Updosing (questions and concerns) feel stuck, afraid

I wrote a question here a while ago, and I used the word reinstatement, which now looking back wasn't the correct wording.  I understand this isn't the best option for everyone, and I really and truly believe everything that I read here.  That said, here's my story:

 

I tried hard to get off klonopin.  3x.  The last time, over 1.5 years, I managed to get off .75mg of 1.5. So half my dose.  It became unmanageable for me to do this at home alone.  By this time, in my dry cut world, I was making the smallest cuts a scale and knife could possibly imagine.  I was really not ok.  I waited excessive periods of time between cuts, but apparently not long enough, but I can't be sure.  I wish had known more then, than I do now.  The support just wasn't there. 

 

So, in the end, I was put on 1mg.  (back from .75).  I had odd symptoms, like lack of energy, depression, etc, so I was put back to 1.5mg.  This actually cleared things up, but during this time, in which I thought I was healed, I also tried getting off Lamictal.  Cal me stupid, but it's part of the story.  I didn't sleep for 5 months due after that, my gut went completely haywire.  Like no sleep, bubbling in my stomach, agony haywire.  I initially thought it was Lamictal but then... it happened. 

 

I cracked.  I went into the hospital with severe "anxiety", who knows what that exactly means, and they put me on gabapentin.  I will say this has taken th edge off, but I'm still kind of a walking ball of anxiety, almost anything triggers it, even writing this. 

 

I can't taper right now.  I know that I may need to in the future but right now it's just not an option.  I'm too "fragile" as they say.  Has anyone had a successful updose then retaper?  I understand it's not the best option, but it's how I found myself here.  I can't change the past.  They're talking about upping it to 2 mg, which if it stabilizes me, and I have a longer taper I'm almost ok with now that I have more info, better support (people actually believe me now, would you believe it) etc.  I know it's not the best option, and I know that people out there are trying aslo that are stuck where they are, or are holding out with probably worse conditions.  But I honestly, really, really tried, and I'm worried. 

 

I'm worried that by updosing that I'll never get better, that I'll never heal enough at this dose and that I'll constantly be this way until I try another taper, but I honestly can't do it like this.  I'm fried as it is.  Will time ever heal me enough to get back to what I wanted?  It's so hard to find people that have been in this position and I really don't want to be seen as a quitter.  I'm still fighting this, despite having to go back up.

 

I appreciate your thoughts, and good luck to everyone out there.  Thank you

I was very fragile after going off Ritalin while still on a benzo. It took me 4-5 months to stabilize to where I was well enough to start tapering. It took a while for my body to recover but it did. I started feeling better and better as I tapered.

Did you have to stabilize on Ritalin or the benzo?  If you don't mind me asking, did you have to raise your benzo dose? Thanks!

I was switched over to Valium before I started my taper and believe that this is what made it go a lot easier than it could have gone. I believe that part of the issue that you keep running into is having to dry cut these impossibly small pills into even smaller crumbs. Also, Valium has a longer half life, so it kind of lasts a little better thus giving a bit more stability between doses.

    I was going along quite well cutting anywhere from 0.5 to 1 mg Valium at a time, until I got to about 14 mg. Then I got slammed quite hard. I thought holding would help, but the symptoms were frankly intolerable. I put up with them for few days, consulted the people on the site at the time, and made the decision to up dose back to where I was before I made the cut. I got relief in less than 24 hours, and then I held for well over a week (which at the time for me was long). After that I made much smaller, cautious cuts, starting with only 0.25mg cuts at first, and then going on to 0.5 mg cuts. I did quite well on the 0.5 cuts, but I held for about 1.5 to 2 weeks at that point. I did okay once more until I got to about 4 to 5 mg Valium and then started having issues again. This time, however, it wasn't as severe, but it required that I hold a lot longer and make smaller cuts for the rest of the taper.

  As far as up dosing goes, in my case it was my body telling me that my cut was simply too big for me at that point, and up dosing was the sane thing for me to do, and it worked in my favor.

  My PDOC also wanted me to stop taking SSRIs at that time, and he slowly tapered me off of these simultaneously. He told me that if I felt I couldn't handle it, we would stop the SSRI taper, but I didn't have any major issues with it even though I was on a large dose of Zoloft at the time.

  I truly believe that if I had been in a situation where I was forced to dry cut from the original benzo (Ativan), I wouldn't have been able to do it. I was so cognitively muddled that my first three weeks of crossover from Ativan to Valium had to be done via blister pack so that I didn't have to think. The Ativan is so short acting ( 4-6 hours) that just a single daily dose would never have been sufficient to allow me to stabilize at all. Since that experience I've come to appreciate the importance of using Valium for the taper, but I understand that for many people this isn't always possible.

    So, the bottom line for my up dosing experience was that I up dosed to the last dose where I was stable (which was my previous dose), held longer, and then made smaller cuts and longer holds. Up until that point I thought I'd be done with my taper in six months. It turned into more than twice that amount of time to get from the 14 mg to the 5 mg mark, and then slowed down even more from 5 mg down to 0.5 mg where I jumped.

I wrote a question here a while ago, and I used the word reinstatement, which now looking back wasn't the correct wording.  I understand this isn't the best option for everyone, and I really and truly believe everything that I read here.  That said, here's my story:

 

I tried hard to get off klonopin.  3x.  The last time, over 1.5 years, I managed to get off .75mg of 1.5. So half my dose.  It became unmanageable for me to do this at home alone.  By this time, in my dry cut world, I was making the smallest cuts a scale and knife could possibly imagine.  I was really not ok.  I waited excessive periods of time between cuts, but apparently not long enough, but I can't be sure.  I wish had known more then, than I do now.  The support just wasn't there. 

 

So, in the end, I was put on 1mg.  (back from .75).  I had odd symptoms, like lack of energy, depression, etc, so I was put back to 1.5mg.  This actually cleared things up, but during this time, in which I thought I was healed, I also tried getting off Lamictal.  Cal me stupid, but it's part of the story.  I didn't sleep for 5 months due after that, my gut went completely haywire.  Like no sleep, bubbling in my stomach, agony haywire.  I initially thought it was Lamictal but then... it happened. 

 

I cracked.  I went into the hospital with severe "anxiety", who knows what that exactly means, and they put me on gabapentin.  I will say this has taken th edge off, but I'm still kind of a walking ball of anxiety, almost anything triggers it, even writing this. 

 

I can't taper right now.  I know that I may need to in the future but right now it's just not an option.  I'm too "fragile" as they say.  Has anyone had a successful updose then retaper?  I understand it's not the best option, but it's how I found myself here.  I can't change the past.  They're talking about upping it to 2 mg, which if it stabilizes me, and I have a longer taper I'm almost ok with now that I have more info, better support (people actually believe me now, would you believe it) etc.  I know it's not the best option, and I know that people out there are trying aslo that are stuck where they are, or are holding out with probably worse conditions.  But I honestly, really, really tried, and I'm worried. 

 

I'm worried that by updosing that I'll never get better, that I'll never heal enough at this dose and that I'll constantly be this way until I try another taper, but I honestly can't do it like this.  I'm fried as it is.  Will time ever heal me enough to get back to what I wanted?  It's so hard to find people that have been in this position and I really don't want to be seen as a quitter.  I'm still fighting this, despite having to go back up.

 

I appreciate your thoughts, and good luck to everyone out there.  Thank you

 

This is my third time getting off klonopin and I am considering, if things don't improve, doing what you did and going back to my original dose, or close to it. Or above it. Whatever I have to do to end the misery. I have been tapering for two years and it just keeps getting worse despite a very conservative schedule. For me, my symptom is constant nausea. I just cannot live this this anymore.

 

So I have no answers for you, but I am sure that there are many others who have done what you have done, gone back up, they just don't post anymore. There is no shame in doing what you need to do to survive.

You can check my profile below.

 

I have been nauseated since Nov 5, 2015 every day, all day.  But have come to accept it as a way of life now otherwise I'd be too miserable to survive.  Just glad I can get the food in and keep it down. Some days are more tolerable and sometimes I wonder if I am getting a bit better.  Hard to tell when it's gone on so long you just don't know what normal is anymore.

 

Anyway, I got really bad, as you can see from my profile below, so the new psych upped me quite a bit.  He wanted to go higher to a "more therapeutic dose, as he referred to it," but I wanted off this stuff.  So, after a bit,  I told him I wanted to start small cuts. Going up that high was too fast, I believe, but I was desperate.  Now I have a long way to go down!

 

But coming off hasn't been as bad as I thought but that might be because I'm still high. I'm still ill at 2.125, but not much different than I was at 2.75.  So, I'm now going to try to do a slow and consistent taper until I reach the place where I will have to hold until stable and then microtaper the rest of the way no matter how long it takes, I guess.

 

It's sure a bad thing that has happened to a lot of us and many of us innocently enough, but what is done is done.  There are many in this world suffering.  We are included.  If I accept where I am and try to relax more through it, I think it may go better for me.  I tried too hard to fight it this whole time and it only made things worse.  I just have to accept what it is and do the best I can do now.

 

We're all in this together.  I hope you find something that works for you.  Updosing helped, but only time will tell if coming down slowly this time will be the winner for me. 

 

Best to you.

heres what a lot of people don't know

 

If you are on multiple drugs you must always taper the benzo first . Keep everything else stable. Because the other drugs change the rate of clearance of the benzo in your metabolism. If you go off one of the other drugs you can go into acute benzo withdrawal without even dropping your benzo dosage.

 

So when I cold turkeyed Ritalin , I went into acute benzo hell. I updosed from 1 mg X to 1.25. It did nothing so I decided to gut it out and it took 5 months before I could begin to taper.

 

So the stabilization has to do with the CNS which can get very touchy on a benzo , and even more so on multiple drugs.

makes sense about the multiple dosing and withdrawals.  I only found out too late when I found Benzobuddies that I should never have tried to get off the Mirtazepine, too.  I did it microscopically, but apparently it still was too much for me.  AND I heard that Mirt can be very hard for some to come off of.  I've read stories on their forum where people still were suffering after a year of being off of it.  I still have a few months to go before being off of it for a year.  Not that this is my problem, but I agree.  I think Dr. Ashton said so, too.  Go off the benzo first and then wait a while a then start to taper off the others.  Usually by then we are pro's at it.

 

Anyway, hope this helps those who are considering going off more than one medication at a time.  Perhaps it works for some people, but not all.  Certainly not you nor me.

 

Thanks for your input.  Hope this helps others.