Has anyone found they needed to liquid taper in much less than 1ml increments?

Hi y'all. Has anyone tried going extremely slow with the liquid taper- much less than 1ml a week , for instance? Did it help ?  My dear daughter wasn't doing so well on a milk titration of 1ml every few days. I bumped her back up to her original dose so she could get through some important exams (she is a high school senior and this is a stressful time right now ).  I am wondering if I should do an "extreme micro- micro " taper? My syringe is marked as small as fifths of a ml. Should I try doing one fifth every week or is that too slow ? Will it make a difference in side effects? Thanks.

I'd need to know how many mgs of K you put  in how much milk.

 

Sure, she could go very slow.  It's a good way to go.  To give you some perspective, 5-10% a month is considered quite conservative.  7.5% might be a good place to begin.  If your daughter's dose is currently .5mg K, 7.5% would be a daily cut of .00125mg.

Oh- I had thought the recommendation was about 5-10% a week, not month as you stated!! Ok, so I am holding out the hope that the sxs she encountered will be better if I slow everything way down!!

 

Has anyone done it this slowly and still had bad side effects? I would love to hear.

 

Let's see if I am doing the math correctly:

 

If you start with .5mg of clonazepam dissolved in 100ml of milk, each 1ml is 1% of .5mg =.01 x .5mg=.005mg, so I can see that was about 4 x your recommendation of .00125mg a day!!  I had never done the math before. I just figured that 1%  a day sounded slow enough (and I thought that is what the man who made the milk titration video on this site said he started with).

So--.00125mg would be about 1/5ml, right?  1/5 of 1%= .002, right? So... 0.5mg X .002=.001mg

 

ok--that is what I am going to try, 1/5 of 1ml each day (or maybe every few days). Thanks.

When you use 100ml each ml contains .005mg as you calculated.  To make a cut of .00125mg  just divide .00125mg by .005mg/ml and you get .25ml.  Your .2ml figure would be a little slower, which is fine.

 

A thing you might want to consider is using 50ml whole milk instead of 100.  This would make the "ml" number and the "mg" numbers resemble each other as a reminder.  They would just differ by the decimal point.

When you use 100ml each ml contains .005mg as you calculated.  To make a cut of .00125mg  just divide .00125mg by .005mg/ml and you get .25ml.  Your .2ml figure would be a little slower, which is fine.

 

A thing you might want to consider is using 50ml whole milk instead of 100.  This would make the "ml" number and the "mg" numbers resemble each other as a reminder.  They would just differ by the decimal point.

 

Thanks, SG57!! (The reason I was doing the 1/5ml was because that was how my syringe was divided, LOL! ) I LOVE the idea of using the 50ml instead of 100ml so that the ml and mg numbers would be the same  (though not decimal points, as you say) What a helpful tip for my math-stressed brain.  Also, my daughter isn't a big milk fan, either, so not having to drink so much would be actually appreciated by her! I think this time will work out much better, hopefully.

Are you using a 10ml and a 1ml syringe?  They would be a good match for 50ml and the 1ml will be marked into 50 or even 100 divisions.  Measuring .25ml should not be a problem.  Local pharmacies often give these away for free.

Manager, Your daughter is so blessed to have you taking care of this. You're a wonderful mom! I have been daily micro-tapering at a rate of 7%/month with a lot of difficulty. I think that stress in my life (family problems that are day in and day out) is making my taper more difficult. At one point I held for awhile because I was originally tapering at a much faster pace and hit a huge wall of symptoms. Then I resumed at a slower pace. I think you could have two things going on, the school stress and the speed of the taper. Holding during a stressful time is not a bad idea. And slowing down the way SG said is a very good idea.

 

Gard

Thanks, Gardener, for the words of encouragement--I really appreciate that, especially today.

 

In your signature you say that you divided your dose of xanax because of interdose withdrawal. I was just wondering about doing that for my daughter's clonazepam! She has only been taking it once a day right before bedtime, but by late afternoon or early evening, she is usually having a hard time with depression, anxiety, etc. It could be just the after-school "let-down" (as in, "let down all the stress you've been holding in all day"). But this seems so consistent that I think it must be "interdose tolerance withdrawal". I know clonazepam is supposed to have a long half-life, but apparently the amount of medicine left at the "half-life" is not enough!!! Maybe I will post the question on the forum.

 

Thanks again.

Thanks, Gardener, for the words of encouragement--I really appreciate that, especially today.

 

In your signature you say that you divided your dose of xanax because of interdose withdrawal. I was just wondering about doing that for my daughter's clonazepam! She has only been taking it once a day right before bedtime, but by late afternoon or early evening, she is usually having a hard time with depression, anxiety, etc. It could be just the after-school "let-down" (as in, "let down all the stress you've been holding in all day"). But this seems so consistent that I think it must be "interdose tolerance withdrawal". I know clonazepam is supposed to have a long half-life, but apparently the amount of medicine left at the "half-life" is not enough!!! Maybe I will post the question on the forum.

 

Thanks again.

 

Oh goodness, I think most people take K two times a day. Its half life isn't that long and the numbers are only averages. Some people are slow metabolizers and some are fast. I'm very fast. I had terrible inter-dose withdrawal taking X in the evening. When I went to 5 times/day (same amount in smaller pieces), I felt a lot better. Then as my dose got lower, I had to go to 6 times a day. Now that I have replaced some of the X with Librium ( a very slow benzo, like Valium), I am back to only 5 times, which is a relief.

 

Maya6842, who you will find on the klonopin klub and the daily micro-tapering support thread is a frequent doser of K. I think 4+ times/day. It's been such a rough ride for her (other health issues complicating things), that she is attempting substituting in some V right now to smooth it out. You might want to find her. She is a very brave, kind, and encouraging young woman. That said, I have officially initiated her into my Paranoid Princesses club because she and I take forever to make up our minds about making any changes. Just ask SG57!