Benzos Valium taper schedule help

[MagickalKat777]

Hi everyone

I'm quite far into my taper now. I started at 20mg on 9/14 and I'm currently down to 8.75mg a day but I'm curious about something.

I have been splitting my dose 12 hours apart. I have 5mg pills so I have to do cuts of 1.25mg at a time.

I just happened to look at the recommended taper schedule from Dr. Ashton and I'm doing it completely differently. She has you hold at 8mg on your evening dose and then taper the morning dose to 0 before reducing the night dose any further.

Right now I'm taking 3.75mg in the morning and 5mg at night (I've been cutting 1.25mg off the morning dose then in 10 days cutting 1.25mg off the night dose) but I'm hitting a wall. I'm on the 14th day at 8.75mg and I'm extremely uncomfortable and starting to have trouble sleeping, staying asleep, constant discomfort when awake, mild DP/DR, etc.

Should I alter my taper plan and start taking off from just the morning dose or should I continue on the plan I've been doing and just grin and bear it? I've been noticing that as I go down in dose, the dose lasts less as well. I'm about ready to climb up the wall at the 9 hour mark (I take it at 1PM and 1AM or as close as I can get to there) so I'm miserable at 10PM at night.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm starting to get really frustrated and its kicking in the depression and I'm starting to lose my confidence in being able to pull this off.

I don't take anything else other than 30mg of DXM Polistirex (Delsym) twice a day. I haven't even had a cigarette since 9/14

 

[brutus]

Follow the link in my signature and PM me if you need help figuring out anything from there.

 

[MagickalKat777]

That's actually how I came to this issue brutus was clicking that link.

I'm curious if my way of doing it as of now is actually worse than doing it the way that Dr. Ashton suggests. I mean she refined that process over so many cases that there must be a reason that she feels it is acceptable to go down to one dose in a 24 hour period instead of cutting each dose equally throughout the taper.

 

[brutus]

I would follow it exactly how she outlined every step since she is a doctor haha.

Nice to know that my link helped you. I plan on starting the taper in a few months.

 

[stray cat]

M-Kat. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference either way. If you're still getting any sort of noticeable effects at those low doses, maybe it would even be better to keep it spread out so that you get more peak plasma level throughout the day. I don't know. For me, every time i tried to taper the benzos I would end up re-increasing when it got awful, so I'm pretty much in awe of your ability to successfully taper. for me, surprisingly, i finally broke the 5+ year benzo dependence/addiction w/ round-the-clock phenobarb and monitoring for ~3 weeks (and however long its half life goes on and on). I'd had seizures from stopping cold before, panic and anxiety like I can't describe in words, tremors, brain zaps, the worst feeling of general malaise i've ever felt from anything, but for whatever reason for me, the phenobarbital short-term thing worked for me better than attempts at the ashton stuff.

 

[MagickalKat777]

I would follow it exactly how she outlined every step since she is a doctor haha.

Nice to know that my link helped you. I plan on starting the taper in a few months.

Yeah I totally spaced out that part of the taper plan though and I'm already in the midst of mine. Maybe I should just keep down the same path and hope for the best.

M-Kat. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference either way. If you're still getting any sort of noticeable effects at those low doses, maybe it would even be better to keep it spread out so that you get more peak plasma level throughout the day. I don't know. For me, every time i tried to taper the benzos I would end up re-increasing when it got awful, so I'm pretty much in awe of your ability to successfully taper. for me, surprisingly, i finally broke the 5+ year benzo dependence/addiction w/ round-the-clock phenobarb and monitoring for ~3 weeks (and however long its half life goes on and on). I'd had seizures from stopping cold before, panic and anxiety like I can't describe in words, tremors, brain zaps, the worst feeling of general malaise i've ever felt from anything, but for whatever reason for me, the phenobarbital short-term thing worked for me better than attempts at the ashton stuff.

Yeah I've never been successful before. I have an addictive personality (I had an addiction to DXM and 5-MeO-AMT of all things) and within a year of starting Xanax I was up to 8mg because it just stopped working (I never abused it either, I was taking it as prescribed but found that it was quickly diminishing in returns). My idiot doctor cut me over to Klonopin at 4mg and according to my grandmother I spent the next week pretty much in bed sick as a dog, seizing, etc., I stayed on that for awhile, managed to get down to 2mg a day before it stopped working (doses up to 6mg did nothing) which is when we crossed me over to 60mg of Valium back in 2010 and I tapered myself down to 20mg using a combination of DXM and memantine (and admittedly a lot of alcohol now that I can think clearly enough to remember that period) before I had a seizure at 15mg and my doctor made me go back to 20mg. Stayed between 20-30 milligrams until this year but now I'm determined to get off of it.

Its not easy by any means. The only way I'm able to do this is because I literally cut everything out of my life. Short of trips down to the roommate's car to get groceries occasionally, I haven't left the apartment complex since 9/14, I stopped drinking and smoking cold turkey (the first week of no alcohol was lovely let me tell you) and my social life consists of Facebook and Bluelight. Its the only way I can guarantee success though. I can't function well at all. Just now I finally took a damn shower (I don't know what it is but when I'm in withdrawal, showers are the most agonizing thing in the world to me) and barely made it out without panicking.

If I had insurance that would cover it, I would have done a pheno detox but the only places that Medicaid covers use Depakote and Tranxene or worse, use no GABA agonists at all... I tried that and 5 days after my 5 days inpatient I was in the ER feeling like I was having a heart attack - worse than any panic attack I could remember so I was reinstated to Ativan at the time and filled my Valium script the next day.

 

[brutus]

M-Kat. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference either way. If you're still getting any sort of noticeable effects at those low doses, maybe it would even be better to keep it spread out so that you get more peak plasma level throughout the day. I don't know. For me, every time i tried to taper the benzos I would end up re-increasing when it got awful, so I'm pretty much in awe of your ability to successfully taper. for me, surprisingly, i finally broke the 5+ year benzo dependence/addiction w/ round-the-clock phenobarb and monitoring for ~3 weeks (and however long its half life goes on and on). I'd had seizures from stopping cold before, panic and anxiety like I can't describe in words, tremors, brain zaps, the worst feeling of general malaise i've ever felt from anything, but for whatever reason for me, the phenobarbital short-term thing worked for me better than attempts at the ashton stuff.

I've done the same thing in one of the nicest rehabs in the nation. It helped me get off benzos, but the phenobarb made me wish that I was dead. I guess different things work for different people. My anxiety was unbearable and after a good 60 days, I started back taking benzos because I literally could not function. Thanks for bringing that method up though, I had forgotten all about it. I used to act like I swallowed my phenobarbital then spit it in the toilet.

 

[stray cat]

it definitely wasn't a picnic or anything, and it wasn't exactly the way i had planned it. i had just gotten picked up for a charge, which led to an immediate loss of my professional license and within a couple weeks my wife to our drug dealer, so i had to come off long-term and high dose opiates, benzos, daily alcohol use for about 15 years as well as stop my daily adderall and all other drugs right then in order to try to keep in somewhat alright graces with the licensing board, etc.

EDIT: I mean SWIM had to do that! prank caller! lol, woops. talk about making yourself easily identifiable :/

 

[MagickalKat777]

Methinks I missed something special here