Dry taper schedule (0.5mg clonazepam x2) - confirmation please

Hello

I take clonazepam (rivotril) 0.5mg twice daily.

I decided to start tapering, so I received clonazepam in powder form from my doctor. I also bought a scale with 3 digits after the decimal.

First question - should I taper off of the morning dose completely first and then reduce the evening dose? Or should I reduce the morning, reduce the night, reduce the morning, etc.?

My doctor didn't seem so sure, but suggested that I completely reduce the morning dose first. I'm wondering what the standard practice is.

Here are two possible schedules assuming that I'm reducing the morning dose first.

Note that the powder is 1g = 1mg clonazepam, so right now I am taking 0.5g (=0.5 mg)

[10% reductions]

Week 1: reduce to 0.45g

W3: 0.4

W5: 0.35

W5: 0.3

W7: 0.25

W8: 0.2

W9: 0.15

W11: 0.1

W13: 0.05

[5% reductions] (reduction every two weeks)

0.475g

0.45

0.425

0.4

0.375

0.35

0.325

0.3

0.275

0.25

0.225

0.2

0.175

0.15

0.125

0.1

0.075

0.05

0.025

I am completely new to this, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance

Congratulations on starting your taper! I'm no expert, but I'm around 70 - 75% done with my taper off K...only a month a half more to go hopefully!

I'd recommend you taper evenly off both your night and morning dose at the same time. This is only based off my experience, but I started having really bad interdose withdrawals during the afternoon about 9 months into my K use (I was taking 0.5mg every night) before I took my nightly dose.

I actually ended up splitting my dose half in the morning and half at night, and took half a percent off each dose (1% total) for the first 2 and a half months. Dosing morning and night evenly should keep your blood levels more stable, rather than having a larger drop off in blood concentration every afternoon before taking your night dose (if you completely went off your morning dose first). You may be fine if you dosed just once, but that caused more problems for me.

Your dosing schedule seems fine by the way. For reference, I started off tapering 1% every day off of 0.5mg total (so 14% every 2 weeks)...and I had fairly mild symptoms until about 70% of the way down. Around this point things have started getting worse, and I have to slow down. Keep in mind that many people tend to get worse the lower they get.

So listen to your body and slow down if needed.