Need guidance on my crossover plan from Clonazepam to Diazepam

Hello everyone. I am in the process of crossing over to diazepam from clonazepam to hopefully make things smoother as tapering directly off clonazepam has been so harsh. I am also conflicted as to whether or not I want to go through with it as the adjustment period is really uncomfortable and I am drowsy, loopy and depressed but am also going through a break up so that is considerably contributing to feeling depressed too. I really need some advice and opinions on my crossover. I am not sure I want to go all the way to 30mg of diazepam and wanted to know if anyone here has had any success with a partial crossover. I am currently at 0.5mg K morning 0.5mg K afternoon 0.25mg K/5mg V nightly. One idea I was thinking was a half and half crossover where when I got to 15mg of the valium, stabilize and then taper the remaining 0.75mg of klonopin and then tapering off from 15mg. That way I would have the valium to ease the process. I have also heard that the equivalent dosage varies from individual to individual. Do any of you have any insight about any of this? Could this be an effective way to ease the process or could it make a bigger mess of things? Much appreciated, thanks.

My opinion is to go all the way to Diazepam and taper from there. Keep it simple. During my first unsuccessful taper I was mixing the benzos and it just kind of messed me up. Once your body gets used to the Diazepam it will not make you as sleepy. Also, when you are on higher doses it is a lot easier to do larger cuts at the beginning. But of course everyone is different so go with what your gut tells you! 

Hi OKitty,

 

I'm starting my crossover this Sunday from 3 mg Xanax (alprazolam ) a day to the Ashton method. Instead of Ashton''s 20:1 diazepam: alprazolam ratio I'm being started at 15:1 (after first day of trying 10:1 -- yikes!).  We'll see how that goes  

I notice you're on omeprazole -  a word of caution:  if you look at the "other medications" section and do a search for Omeprazole you'll find a bunch of good info on the fact that omeprazole potentiates (increases the effects) diazepam. My search on drugs.com under "drug interactions" revealed that indeed, omeprazole does increase the sedation effects of Diazepam.

 

I had the good fortune of finding this out a month before the beginning of my crossover so I tapered off of my 40 mg omeprazole and have been free of that for two weeks. I talked to my doctor about the interaction between Omeprazole and diazepam ( which she was not aware of!!! -- indeed most doctors have little knowledge of what affects benzos and how to withdraw from them).

 

Anyway, I discovered also on drugs.com that another type of PPI (lansoprazole  (brand name Prevacid)) does not interact with diazepam. Also as far as I understand from my research H2 blockers like ranitidine reduce the production of acid which has to be pumped into the stomach with your natural proton pump. A PPI (Proton Pump Inhibitor like omeprazole ) works by not pumping as much of the acid into the stomach. (Somebody please correct me if I've got this wrong!)

 

So be aware of the fact that the omeprazole will increase the sedation effects of the diazepam. You may want to try what I did ; taper the Omeprazole by 50% for two weeks until you get to 10 mg  and then stop it and take care of any stomach heartburn with increased ranitidine ( talk to your doctor about how much to take and when) or else using Tums to control the acid ( a combination of these two have helped me -- however it is just a suggestion). Or if you have to start a PPI again, switch to lansoprazole.

 

Hope this helps my friend. If I hadn't run across this on the Benzo Buddies website I would have stayed on the omeprazole and not understood why the diazepam was having such a huge sedation effect. I'm just glad I had enough time to get off the Omeprazole before starting my crossover.

 

Please keep me in your prayers as I start what looks like is going to be a two-year tapering process of substituting diazepam for alprazolam and tapering off the diazepam.  The journey starts this Sunday October 1st!

 

Best to you,

 

Wantnomore