If you wish to begin tapering before your next appointment with your prescriber, here’s a simple approach for your consideration ….
Take 1mg in the morning and 1mg in the evening as usual.
For your middle daily dose, split a 1mg tablet into quarters using a high-quality pill splitter. Take 3 of the resulting 4 pieces (about 0.75mg). If you are concerned about the possibility that the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) in your tablets is not evenly distributed, save the extra quarter tablets from Days 1 -3. On Day 4, take all three of the extra quarters. (This will ensure that you consume all of the API in those tablets.) Repeat this process for Days 5-8 etc.
This will be 8.33% reduction in dose. It is within our general guideline of 5-10% and should be tolerable given your relatively high starting dose.
Keep a daily taper log. Use the data in the log to determine your withdrawal pattern — that is, how many days does it take for withdrawal symptoms to emerge, peak, and stabilize (i.e. stop changing in nature and number and become tolerable). Note: Clonazepam has a relatively long half-life; it can take one to two weeks for a dose change to fully ‘register’.
As I shared in a previous post, you sound like a good candidate for a combination approach using lower dose clonazepam tablets and a professionally compounded liquid. Here’s what Stage 1 of such a taper might look like:
0.5mg in tablet form + 0.5mg in liquid form, taper liquid to zero as tolerable
0.5mg in tablet form + 0.5mg in liquid form, taper liquid to zero as tolerable
0.5mg in tablet form + 0.5mg in liquid form, taper liquid to zero as tolerable
To implement the above plan, you would need to find and vet a compounding pharmacist. Also, your prescriber would need to write two prescriptions — one for the tablets and one for the compound.
ADDDENDUM: I should have added … one of the major advantages of finding and working with a reputable compounding pharmacist is they should be willing to help you with the math.
