Need taper advice

Tapering off 10mg of Valium.  5 Dissolved in filtered water and 5 tablets at night.

Coming off the daytime water dissolve in a month of the first 5 mg.  I divided the 5mg of water in two doses during daytime ...took 5mg tablet at night.

  Once I get off the daytime water dissolve solution.....how do I do the last five if I dissolve them?  Do I divide it up again?  And how do I take it if I'm off the daytime?

  My water dissolve is 5mg in 300 millilitres of water.  I don't want to drink all that water before bed.  I'm in a dilemma.  Any ideas guys?

Hi Hopeforrecovery

5 Dissolved in filtered water

Like most benzos, diazepam (Valium) is NOT soluble in water. You just can not taper Valium by trying to dissolve it with water. Your solution will be unreliable and what you draw up or toss away will be simply inaccurate.

It would be best if you can do your liquid titration by using the commercial Diazepam Rx liquid. There are actually 2 Diazepam liquid Rx (Roxane Laboratories) I know of:

- Oral Solution is a PG based liquid, 5mg/5ml (or 1mg/ml).

- Intensol Solution (Concentrate) is an alcohol based solution 5mg/ml.

In both cases you will add plain water to dilute the Rx liquid. For example with PG based Oral Solution: 5 ml Rx + 45 ml water = 50 ml solution of 0.1 mg/ml that is the equivalent to 5mg of diazepam. Or with Intensol Solution: 1ml Rx +49 ml water = 50 ml solution of 0.1 mg/ml that is the equivalent to 5mg of diazepam.

In case a pharma compound solution is used, ask the pharmacist to prepare a solution with 0.1 mg/ml of benzo. You would just draw up the contents with a syringe and then inject it directly in the mouth. After you can rinse the syringe with water to not loose benzo.

If instead you would like to prepare yourself your home brew solution then it is possible too. Dissolve your Valium tablets with a solvent like Vodka, propylene glycol, fatty milk...Following this chemical interaction Diazepam changes its state from solid to liquid. When water is added dissolved benzo get uniformly distributed in the solution and there is no risk that benzo will deposit at the bottom. With an appropriate quantity of water added you can obtain the final solution for instance 0.1 mg/ml ready to be used.

Once I get off the daytime water dissolve solution.....how do I do the last five if I dissolve them?  Do I divide it up again?  And how do I take it if I'm off the daytime?

There a few points we need to talk about.

1. Diazepam is long-acting benzo widely used in the taper exercise due to the long time it remains in your body after the dose is taken. The so called elimination half-life for it is between 32-47 hours. It only means that it takes that long for the drug to fall to half of its ingested value. Because of its long half-life, whether to take it in one or two doses a day is really irrelevant. For 3.5 years I took one dose of 0.5 mg of the intermediate-acting Clonazepam per night with no interdose withdrawal symptoms. In my opinion, when you take 5mg in the morning and 5mg in the evening, there is pratically no difference with taking the total 10mg in the evening.

2. When you taper, if you wish you can taper first the morning 5mg dose. When this is finished you start to taper the evening 5mg dose. The other option is to taper both doses together. Again you won't feel any difference because of the extremely long time this benzo stays in your body before it is eliminated.

3. During your taper, you can take your dose part in tablet + part in liquid. This if you are used to tablet and wish to avoid surprise by switching all tablets to liquid all of a sudden. For exemple, you take 4.5 mg of Valium in the morning. Instead of taking all 4.5 mg in liquid the way you do today, you will take 4 mg in tablets and 0.5 mg in liquid. When at a certain point 0.5 mg of liquid has been tapered off then you will take 3.5 mg in tablets and 0.5 mg in liquid. And this until the end of the taper exercise.

If you want to have an idea of how your taper planning might look like, go here. At the bottom right corner there the "ReadMe First" button. Have a look. If questions please ask.

Hope I answered your questions.

Thank you so much Jim....

  So appreciate you trying to help me.  I am presently using a Microsoft Spreadsheet tapering off 10% from 300 liquid. 

  Unfortunately, I have never been able to tolerate alcohol in any form since I tried it at age 18 and that was just wine.  I am overly-and super sensitive to the slightest amount of alcohol.  This is why I'm having such a difficult time tapering from Valium as well.  I have waves every day and night......no let up.  Constant symptoms, no windows.  I DARE not add alcohol to the mix and thus far, the valium is dissolving and it has worked for me till I presently hit the wall at tossing 276 millilitres from 300.  I don't like taking the tablets.......I am very happy with what I am doing with dissolving it in filtered water.  I was fine as I tapered in the past with this method until I became over-confident and sped it up to 10% a day.  That worked for two months then I hit the wall ...BP SPIKING daily into dangerous levels.......I am stubborn, but it was so high, I HAD to HOLD at this rate for now. 

  However, what I'm getting from what you suggested is that when I switch to the other 5mg.......if I so choose to water dissolve as I did with the first 5mg, you are saying it does not matter if I divide or take it all at the same time.  Sounds good ....

  According to the taper schedule from the Ashton Method, she tapers you off the morning then the afternoon and LAST the evening.  I was following her method by Cutting out 2 mg a WEEK .....every week till I hit 10 mg.....then the BP SPIKES happened was forced slow down, well, actually I HELD till I stabilized which was longer than I wanted to do, then I started tapering at 5% then moved up to 7% and stayed there for a year, then moved up to 10%. 

    IF I could take the alcohol, you bet I WOULD DO IT....but I cannot tolerate it without severe reactions. 

  The Upshot of all this is from what you suggested, I don't really have to divide the dose then......so I'll go with that and I thank you for all your help.  I have heard so much about you.  So grateful for your help!

    Kimmie  (HopeforRecovery).

Hi Hopeforrecovery

‘Oral Solution 5mg/5ml’ Rx liquid from Roxane Laboratories uses PG (Propylene Glycol) as solvent and does not contain alcohol.

Dissolve your Valium tablets with a solvent like Vodka, propylene glycol, fatty milk...Following this chemical interaction Diazepam changes its state from solid to liquid. When water is added dissolved benzo get uniformly distributed in the solution and there is no risk that benzo will deposit at the bottom.

Hello Jim Hawk,

I've been reading your posts trying to gain a better understanding of liquid titration and I have a question about the statements I've put in bold.  I hope you can walk me through your process or perhaps cite a source I could read to help me understand.

I've read so many posts from members who complain about the fact that there is residue which settles at the bottom of the cylinder or clings to the sides so I don't see how we can say there is a chemical interaction which changes the drug from a solid to a liquid.  Are the particles the medication or other additives in the pill, do we know?

I don't know if this process could be accomplished in a professional lab but from what I've read here, members aren't seeing what you are.  Are they perhaps missing a step?

Pamster

Hi Pamster

I'm towards the end of a writing on why I'm a DMT believer and I read your message. Here is an extraction that might partially answer your query:

"Contrarily to the pharma laboratories where pure benzo powder is available, we work with tablets. If we think the weight of a tablet is about 163 mg (it varies though!) while the quantity of benzo it contains varies from 0.5 mg to 5 mg, the presence of benzo is just 0.3% to 3% of a tablet. The rest is excipients also known as inactive ingredients (coating, disintegrator, filler, binder, colorant...) necessary to build the tablet. "

What people often see floating on the surface, sticked on the wall of the jar or resting at its bottom after the tablet has been immersed for some time in Vodka and solution stirred, is the inactive ingredients. Inactive but necessary as without them no medication could be delivered in the tablet. Those could be swallowed together with the solution or discarded with no significant impact on the dose as the tiny quantity of benzo has already been dissolved in the liquid part of the solution.

Hope I answered your question.

Hi Jim,

Thanks for taking the time to respond, as I said I'm trying to learn this process so I appreciate your input.  I guess I'm still struggling with the concept of assuming that all of the drug is dissolving and none of it is adhering to the excipients.  I actually tried to read through a publication authored in part by Nishath Fathima which you can find here: https://www.japsonline.com/admin/php/uploads/125_pdf.pdf

I have to admit I mostly just read the abstract and conclusion but I did find this. "In one of the investigation, it was observed that dissolution of drug was decreased due to adsorption of drug on the surface of microcrystalline cellulose."

And this: "interactions can lead to degradation of the active ingredient, thereby reducing the amount available for therapeutic effect." 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel we need to be careful when we talk in absolutes about a process we perform in our kitchens when scientists in laboratories are running into issues.

Tapering is an imprecise process, it's a wonder so many of us have been successful when we're left to our own devices to get off of these drugs.  I so wish the medical profession, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies would realize how much money they could make if they would only help us by supplying us with the doses we need to taper, wouldn't that be wonderful?

I look forward to reading your DMT post, perhaps that would be the better place for us to discuss this instead of hijacking Hopeforrecovery's thread, my apologies Hopeforrecovery. 

Pamster

Hi Pamster

Please see my reply in Chew The Fat board Challis99 moved to.

Hi Jim,

I've briefly read it but will digest it further later on.  The link you put in the post doesn't work, could you take a look and fix it?

Pamster

Hi Hopeforrecovery

I apologize but this is the last time I hijack your thread. I have too because a post of mine in discussion is under deletion request from me and therefore I do not wish to reply to buddie Pamster from there. Thank you!

***

Hi Pamster

..The link you put in the post doesn't work, could you take a look and fix it?

When I went to the Excel file where I use to store all interesting links with associated descriptions/keywords and clicked on the link, it failed! As I always double checked before storing the information, I went to the Internet with same keywords with the hope to find the new location of the file. Guess what! I found again the post from BB where that information likely came from. Needless to say the link is dead again in that post. I seem to have never quite learnt the lesson: What has worked in the past might not necessarily now! Sorry !

Not a problem, enjoyed learning from you both.

    But I have one Question.....what is DMT?

DMT: Daily Micro Taper

DLMT: Daily Liquid Micro Taper (or titration)

DDMT: Daily Direct Micro Taper (or dry cut)

Thank you so very much.

So confusing between the titles of DMT and then DMLT.  I thought DMLT was the Liquid only.  Thanks for clarifying.