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Taper rate at the end


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I am trying to figure out how to taper now. I have been doing 3% for two weeks after a hold of 4.5 months. As I have gotten lower I become bedbound again and tried holding but it hasn’t helped that much except maybe my sleep is a little better still bed bound. Crushing fatigue and POTs where I can’t really be upright without my heart racing and feeling like I am being pulled to the ground like heavy cement is around my neck pulling me down. When laying down in bed the pain is so severe I feel like I am being crushed like their is a slab of cement laying on me. I also have developed histamine intolerance during my hold.

I do a daily micro taper. I at 1.92mg equivalent of Valium. When I first started tapering years ago I was very sick from tolerance and bedbound after reinstating from a ct and holding for a year. It didn’t help much, it took away the very scary symptoms but I was not functional and mostly bed bound. Once I started slowly tapering 3% on a daily micro taper after several months things started to get a little better. Now that I have got lower things have got harder and I am in the same position again as Years ago when I was bedbound. Some part of me thinks I will not be better until I am off and spend some time healing so I think atleast 10% a month should be the way to go but I don’t want to make myself worse if slow would make me function better but don’t know if functional is an option for me at this point and I am just further creating dependency.

 

My worst symptoms is this heaviness that feels like cement in my body so much pain and then the severe hypoglycemia. I am in a blood sugar roller coaster all day that brings on a lot of symptoms and even with my best efforts to manage it it is not manageable.I have been reading  Severe hypoglycemia is brought on from low adrenal hormones and high insulin from stress. I eat the hypoglycemic diet of protein fat and carb every few hours and have lowered my carbs even more and it has helped about 10% just not sure the adrenal function will get better until off or do we still heal on a slow taper. If something closer to 10% is better to get me off this crap faster and not delaying healing then I want to do that but today isn’t a good day and I am driving myself crazy with how to proceed. I have had to move in with my parents at Christmas because I can’t care for myself with the basics like getting food. I am so sad to leave my kids and husband.

 

Just wondering if anyone can share their experience.

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Speaking from experience, I felt better as my taper went along.  I still had symptoms but they began to abate as my dose got lower.  And there was a psychological boost knowing I was getting toward the end and then jumping.  It felt scary and good all at once having benzos completely out of my life.
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Speaking from experience, I felt better as my taper went along.  I still had symptoms but they began to abate as my dose got lower.  And there was a psychological boost knowing I was getting toward the end and then jumping.  It felt scary and good all at once having benzos completely out of my life.

 

Thank you for sharing! Were you functional through the taper?

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Speaking from experience, I felt better as my taper went along.  I still had symptoms but they began to abate as my dose got lower.  And there was a psychological boost knowing I was getting toward the end and then jumping.  It felt scary and good all at once having benzos completely out of my life.

 

Thank you for sharing! Were you functional through the taper?

 

I did everything I usually did as I tapered but I did allow myself to rest more often.

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Speaking from experience, I felt better as my taper went along.  I still had symptoms but they began to abate as my dose got lower.  And there was a psychological boost knowing I was getting toward the end and then jumping.  It felt scary and good all at once having benzos completely out of my life.

 

Thank you for sharing! Were you functional through the taper?

 

Ok that’s hasn’t been close to my experience at all. Hopefully someone similar will chime in.

 

I did everything I usually did as I tapered but I did allow myself to rest more often.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks, I didn't look this far back.  :D

 

Is everything pretty much the same now as when you posted this?  How are your blood sugar levels, are you working with your doctor for this?

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Blood sugar numbers are normal. I have reactive hypoglycemia that doesn’t show on tests just when my blood sugar spikes after eating and then goes back to normal it causes a lot of symptoms severe. Like hypoglycemia symptoms that eating releases. My doctor says this is from high insulin and low cortisol hormones from the stress of the taper and this is the reaction to food it causes. I am doing low carb and hypoglycemic diet eating small meals every three hours. It helps about 10% like I said but doesn’t take symptoms away. I would probably need more healing for that.

 

Everything is the same. My question is mostly about trying to makes sense of the article where it says do 5-10% of each new dose especially in the mid to later half of the taper as it gets harder but then also says speed up and the end to get off. Thanks for your help. I get worried because most people are not bed bound with a caregiver like me so it’s hard to relate to anyone.

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I'm having trouble finding where in the literature it says to speed up, I haven't read it all but can you point me to it?  Was it in the Inner Compass, SA or the document I provided?

 

You may want to get other opinions because mine reflects my personality, I tend to leap so I'm probably not the best person to advise you on how to reach the end of your taper.  For me, if I'd been suffering as long and as much as you have, I'd speed up and get off the drug since its doing you absolutely no good. 

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I'll second what Pam said.  Tapering got so tedious for me that I hastened things.  But like Pam said, benzos had stopped working for me quite a while before I even began tapering.
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I'm having trouble finding where in the literature it says to speed up, I haven't read it all but can you point me to it?  Was it in the Inner Compass, SA or the document I provided?

 

You may want to get other opinions because mine reflects my personality, I tend to leap so I'm probably not the best person to advise you on how to reach the end of your taper.  For me, if I'd been suffering as long and as much as you have, I'd speed up and get off the drug since its doing you absolutely no good.

 

Pamster

 

Here is a copy and paste from that portion.

So while Jill’s approach lengthens the amount of time spent tapering, especially during the mid-to-late stages of withdrawing, many experienced laypeople report that this smoother, decelerating pace seems to be a vitally helpful approach for more responsible tapering. This may be in part because it’s common for a taper to become more difficult in its later stages. Of course, in order to prevent a taper of this kind from continuing indefinitely, at some point in the mid-to-later stages it does become necessary to slightly increase the taper rate again and make some larger dosage ‘drops’ to get fully off a drug, but by that point dosage sizes are becoming so small that even these drops are relatively tiny.

 

See where it says decelerating the rate of the taper is helpful because it becomes for difficult in later stages. Then it says at some point mid to late taper it becomes necessary to slightly increase. I am just trying to decide what to do and it seems contradictory. Thanks for help Pam and Kate.

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Bob7 has made the point here that as the doses get smaller, the percentage of reduction in dose is much greater.  For example, with my final cut from 0.02mg to 0.01mg, the reduction was 50%.  The consoling thing about that is that the actual amount of benzo is very small at this point. 
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So is there anything to doing 5% of each new dose and taking two more years? That would only work if I was well and functioning then it would be worth doing it to keep functioning. Do you think I would get much worse speeding up? I am already so miserable. Is there a way to tag Bob 07 to chime in?

 

Your cut of .01 is .2 of v that is 20 times the daily rate I was doing when I was going much faster. I just don’t know how to proceed.

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If you have not already read ‘A Few Notes Concerning Tolerance,’ you might find it of interest:

 

Benzodiazepine Tolerance & Dependency

http://www.benzobuddies.org/benzodiazepine-information/tolerance-and-dependency/

 

Thank you I have not read that. It’s hard to read with my cognitive function being so bad but I think it’s says once you don’t stabilize on a certain amount getting off is the only option and drawing it out isn’t smart. I hit tolerance in a few weeks and have been trying to stabilize and taper off since then. It’s been such a nightmare and ruined my life so much I am 45 and in bed at my parents.where they help bath me and bring me food.

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Kate08.....Hello,

I'm familiar with your taper from 0.5mg to the end.  50 days is pretty quick and I'm curious as to how that went for you.  I'm at 0.35, feel "OK" and have had just about enough of this.  Wonder if I could do this in 35 days?  I'd like to try but don't want to end up in a jam.  We're all different and I know there is no way you can tell me what to do....but was it relatively smooth for you?  Thanks.

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Kate08.....Hello,

I'm familiar with your taper from 0.5mg to the end.  50 days is pretty quick and I'm curious as to how that went for you.  I'm at 0.35, feel "OK" and have had just about enough of this.  Wonder if I could do this in 35 days?  I'd like to try but don't want to end up in a jam.  We're all different and I know there is no way you can tell me what to do....but was it relatively smooth for you?  Thanks.

 

Yes, it was smooth for me.  My withdrawl symptoms were worse in the early part of my taper.  If you mix your 0.35 in 35ml of water you can do a 1ml reduction per day or of course and be finished in 35 days or you can go slower or hold even - however you want to do it.  There are many things I liked about this method (which by the way, I was VERY resistant to) - it is easy to do and there is no math involved.  I mixed three days worth at a time and stored them in the frig.

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Kate08.....Hello,

I'm familiar with your taper from 0.5mg to the end.  50 days is pretty quick and I'm curious as to how that went for you.  I'm at 0.35, feel "OK" and have had just about enough of this.  Wonder if I could do this in 35 days?  I'd like to try but don't want to end up in a jam.  We're all different and I know there is no way you can tell me what to do....but was it relatively smooth for you?  Thanks.

 

Yes, it was smooth for me.  My withdrawl symptoms were worse in the early part of my taper.  If you mix your 0.35 in 35ml of water you can do a 1ml reduction per day or of course and be finished in 35 days or you can go slower or hold even - however you want to do it.  There are many things I liked about this method (which by the way, I was VERY resistant to) - it is easy to do and there is no math involved.  I mixed three days worth at a time and stored them in the frig

Kate did you have to trial the liquid for a period of time? Also how did you handle the last few ,01 ml must have been hard logistically ?
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Thank you Kate.  Yes, there's nothing that says I can't hold if I need to.  I think I may try it.  My goal was/is to be off this crap by the 1 year anniversary of starting on it...May 13.  At the rate I'm going, I still have at least 8 weeks to go which would accomplish my goal....but man, this is just dragging out.  I don't need to tell you that :D  You mention initial resistance to the method.  May I ask what your concerns were?  Thank you so much for all your contribution to the board.
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Thank you Kate.  Yes, there's nothing that says I can't hold if I need to.  I think I may try it.  My goal was/is to be off this crap by the 1 year anniversary of starting on it...May 13.  At the rate I'm going, I still have at least 8 weeks to go which would accomplish my goal....but man, this is just dragging out.  I don't need to tell you that :D  You mention initial resistanrce to the method.  May I ask what your concerns were?  Thank you so much for all your contribution to the board.

 

No problem.  My concern about a liquid taper was I thought I was not capable of understanding a liquid taper but the one I used was so easy that even I could do it.  :thumbsup:

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