't know it until you're already in too deep.
 
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