Oops, I did Something Dumb Again

Hi,

I've been on clonazepam since 2006. I take 3, .5mg tablets at night. My GI Specialist advised me to go off of it as it was exacerbating my GI autonomic dysfunction. Did some googling and the only thing I found was some information only on "Benzo Belly." Met with my prescribing doc and we came up with a plan to cut one pill in half every 2-3 weeks. This worked well. Only symptoms were short insomnia and brief decreased gut function and then it would level out.

So from beginning of Oct 2022 to beginning of December, I went from 1.5mg of clonazepam to .5mg. I decided to stay on it for a month as I didn't want to deal with withdrawls at Christmas. Around Christmas I got a sinus infection. I thought it was affecting my ears as I had some mild ringing.

Last Wednesday, I halved my .5 pill to .25 and got the insomnia and gut dysmotility. Yesterday, I got 3 vitamin shots due to malabsorbtion. That night after the .25mg dose, I got horrendous ringing in my ears, tinnitus. I have hearing loss in both ears, so occasionally this will happen, but not as bad as this and constant. Too loud to use a distraction method and never stopped. Also, I got some nausea, headache, and woozy feeling. They were bearable, but the tinnitus isn't. Could the vitamin shots (D3, B6, and B12) have caused the withdrawl sypmtoms that night as I've been reading warnings about introducing supplements, etc. In October, though, I got just a D3 shot and didn't have this issue?

If you've read this far, thank you as I tend to be verbose.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I did alot of research during the night as I couldn't sleep at all. Found the doctors method of converting to diazepam and slowly titrating down over 36 weeks. Plus, she wasn't very hopeful about resolution of tinnitus and I got really scared.

Im afraid that I caused a permanent problem by unknowingly titrating too quickly, even though, first unbearable symptom didn't happen until last night.

I called my doctor, who is on vacation, and scoured Facebook groups. The doctor, who is in for him finally called me back tonight. He advised me to back up to .5mg and when my doctor is back to work with him on a slower taper. I took .5mg almost one hour ago and I'm still getting ringing, so I'm nervous that Ill need to back up to .75 or that I caused  permanent withdrawl damage.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go from here? Will I have to start back at 1.5 or even higher and then slowly come down or convert to diazepam and come slowly down from that.

If this .5 mg or .75 mg helps, how should I do my titration schedule?  Should I cut up and spread out my .5 dose in 3 doses during the day and then reduce one dose at a time by 5-10%?

Im just at a loss. Has anyone stsrted out like me and had to back step and retry or did you have to start from where you initially started?

Hi Hak,

Yes I stopped completely without knowing I had any dependency.  It took me a while to stabilize (meaning tolerable withdrawal symptoms).  I think this can be done better than I did, because at the time I still didn't understand that stable and slow was GOOD (I was still trying to reduce too much instead of focusing on getting the initial stable dose right).    Try not to worry too much about this (easier said than done) and get yourself to "slightly uncomfortable".  There are a lot of really great people here that Im sure will post soon with a specific recommendation as to your dosage based on your history.

The best thing I've learned so far is how to concentrate on slow breathing in and out of my nose to help calm myself.  You'll be fine  -  these are only symptoms.