Posted by bleauberry on June 21, 2009, at 18:09:06
In reply to Weaning schedule for Seroquel?, posted by Zana on June 21, 2009, at 14:15:24
The weaning schedule should be whatever you can realistically tolerate. It will be uncomfortable no matter what. But you can reduce the trauma to a bare minimum by listening to your body. Keep inching down in dose, but not too fast and not in large steps. Tiny steps over time is the key, with your body telling how long it will take.
You can set a prepared schedule in advance, but be prepared to modify it as you go, maybe going faster and maybe going slower, depending on what is happening.
Fast weaning or cold turkey will get you out of it the fastest, but also serve you the most traumatic experience.
Get good at customizing the doses. With a knife or razor blade you can cut slivers or chunks off of pills. You can cut pills with a pill splitter. With these techniques you can for example go from 100mg to 90mg, rather than 100mg to 75mg, or 100mg to 50mg, or whatever. The sizes do not need to be super accurate. Actually a little error is helpful to help the body's adjustment mechanisms get in gear.
Small eensy weensy steps will do it. Stay at each new step 2 to 4 days. A general rule of thumb is to reduce dose by no more than 10% per week.
I was on Zyprexa for 8 years and it took a couple months to get from 5mg to 0mg. The benefit was that even though there were some rather uncomfortable moments, mostly anxiety nervousness stuff, it was tolerable enough that I could still function and work.
As-needed temporary bandaids for the really tough moments included Bendryl, very helpful, and the herbs Passionflower and Valerian.
poster:bleauberry
thread:902448
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090620/msgs/902485.html