help with valium taper

Hello Libertas, I too am titrating from valium but the process comes with questions and some confusion. Currently I'm at 3.5mg A.M. and 6.75mg P.M. I started both AM and PM at 7mg each or 14 total per day. I've been reducing the day time dose by 3% and holding for 3 or 4 weeks. I pretty much haven't touched the night time dose thinking at least that dose will help me with sleep which it seems to have done. If I do get up to answer natures call when I get back to bed my mind races, I see light flashes in my eyes and other"pleasant"stuff. My question is in your opinion is this taper slower than it needs to be and do you think there's a problem in combinding the A.M and the P.M. dose together and what time of the day would be suitable to take it? I'm using a scale to make up the two doses so a single dose preparation would be nice.I know the bottom line with all this is how well my body handles the taper but you seem to be well versed in this matter. Oh, another factor for consideration is I am in the elderly age group, combat VietNam vet with PTSD and GAD. Thanks for any insight you might have.

Greetings, Bubba13. 

 

Tip of the hat for creating your own thread so we can focus on your case.

 

A 3% reduction every 3 or 4 weeks is a conservative taper but it seems to be working for you.  Do you feel you could tolerate a slightly faster rate? 

 

I don’t have personal experience with diazepam, but my general impression is that we have a good number of folks who have found dosing diazepam twice a day (or even more often) to be helpful.  I will ask one of our long-time members to stop by to share her thoughts on this.

 

Again, thank you for your service to our country.

 

Hi Bubba. Libertas asked me to stop by and talk to you about your valium taper as I tapered valium and he didn't.

 

I don't think your reduction rate is too slow . . . as long as you feel okay and can function, that's the "right" rate. If you wanted to increase a little, go ahead, but if you feel funky, back off. That's what I did.

 

I don't see why you can't combine the am and pm doses. Do you feel okay? I understand that taking multiple dosings is a pain, and valium is supposed to have a long half-life, but I eventually (at 5 mgs) had to dose twice a day. I had to fool around with the best time to take my doses and found that 9 am and 3 pm were best for me.  (Valium never helped me sleep). I was careful not to make too large a reduction -- I reduced about 5% every 2 weeks. (I'm a weenie.) I tried to reduce each dose about equally.

 

My advice is to keep careful track of how you feel (in a journal) and correlate this with your reductions. When I began to feel funky, I backed off my reductions and ended up doing a DLMT (Daily Liquid Microtaper) at 3 mgs. That worked very well.

 

I, too, am in the (ahem) elderly age group and things worked best for me when I did not make big reductions. As corny as it sounds, slow and steady wins the race.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Katz

Hi Katz, thanks for helping with my taper.A question about combinding the two does to once a day. I'm at 3.5mg A.M. and 6.75mgP.M. now so taking the total 10.25mg all in one dose is your thought? If I started feeling funky I should take smaller % cut? Do you remember about what % you took when you added the two doses into one and were you cutting and holding or reducing a little every week or so? Sorry for all the questions, this is all so iffy and confusing at times. Whatever you might think of in your experience you'd care to share I'd like to hear. Us elderly folks need help sometimes.

Thanks again

If you're feeling okay, and the only reason you would combine doses is that it's a pain to take 2. . . then I would stay at 2 doses and put up with the inconvenience.  Really, as someone who struggled throughout their entire taper to "get it right" I would not rock the boat. This is such a miserable process, if something's not "broke", I wouldn't tinker trying to "fix" it.

 

You say the night time dose does help you with sleep, so why touch it? To be clear, I am not advocating your combining doses, just telling you my experience.

 

I combined my doses thinking that one dose would help me, but after a few weeks, I realized it didn't. So  I went back to 2 doses (some buddies on here dose 3 x a day)  but changed the times I was dosing. That seemed to help.  I always aimed for about a 5% cut every 2 weeks. (I cut up pills). I really struggled Bubba, and never got things right. Finally going to a daily liquid taper, as I said, was the "magic bullet" for me. I then reduced a tiny amount daily.

 

The main thing, Bubba is how you are feeling. It seems your reduction rate suits you. If that's the case, I wouldn't change anything.

 

Keep in touch.

 

 

Best,

 

Katz

 

 

Thanks again for your continued help. I hate to keep asking questions of you especially since I'm asking such basic questions but I too want to get it right. I know nothing of tapering's ins and outs I just know I did the wrong thing back in 1980 cutting C/T from Xanax and struggled for two years to feel "normal" again. Then my wife died at 43 and later my son died at 26 and I was off and running on ativan then valium to cut the ativan off now the valium has to go before i do.Sorry for my recount of my past but it feels good to tell someone who knows about these struggles from meds.Anyway I think you're correct in not messing with what so far is working. I'll soon be down below 3mg in the morning where I hear is much harder at the lower dose but I'm hoping the 6mg P.M. dose will cover the lower end of the A.M. dose. I may try to increase the cut to 5% and maybe 3 weeks between cuts. As for daily liquid taper that's a total unknown process but that's in the future. I don't want to make a pest of myself but is it ok to contact you every now and then?

Sure, Bubba. Good luck.

 

Katz