How I dissolve 1mg lorazepam in pure water

I will describe how I taper my lorazepam by dissolving it in pure water at room temperature.

It concerns lorazepam 1 mg tablets.

Since the water solubility of clonazepam is slightly higher than that of lorazepam, I suspect that this method also works for clonazepam.

I put my tablet in a glass jar and add 100 ml of water at room temperature. I close the jar with a plastic lid. My brand's tablet is now falling apart quickly. Because of the poor solubility, I now wait 30 minutes, then I shake the jar vigorously for 10 to 15 seconds, after which I wait another 30 minutes. Then I can pull out the desired volume with a syringe.

The solubility of lorazepam in water is 80 mg/litre (Merck index). This would mean that 12.5 ml of water would be sufficient to dissolve 1 mg of lorazepam. However, this says nothing about the time it would take to completely dissolve, which is why I wait long, use a larger volume and shake vigorously for a long time.

This solubility probably applies to room temperature or 25 °C. That's why I use room temperature water.

The jar I use is an empty peanut butter jar. The plastic lid closes well enough to lose little or no water when shaking. It is a small size so that the jar is just over half full with 100 ml of water and I can bring the water in vigorous motion.

To withdraw precise amounts of liquid, I use a 50 ml needleless syringe with a rubber plunger.

To make sure that the lorazepam has largely dissolved, I tested it as follows. I always wait 30 minutes or more after shaking. In the meantime, all insoluble tablet components have sunk to the bottom. I now suck out the desired volume, being careful not to suck up any of the sediment. When I drink this, the effect of this on me is the same as if I had swallowed a corresponding amount of lorazepam in dry form. Since I clearly notice a difference of 10% with the dry method, this is proof for me that the sediment contains virtually no lorazepam anymore.

I made the switch from the dry scale method to this method without any problems.

The advantage of this method is that I can work very accurately even at low doses. It is also very easy to accurately measure the volume to the nearest 1 ml, i.e. accurate to 0.01 mg of lorazepam. If I want to achieve something similar with the scale, it is at least much more difficult.

An additional advantage is that the lorazepam may not be completely evenly distributed over the tablet, which, in the case of the dry method, could lead to inaccuracies at low doses. That would be very annoying for a relatively short-acting drug like lorazepam. In any case, this method does not suffer from that.

Due to the poor solubility, I store my solution in a not too cold place in the refrigerator..

Because I take into account the possibility of spoilage, I never keep the solution longer than approximately 2 days.

It's this syringe: https://www.merkala.nl/bd-plastipak-injectiespuit-50ml-3-delig-60-stuks.html

For solubility search for solubility in https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00186

Thanks for sharing your tapering approach john17! I'm happy that it's working for you!

I like the steps you're exploring in this method; the waiting and shaking seem important, although I'm curious about what if any lorazepam particles are settling to the bottom of your final liquid.

I have some concerns about your assumed correlation between pure lorazepam solubility data and your 1-hour of waiting with 10-15 seconds of shaking. I don't know the the method used to determine the solubility data used in the Merck Index but I doubt it's similar to your tablet-based procedure.

I do have solubility data from Jouyban and friends, (https://sci-hub.se/10.1021/je900200k), which shows that a maximum of 0.05mg/ml of pure lorazepam was soluble in water. The lorazepam dissolution data from Jouyban was determined by using pure lorazepam with excess drug material and waiting >24 hours during constant agitation in an incubator. We're not in tablet-shaking Kansas anymore! 

I'm glad to hear that your procedure results are currently feeling similar for you to taking tablets. However, your very first sentence says "I will describe how I taper my lorazepam by dissolving it in pure water at room temperature."; I'm certain that you cannot verify this at-home, and I think this factual claim is misleading to our members.

Would you mind amending your post to reflect that your method is an attempt to dissolve lorazepam from tablets, without any proof to what degree this is in-fact taking place?  I know your symptoms feel similar, but this is not proof of dissolution.

I suggest if you run into any problems, to consider consuming a portion of the precipitate material as a part of your dose by shaking or stirring vigorously immediately before drawing your dose from the middle of the volume of liquid. You might also benefit from using a mortar and pestle to wet grind your tablets to a very fine paste in a small amount of water before rinsing the mortar into your final dilution; smaller particles are more likely to dissolve and also stay in suspension longer.

I hope your water suspension/solution of deconstructed tablets keeps working for you!