Morning withdrawal

I take my evening dose of Ativan at 1130pm.  I normally take my morning dose at 7am to keep my daily spacing even to minimize interdose withdrawal.  Most mornings I get jolted awake around 530am and if I’m lucky I can fall asleep until 615ish.  But I have horrible interdose withdrawal.  Is there any way I can minimize this?

I was thinking of switching to clonazepam to address this morning interdose withdrawal.  My doc said she would be willing to switch me but there are risks when crossing over to another benzo.  Some people really struggle with it.  I don’t know what to do!!!!

Have you tried dosing more frequently?

 

If I were in your shoes, I would consider the following when contemplating a switch from lorazepam/Ativan to clonazepam/Klonopin.  Clonazepam is a difficult drug to taper because of its high potency, limited FDA-approved formulations, and challenging solubility profile. Also, per the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, “While interdose withdrawal typically occurs with short half-life benzodiazepines, like Ativan or Xanax, it can and does occur with longer half life benzodiazepines like Klonopin, Valium, Librium and Tranxene.”

I’m already dosing 4 times a day.  For some reason the morning always gets me.  I take at 7am, 12pm, 530pm, and 1130 pm.  So between my evening dose and my morning dose. 7.5 hours have gone by - and I feel it pretty good.  It wakes me up at like 530 every morning and I feel the need for my morning dose but a hold out (it’s tough) to as close to 7am as I can so that my day is smoother.  I think the bedtime dose helps put me asleep so not sure if I should try breaking that last dose into two doses with a dose around 3am?  I’d be afraid I might sleep right through it and miss it completely.  Or the alarm goes off at 3am and I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep.  The reason I asked my doc about switching to clonazepam is I tapered off .5mg in 2015-16 (took me exactly a year to do it) and had very little issues.  Scared to switch even though I was successful before cause this time could be not as smooth.  Just want some advice if I would be better off tapering from Ativan vs clonazepam.  I was dosing the clonazepam 3 times a day in my last taper

Ah ha.  I was going by what you wrote in your post “ I take my evening dose of Ativan at 1130pm.  I normally take my morning dose at 7am.”  When you have a minute, it would be helpful to other members if you updated your signature to include your current dosing schedule.

Will do

Thank you!  As I’m sure you’ve read, many members suffer from the “early morning alarm bell” phenomenon.  I wonder if that might be a contributing factor?

I haven’t read through all the past posts.  They scare me to much and my doctor told me I have to watch that.  Do you suffer from this?

When I was taking clonazepam, I didn’t suffer from the morning interdose withdrawal.  That’s why I was considering switching.  What would the cross over schedule look like from 1.5 mg Ativan to clonazepam?

I tapered from clonazepam twice.  Once in 2010.  Again just recently.  I did not cross over to valium and did a direct taper both times.  I was okay.  The first taper 2010 was easy.  This recent one was much much harder.  But,  I did succeed.  It has a decent half life.  I had a compounding pharmacy prepare it in liquid so I could reduce very small amounts.  It was fine that way.  If you have compounding pharmacies near you and your doctor is willing to prescribe it that way, you can def succeed to taper with clonazepam.  However, cross overs can be challenge.  I am unsure what the right crossover dose would be. 

 

I hear you about scary posts.  If your doctor advises against getting too into it, then follow advice.  You don't know what is scary until you read it, and then it is kind of too late.  My counsellor advised me to take a break at one point, and it helped me a lot.  I needed to dumb down the anxiety and stop feeding it. 

You could try splitting your dose into 3× a day

I'm taking the Ativan 4 times a day - 1.5mg total.

 

its the morning interpose withdrawal that I'm struggling with