Accidentally fudged

Hi all!

After a horrific 48 hours of all of the withdrawal side effects possible, it finally dawned on me why I was having such an excruciatingly hard time.

I made the awful mistake of putting 50 units of 40/80 alcohol into a cup, then adding in a 1mg pill of Ativan.

Waited until it was all mixed together, and was pulling 5 units off the paste. (What I had thought would be the equivalent of a 10% drop.)

WRONG I was!!!!!

For some reason I never pulled the paste back into the syringe to see if it still amounted to 50 units. I just assumed pulling 5 units of the paste out, would equal to a 10% decrease in 1mg of Ativan.

Long story short, I measured all of the paste tonight, and it only comes out to slightly below 12 units. Having been disgsrding 5 of those units every dose, I got myself into this mess of massive Withdrawals.

I am now switching over to the whole milk/water mixture and will make sure it is the appropriate amount this time. Perhaps the amount of liquid I am using in such a small syringe is not helping either; since it is little liquid to dissolve into, making it a paste.

Long story short; going back to the actual correct dosage, does anyone know how long I should be taking the regular dose of 1mg 3 times a day, in order to not be experiencing w/d’s, and, for how long I would need to hold at that dose, before dropping down the correct way, next?

Or, is it purely individual on how long it will take the body to readjust back to no symptoms?

(I have been on Ativan for 6 years. 3mg a day. I was prescribed 3mg at bedtime for sleep. Figuring it might be easier for my body to have the Ativan every 8 hours, at 1mg each, versus a whopping 3mg once every 24 hours seems to have helped me. I am still upset that I never realized that my prescribing Dr was over prescribing, but, I take full responsibility for not doing more research and just saying “okay” and taking the prescribed amount.)

Any help is much appreciated!!!!!