To Cut or Not to Cut; How do You Decide?

I'm currently doing a direct taper (cut and hold) of clonazepam. I take a quarter of a pill off my ~4 tab dose every two weeks; this means my % reduction goes up with every cut. To lessen the rate of taper, I need to at some point switch to another taper method, but when? And likely, I'll know that information AFTER I've take too big a cut. I imagine the solution then will be to hold a little longer, and adjust.

 

I've been working on how to determine when it's safe to cut, and when to hold longer. My head is always a bag of cats, with waves of fear, fatigue, depression, etc; as a short time benzo user and a long-time mental health case, these are NOT symptoms I'm expecting to disappear after a couple weeks hold. But I've needed SOME way to measure if I'm tapering too fast and need to hold longer. The solution I'm using currently is to track 3 metrics: body weight/appetite, sleep, and exercise.

 

Body weight/appetite:

I weigh myself weekly, or biweekly if I'm worried; first thing in the AM naked. If the numbers are going down, I need to hold. I eat four meals a day, plus usually a vegetable juice soon after waking; if I feel bloated or nauseous I skip a meal. If I'm skipping meals regularly, I need to hold.

 

Sleep:

I take 0.5mg melatonin and go to bed in a dark, cool, quiet room at the same time every single night; 8-9pm. My 2am dose sucks, and usually sleep after 2am is rocky. In the morning I add up the hours I slept in the night and record this, along with notes about nightmares and other behavior. If I'm sleeping less than 8 hours, I hold.

 

Exercise:

I have IBS. Twice a day I strap on a diaper, and one time I go for a 45 minute ride in a car (I have severe car-travel anxiety I want to desensitize myself to), and the other time I walk a 1.25 mile loop around the neighborhood. If I can't go for a ride, or I can't walk the loop, I hold.

 

I'm not currently employed; I imagine other people need to be "stable enough for work", whatever that means for them. I'm interested to know how other folks measure their stability before taking another cut, even if they're doing a DMT. Since life is never "stress free", how do you decide?

It looks like you're taking care to observe your symptoms so you can adjust your taper accordingly, good plan however I'm concerned about your taper percentage because I'd hate to see you do that big cut you're worried about only to realize after that you've reduced too much.

 

Are you using your original dose when figuring out your next reduction or are you using your current?

Thanks for your response Pamster.

 

I'm on 4 tabs a day, taking off a quarter of a 0.5mg tab from a single dose once every two weeks at the moment (linear 0.125mg reduction). Compared ALWAYS to the "current" dose, my first cut was therefore 6.3%, my most recent cut was 6.7%, and if things remain manageable my next three cuts would be 7.1%, 7.7%, and 8.3%. These all seem theoretically reasonable. I could keep going with quarter pill cuts to get 9.1%, 10% and 11.1%, but those seem like "the danger zone". 

 

Since this is my first time tapering this slowly, I don't know what will be my comfortable limit. I'm only expecting an "okay, that was tough enough" sort of cut, and then switch to liquid and adjust the remaining cuts based on that percentage.

 

Does this gentle ramp up sound reasonable to you?

Thank you for explaining it to me in more detail, your plan looks very reasonable and well thought out.  I like your willingness to plan ahead and your flexibility in case you need to make adjustments.

Thanks for your consideration and encouragement Pamster! I really appreciate it.