i messed up my dosing, now theres a lot of symptoms, pretty sure its klonopin?

Hi!

I am so super anxious all of a sudden. I had a birthday party that I had to plan (27!), june 1st, that was so much and then I either got food poisoning or it was klonopin withdrawal shit or random anxiety?! and i also found out my partner cheated with my ex who is also my roommate (june 4th) which was an extreme thing as well. also other shit happened. but i did mess up with my taper as you will see below!

Symptoms have been nausea (which i have not experienced thus far and has brought on a lot of missed meals and therefore exhaustion),  lil bug crawling sensation on my skin [which should have clued me into my klonopin symptoms coming on strong, cuz she the only one that does this to me ], FUG i typed everything out and it didnt save, hopefully i can remember everything. dizziness, foggy brain, full body numbness and tingling, cold sweats, abdominal pain, diahrea, insomnia, restless sleep, racing thoughts, racing heart.

Klonopin .5mg

take half morning and night

3.5 years on

water/milk taper - stop and hold as well, at the same time

i dissolve the pill in 300mL water and take a tablespoon or however much it is until i get to the right amount

taper

3-18 .475

3-21 .45

3-27 .425

3-31 .4

4-5 .375

4-10 .35

4-13 .325

4-16 .3

4-22 .275

4-26 .25

4-30 .225

5-5 .2

5-9 .175

5-12 .15

5-15 .25 this is where i messed up, it was an accident, i didnt notice until 6 days later

5-21 .125 then i halved the dose which was stupid so i went back up

5-24 .2

5-26 .15

5-28 .125

6-1 .1 and this is where i stopped and also the day after is when the symptoms started coming on strong.

im just hoping people can validate this as klonopin withdrawal and maybe offer some support or advice.

Edit: profanity

You say you take a dose twice daily. Which dose are you tapering first?

Sounds like classic withdrawal symptoms. But you can't know from which dose decrease; that is the issue. None of us know for sure. The taper seems pretty quick. Some people can handle quicker tapers, but what you are experiencing symptom-wise now might be a delayed reaction from prior decreases.

Regarding 5-15 to 5-30, if I were you and increased like that by mistake, I would have probably held for a while to stabilize again, then dosed down slowly to recover. But what can you do? You are human, and you made an honest error.

Sure, you had life stress. But your doses seem to have jumped all over the place, likely confusing an already sensitive nervous system and brain. The brain likes continuity.

My guess is you are tapering way too fast. It took me approximately 6 months to taper from 0.5mg to 0.25mg at around 7.5%/14 days and you did more than double that in less than half the time. It sounds like you are experiencing some acute withdrawal symptoms. My suggestion would be to updose to 0.25mg and hold there for at least 6 weeks or more, so your body has time to adjust to the rapid cuts. This should also alleviate some of these symptoms.

I know we are all eager to get off this stuff. But we can either do it gently and have some sort of life or we can rush it and suffer while we do it. I really hope you feel better soon. None of us like to see anyone suffer. 

Hi, thank you both so much for responding. This is very validating. I've been tapering both doses. For example, I would dissolve .125mg in 150 mL of water, take out a tablespoon and a teaspoon which is about .017, so it gets me to .108. And then I drink half at around 10am and then the other half around 8pm to 10pm.

I am so relieved that this is from me doing some dumb shit with klonopin and not my brain just freaking out, but also idk how to deal with it. I could not sleep last night. I'm usually (99% of the time, unless there's a full moon) a deep and really good sleeper so I have very little experience with sleep deprivation, coupled with everything else. I probably got a few good hours but they were nightmarish.

I can't believe I've been going so fast in comparison to you two! I thought I was doing pretty good since my psychiatrist said to do the single month thing, halfing every week. I read on one of the pages here that updosing can make things worse? I mean I accidentally did it and nothing bad happened. And maybe it's people's desire to get off it quicker that they were mainly coming from. I just don't want to fuck up again. Jelly baby, could you offer any resources on people doing this. And if I could hear other people's accounts here that would be great. I would gladly updose if that makes sense and makes some of my symptoms go away. I've been thinking about my brain like a lil shriveled bean or something, because of the lack of klonopin. Whenever I take it I'm like okay brain, you can calm down now, you got your sustenance.

Anyways, thank you again. I hope others are able to read and offer support. I'm so glad we have this community. It is so needed. 🩷

Hi Breeze4

I updosed twice. If you look at my signature at the bottom, you'll see how I did my taper. I had two massive reductions because I didn't know anything about benzo's and went into severe withdrawal. For me, the diarrhea was only a symptom with big reductions and once I updosed it stopped. For some people though, this is a normal symptom. I need to clarify some terminology as it can be confusing when people use it incorrectly. There is a difference between updosing and reinstating - some people use this interchangeably but it's different. Updosing is when you increase your dose while you're still on a benzo. Reinstating is when you have already stopped a benzo and start it again. Reinstating has a very slim chance of working once you've been off a benzo for a specific period of time. Updosing however can work much better and alleviate symptoms and in my experience it has a better chance of success if you've tapered too fast.

You can do a search on the forum by typing the word updosing in the search tool or you can use this search option: http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=251991.0

I also have to mention that I'm concerned about the method you are using to taper. When tapering we need to be fairly accurate in reducing as these drugs are very potent, especially Klonopin. We don't have to be 100% accurate, but we need to get pretty close to our dose. If you use a tablespoon and a teaspoon to reduce, it doesn't sound very accurate to me. Most of us use syringes to reduce as we need to be accurate to the ml. I am not criticizing you, I am trying to help.

You might want to start a thread in Titration so someone can double check the method and maths you are using to reduce.