I’m a DMT (Daily Micro Taper) believer: a friendly discussion

Hi buddies

 

...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...

I agree. Here we are. As the text I nearly finish is long, I will try to not overload the thread though. I will update periodically with short extracts in this same thread for buddies who would like to discuss.

 

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.

Thank you for sharing your personal viewpoint. Before I start to share mine, please allow me this disclaimer: "I am not a doctor, a pharmacist, a chemist or a professional in the health care domain. I do not detain any copyright over the truth. Besides my personal experience, what you read here is what I have learnt over the years by reading and synthetizing posts from members of Benzo and Antidepressant different forums. It is a personal position and may or may not reflect the position of the BB direction board. Buddies are free to reject."

 

Few years ago, while I was still under 0.5 mg tablet of Clonazepam per day, I frequently got caught in a doubt. It always came early in the morning when I first woke up and still laid in bed. It was always the same question: “Have I by any chance forgotten to take my tablet yesterday evening before going to bed?”. Why this question? Because during certain nights it appears that all of the symptoms of my Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) problem, for which I’ve been prescribed benzo for, are back in all its splendor as if benzo has never played any role in its suppression.

 

As the medication has been of course taken the night before, I first thought it was a manufacturing problem where one tablet might contain more benzo than another. When following my research, I learnt from here that each tablet individual content was between 85% and 115% of the average content. So, I told to myself, if one evening I happened to take a 85% tablet, it may explain why I had symptoms. But I had to change my idea very soon. I actually happened to have in a row several days (5-7) of good sleep then few weeks later again in a row 4-5 agitated nights. I just don’t believe the tablets I picked out from a bottle are all 85% tablets for 4-5 nights in sequence. From a probability stand point it is possible but it is very unlikely. There must be something else. So, I started to investigate at the receiving end: myself!

 

I realized that when I did too much workout, ate a special salty fish sauce and drank too little water, or ate too much pasta during the evening meal or watch TV during long soccer matches in the evening then the symptoms seem to be amplifying during the night. There are other reliable findings I found later on but I will not spend more time on them now. Over the time I came up with the conclusions that benzo as one of the main regulators of my symptoms is NOT the only player in the game. There are multiple different other concurrent parameters, many I can control others not, that can intervene in the complex body functions and impact my sleep quality during the night. It is certainly not a crumb of tablet left in my tablet-splitter nor some lingering benzo dust left on a wall of a jar that dictates alone if my right leg will be jerking that night.

 

While I continue to be for a precise recipe with accurate proportion between alcohol/PG and water, I understand that buddies can make errors. Particularly those with foggy brains as consequence of many years under benzo could make manipulation mistakes while preparing their home brew solution. I was one of them and during a short period of time I have not been able to calculate a percentage. For those buddies a home brew preparation done alone may be a risk. But if someone with informed action, instead of 10 ml of Vodka and 90 ml of water for instance, made a mis-manipulation and used 80 ml of water or 100 ml of water, I firmly believe there won’t be any significant difference as far as symptoms are concerned. First of all, because of the so small quantity of benzo involved in the diluted solution. Second, because human body has this tremendous capability to handle and absorb fluctuations, whether they are internal to the body or external, and adapt to the new situation to get a new equilibrium. Without this capability, human race might have extinguished long time ago due to the challenging environment it lives in. It is not some tiny dust of benzo too much or too little swallowed that will prevent our body to achieve this target.

 

Recently I happened to read about a buddie who has tapered off 90% of her initial and large dose of benzo by using water as solvent. Needless to say that her benzo, like many others, is NOT soluble in water. It is true that she is having a plethora of symptoms but it also shows how a human organism can tolerate the huge fluctuations of benzo during all these months as nobody can say with certainty how much benzo she managed to swallow each time. I read several cases like this in the past.

 

Because of that, whenever buddies worry about the precision of his/her dose, whether by using a precision scale that results not so precise, or from a home brew solution prepared as best as one can in one’s own kitchen with unexpected excipients floating on the surface, I try to tell them: "It doesn’t matter if your dose of today is not absolutely precise, provided that you consistently lower a small quantity of benzo each day with manageable symptoms then you are on a good track."

 

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

I read it with mild interest. Scientists do lot of good job to help us understand what lies below the surface, in their research-bound approach. Taperers can have a different and more survival-bound goal: Consistently lower a small quantity of benzo each day while staying functional in the day-to-day activities with symptoms kept manageable. This is also my conduct line when I post in BB.

Also a firm believer in micro-taper based on what you just said. Small cuts may show a rocky graph but the graph always trends downward. Better than a sharp drop followed by a little plateau then another sharp drop.

Hi Jim Hawk, 

 

I'm addressing the information you put on another thread here since this is where we'll resume our discussion, thanks for digging this out for me.  I discovered the link builder put in to cite his position is also broken, could you do just a bit more research to find one that works?  Thanks so much.

 

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 Hamster

 

..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 !

Hi Pamster

 

At that time the link included in builder’s post worked and provided useful information for me personally in my investigation. Apparently the document has gone (together with the entire domain name) during the time I was off. As for the good documents that can show variations of a tablet weight there are plenty of them on the internet. Google with tablet weight variations as keywords and you will find them. Good luck!

 

From your insistance, I understand you are particularly interested in the tablet weight difference. Do you have any special reason for that specific topic or you just would like to pinpoint my lack of serious in having not checked the link before posting, therefore my position in home brew preparation that you apparently prefer done by professionals?

I don't think I would have been able to get off Xanax had I not done a DLMT. It made ALL the difference.

 

My calculations included running numbers and decreasing by percentage rather than a static reduction of the same amount. There were times when I stuck to a set amount, but I paid close attention to the amount of the reduction and adjusted as needed.

 

It's unfortunate that it's now hard to find "home brew" info here.

... decreasing by percentage rather than a static reduction of the same amount....

You are one of the very few I happen to read that went by percent reduction. In a certain sense you are an illuminated mind. Congratulations for been benzo free.

 

It's unfortunate that it's now hard to find "home brew" info here.

By joining BB mid 2017, I saw a few buddies with knowledge of home brew solution sharing their experience. As I gradually learnt what it is all about, I remember requests for help flowed in incessantly.  I recall I used to spend 2-3 hours a day, sometimes in the evening, together with those buddies to answer all of these requests. I humbly think this is one of key factors, that other sites do not have, that have contributed to make BB a great worldwide known forum. Nowhere else could we find such a precise recipe as provided by BB. At that time the number of members was about 45’000 as far as I can remember. I cannot count the number of PMs I received from buddies, who found their taper eventless or have successfully tapered off, to say thanks. During the time I was off and didn’t answer PM, many months later I continue to receive heartly felt thanks from buddies.

 

When I came back few weeks ago, those knowledgeable buddies are no longer there. People in here seem to be reluctant even to talk about home brew solution. Suddenly I’ve got that weird feeling that for some reasons BB, which remains a peer-to-peer support site, wants to take a different, more ‘professional’ look. I just couldn’t stop to see in different posts references to this research and that research. I’m startled! Is that a deliberate choice to slowly discourage the home brew solution on behalf of a more ‘professional’ solution? If it is the case then is BB not loosing one of the strengths that made its success?

 

People come here to look for a complete and simple solution to get them out of the mess. If they found just kind welcome words with the recommendations to not cut too fast and nothing else then empty handed they will not return. Any benzo support site would offer the same. Nowadays we have in BB more than 70’000 members between active and not active buddies . A jump of nearly 80% up compared to when I first arrived! While I can witness  many new comers in the Introduction board, the posts from buddies in the taper boards do not follow the same trend. Some days not even one post is made in the crossover board for instance. The ‘main’ titration board that few years ago was always crowded with new requests now has much less posts. One or two a day, some days. That makes me wonder if BB by deliberately choosing a more respectable professional image is not loosing a part of its soul and with it its success. I might be wrong. I hope I am.

 

Micro-taper worked for me. I am very thankful that I did it.

I'm using daily liquid micro taper for xanax, and I'm almost done! I was quite precise with my calculations at first. I make dilute solutions. My starting daily dose was 100 mL of my solution, and I reduced my dose by 1 or 2 mL per day. When I got down to 90 mL, or 80 mL, or wherever I started feeling uncomfortable, I went to a more dilute solution and back to 100 mL per day. This is how I keep my percentages roughly the same.

 

I'm now at the point where I don't have the glassware to make more dilute solutions. I use one 0.5 mg pill, and I dilute to 500 mL. It currently takes me 10 days to finish this solution. I'm not feeling any symptoms as I go lower, so I'm hoping I can just keep reducing. At the moment I'm holding at 0.05 mg per day as I get rid of ambien altogether. I could use the syringes I bought, which I haven't used, to reduce by 0.5 mL a day if I need to. But I don't want to do that. And I wasn't feeling symptoms as got lower, so I'll just keep reducing by 1 mL a day (currently at 50 mL per day dose).

I used the "home brew" method for my valium DLMT. I would never have gotten off that blasted drug otherwise. I, too, am sorry to see the home-brew method de-emphasized here. Thinking outside the box (by buddies who preceded me) saved my bacon.

 

Katz

I used "Home Brew" and so thankful that DiazPam helped me with it, I would not been able to get off. It saddens me that we do not have the support here that we have had in the past, concerning making our own brew. I understand wanting to be careful, and we do not know how it affects everyone, I can see that it would be banned in a Medical setting, But for me it worked and for that I am eternally grateful for all that have given their time and patience to help others get off of the  benzo's. I always liked to read the help our Pros with math and Brews gave to others, and I know that it helped many...hopefully there will be a middle ground and more can be helped off of these benzo's that has taken so much from us. Thanks to all that gave of their time and knowledge...💖 Peace and Healing.

DiazPam helped me with it,

 

Me, too, begood! I was so lucky to land here while she was still an active member.

 

 

Katz

 

 

DiazPam helped me with it,

 

Me, too, begood! I was so lucky to land here while she was still an active member.

 

 

Katz

 

I also believe homebrew works.  I came off many mgs before needing a Long Hold, when I changed to Liquid Diazapam.  It was my fault I needed to hold, I was going too fast because I made a mistake in my math.  I would have made the same mistake using Liquid Diazapam.  Also, many people can not afford Pharmaceutical Liquid benzo's, their insurance won't cover it, their Dr won't write a script for it.

So they are left without being able to do a dlmt. 

I was very disappointed as we saw the homebrew information disappearing. 

Jim helped me when I needed it in the beginning, builder helped me later on.  I so appreciate the help they provided.

I agree with all the buddies here.  That was a part of bb that was unique and helped many people off their benzo's.  You still read the stories of those people today as the end of their journey comes.

Mary

Hi buddies

 

... many people can not afford Pharmaceutical Liquid benzo's, their insurance won't cover it, their Dr won't write a script for it.

So they are left without being able to do a dlmt...

In Switzerland where I live and in most countries of Western Europe, nearly all pharmacies have this facility to prepare personalized medications. But the cost, usually covered by health insurance, is important. That is normal considering the very high quality of life over here. Benzo goes beyond the borders. In some countries of the Eastern Europe, India, South-East Asia, South-America...there is not the same facility or those facilities are not accessible to everybody. People who are benzo dependent sometimes have just a few bucks to eat while constantly fighting for survival. They have no way to ask a pharmacist to prepare a compound solution of 0.1 mg/ml of Xanax for their taper. They just have the money to pay for their benzo tablets found in the streets.

 

Just let me relate a story I've been taught when still a young boy. In 1789, when being told that her French subjects had no bread, Marie-Antoinette who is at that time the bride of France’s King Louis XVI, sniffed: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” traduced in English: “Let them eat cake!”. Of course everybody would like to eat cake but it has a price that not everybody can afford in certain regions of the globe. BB by its noble mission is not dedicated to a certain category of buddies. It is for all human beings suffering withdrawal from benzo, whether they are wealthy or poor. It would be nice if solutions proposed here accordingly reflect that value.

I switched over to a daily liquid microtaper.  I was doing fine with dry tapering from 20 mg a day of Valium down to about 7.5mg.  From 10 mg on down I was using a pill cutter to slice 2 mg valium pills into quarters.  That allowed me to make .5 mg cuts.  This was the smallest that I could accurately make with the pill cutter. 

 

As I got lower, the .5mg cut represented a larger percentage of my total dose.  When I cut from 7 mg a day to 6.5mg a day, and then 6.5 mg a day to 6 mg a day, the symptoms became increasingly difficult, and I had to wait a month or more to stabilize between .5 mg cuts.  Going over to liquid Valium and diluting it with water proved to be a lifesaver for me.  It allowed me to make tiny daily cuts that are smaller and more accurate than I could make using dry cutting.  And it greatly reduced the SXS that I was experiencing.

        Here's all the info you need on the link below  Diaz Pam wrote it, but its using milk as the solvent, no mention of vodka or Propylene Glycerol( PG)  there' s lots of helpful information and tips too I don't know why it isn't a ''sticky'' people need this information.  Also if I can't find it will someone else please put the link to using Vodka/alcohol and Propylene Glycerol( PG) as a solvent on this thread, that information should also be put up as a sticky too. If it already has can someone then please put the sticky link up with its title along with the link thanks . Or perhaps write out a more descriptive post on it as my brains not too great, but I believe  the below is correct 

 

As far as I know for those that want to use the Vodka/ Water or the PG and Water to save cutting pills you put a 2mg pill into 4mls of either Vodka or  Propylene Glycerol( PG) to allow 2mls of either solvent  for each 1mg of pill  to act as a solvent , wait for the solvent to dilute the pill first before adding water, then add your required amount of water. which works out the same as the milk instructions on Pams link except your using a solvent and the same amount of water minus the 2 or 4mls of solvent e.g if your using 2mls of solvent, and 100mls of water subtract 2mlls for the solvent leaving you 98mls of water. So 98mls of water+2mls of either vodka or PG =100 which you then take your cut from .

 

Diaz-Pam Example of a Valium/Diazepam Daily Reduction Method

« on: 22 December 2013, 02:53:25 »http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=97511.0

 

                                                      Nova xxx  :smitten:

Just found Jim Hawk's DMLT instructions as I didn't see the link in his signature  on his post???

 

 

Benzodiazepine Liquid Taper Help https://benzo.alwaysdata.net/titration/titrationHelp.htm?help=Help

 

 

 

                                                Nova xxx  :smitten:

        Here's all the info you need on the link below  Diaz Pam wrote it, but its using milk as the solvent, no mention of vodka or Propylene Glycerol( PG)  there' s lots of helpful information and tips too I don't know why it isn't a ''sticky'' people need this information.  Also if I can't find it will someone else please put the link to using Vodka/alcohol and Propylene Glycerol( PG) as a solvent on this thread, that information should also be put up as a sticky too. If it already has can someone then please put the sticky link up with its title along with the link thanks . Or perhaps write out a more descriptive post on it as my brains not too great, but I believe  the below is correct 

 

 

 

This is not a sticky because this not a method that BB would wholeheartedly support due to the inherent problems that are present with this particular plan. We've tried to point out the issues that can arise by using 'home brews'. 

 

Note that Colin wrote some good information about the use of mini dose daily reductions here:

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=231828.0

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=231363.0

 

We have found that the best available solution is the use of RX liquid. I know this is not possible in the US for clonazepam, however a compounding pharmacy can create an accurate liquid, much more accurate than someone using their own kitchen as a laboratory.

        Here's all the info you need on the link below  Diaz Pam wrote it, but its using milk as the solvent, no mention of vodka or Propylene Glycerol( PG)  there' s lots of helpful information and tips too I don't know why it isn't a ''sticky'' people need this information.  Also if I can't find it will someone else please put the link to using Vodka/alcohol and Propylene Glycerol( PG) as a solvent on this thread, that information should also be put up as a sticky too. If it already has can someone then please put the sticky link up with its title along with the link thanks . Or perhaps write out a more descriptive post on it as my brains not too great, but I believe  the below is correct 

 

 

 

This is not a sticky because this not a method that BB would wholeheartedly support due to the inherent problems that are present with this particular plan. We've tried to point out the issues that can arise by using 'home brews'. 

 

Note that Colin wrote some good information about the use of mini dose daily reductions here:

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=231828.0

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=231363.0

 

We have found that the best available solution is the use of RX liquid. I know this is not possible in the US for clonazepam, however a compounding pharmacy can create an accurate liquid, much more accurate than someone using their own kitchen as a laboratory.

OK thanks PG 

 

                                                                      Nova xxx  :smitten:

I'm not trying to be a trouble maker or stir the  pot at all but,  when I looked at the Benzo buddies over view page about tapering methods Milk titration is on there http://benzobuddies.org/benzodiazepine-withdrawal-methods/titration/

 

As well  Direct pill tapering   http://www.benzobuddies.org/benzodiazepine-withdrawal-methods/overview/ 

 

Stepping-Off  pill Tables Direct taper  http://www.benzobuddies.org/benzodiazepine-withdrawal-methods/direct-taper/ 

 

Which is what Diaz-pam wrote about, Milk titration

 

So if its deemed to be unreliable I can't understand why its there    My intentions  are good so please don't think I'm posting about  it for the wrong reasons I'm truly  very puzzled that's all 

 

 

                                                                      Nova xxx  :smitten:

Hi Nova 1!

 

You asked me in a PM about what my liquid taper looked like. I tapered off of xanax, which has much smaller doses than the diazepam you are tapering off of, so I don't know if my method would work for you.