Posted by crittercuddler on December 15, 2008, at 23:13:54
In reply to conazepam withdrawal question, posted by JohnSky on March 6, 2008, at 10:20:45
Hi John,
I am so happy to hear that you have made the decision to discontinue your benzo Klonopin, and that you are doing it slowly. I must say though, that you might want to go even slower.
Have you read "The Ashton Manual"? You can easily find it online and also read it online. Copies are also available for you to buy should you want one. Professor Heather Ashton has basically dedicated her life to studying benzodiazepines and this is a great resource to understand what they have done and are doing to you (bad of course), why you should not use them long term, how to withdrawal safely, detailed information on withdrawal symptoms you might encounter... etc... Here is a link to it
http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/
The Ashton Manual advocates a 10% dose reduction every 7-10 days. There are also several methods for tapering such as doing a Valium cross-over, doing liquid titration, and doing dry cuts. As you can see you are going faster than 10% every two weeks.
I have been free from Klonopin for six months. I took 3mg daily. All together I took Klonopin for 1.5 years at that dosage. I cut my dosage down by .25mg every two weeks. When I got down to 1mg daily things go really hard. I continued on at that pace though. I spent February till June of this year tapering and it was so awful. It has been the struggle of my life to get off of that medicine. Since finishing my taper I have been dealing with benzo withdrawal syndrome symptoms too. One very distressing symptom is tinnitus. I developed it during the last week of my taper and it has not gone away. :-(
You should join a support site like benzobuddies.org or benzoisland.org. They will be a wonderful support resource for you while you do this and they can guide you in your taper too and help you create a taper plan according to the Ashton method.
I am a benzobuddies.org member. Please check out my two main threads to learn more of my story...
http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=10812.0
http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=10815.0
If you go to the first link please note that in my post I put a link to my fist thread on benzobuddies. You can follow that to see how I was doing right after I finished my taper.
You can email me if you like. crittercuddler@sbcglobal.net
Best wishes for a smooth taper.
-michelle
poster:crittercuddler
thread:816537
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20080220/msgs/869030.html