The very beginning

I wrote a quick introduction in the welcome section.  I can't express how pleased I am to find this board.  I am sitting down right now and planing a schedule to taper from 3 mg of Clonazepam daily.  After considerable research, I was leaning towards crossing over to valium but it doesn't look as if I'll have contact with a doctor for another month.  That leaves me with only the bottle of .5 clonazepam to work with.  As much as I've been on these meds for years and another month probably shouldn't matter all that much... I really feel that I need to get started.

Keeping your taper rate near 10% until the final stages seems like pretty easy math and the tables take alot of the work out of it.. thanks a bunch for that.  I was curious however.  Is there a general protocol as to where in the day is wisest to reduce your dosage. Morning evening or night.. I suspect it's best to spread it out when you can, but I take my pills 3 times a day... soo often I will have to make these calls.

I'm suspecting that it all sort of equalizes as the halflife isn't that short with Clonazepam, but I was curious if anyone had any insight.

Wish me luck!!!!!  I have tried to taper rapidly many times in the past and have failed.  I have felt the effects of severe withdrawal and know that a slower taper is the only way of of these things... ugh ... does anybody else wish they were on heroin???  ok.. not funny.. sorry I couldn't help it.

Full time University starts tomorrow and so does this... it's going to be an interesting semester.

lol 

  Hey Budgie

                  You dont know how many times I've thought that but didnt have the guts to post it. 

          Im titrating off 1mg klon. its recommended to switch I guess. but Im gonna try to do it with klon. if I have to switch later on I will.

              I've tried a fast taper once before. cutting up my pills by quarters. I bailed out of that attempt.  I didnt really know what I was dealing with.

                          Seee Yaaaa  Skeeter

                                              peace

Hi Budge,

Yes, keeping cuts to no more than about 10% every 1-2 weeks works for most people. The important thing is to listen to your body. If you feel lousy from a cut, delay the next cut. Also, if a cut hits hard, you should be aiming to smaller cuts. lastly, smaller more frequent cuts are better tolerated than larger less frequent cuts, even if they add up to the same over all taper rate. What dose are the tablets you are taking? 0.5mg tablets allow you to make smaller cuts. If you are going to titrate your dose, the strength of your tablets is not a big factor, since we can make tiny cut using titration.

Is there a general protocol as to where in the day is wisest to reduce your dosage. Morning evening or night.. I suspect it's best to spread it out when you can, but I take my pills 3 times a day... soo often I will have to make these calls.

Hi, Budgie, and welcome to BenzoBuddies.

Where you cut is really up to you. However, I would recommend keeping the night dose intact, since withdrawal often causes a lot of problems with sleep. As you suspected, it's best to even things out if you can.

If you want to start your taper by cutting tablets, you could do that. You're on 3 mg a day, so you could either cut half a .5 mg tablet (.25 mg) or else even a quarter of a .5 mg tablet (.125 mg). The larger cut (.25 mg) is about 8% of your total dose, which is appropriate, especially at the beginning. Or, if you're worried about symptoms, you could make the smaller cut (.125). Either way, wait until you feel that you are "recovered" from your cut before making another one.

Good luck with the doctor visit!

Therese

Thanks a bunch for quick replies folks!!!  Stoked to get this on the go... may as well be excited now as there are going to be some uneven roads ahead.  ok one more query

I was looking at the tapering table... it all makes perfect mathematical sense.. but one thing baffles me....

ok so as far as the table is concerned.. if

a. I'm on 6 mgs of said drug in the form of 6 pills, I could use the table to start at stage 21

b. I'm on 6 mgs of said drug in the form 12 X.5 mg pills I see myself on the table at stage 30

Same dosage different pill size.. sooo I'm guessing that before you consult the table you must create a reasonable time frame goal and then find the proper denomination of tablet to make it happen.  The tablet denomination dictates what you'll be taking at stage four when the rate of reduction skyrockets and you start to jump toward the obvious goal of100%. 

I suppose once you hit stage 4.. and you wanted to slow your taper and didn't feel prepared to walk into the final rising rate of reduction you could get tablets of half the size and bump yourself back to stage 8... or if the smaller tablets were'nt available you could titrate... and taper on the "moving closer but never getting to zero rate".  Didn't we call that an asymptote on a graph in high shool?

Wow.. I've been snowboarding in Whistler B.C. for 8 years.. this is the most math I've had to do since uni.  Kinda enjoyed it.

Ok I think I'm getting it.. am I?

I currently have .5 mg pills and I take 6 of them.  That starts me at stage 30.  Potentially somewhere between a half year or a year depending on how things go.  Am I thinking this through properly.. I'm sure I'm overthinking it...    Ahh well...  and so it goes.

I can't thank you guys enough.. Cheers everyone.  Chop! chop!!

Hi,

The thing about the stepping-off table is that the cuts are scaled to the number of tablets taken. If you are at step 21 (6 tablets), you make a half-tablet cut (8.33%). If you are at stage 30 (12 tablets), you make a full one tablet cut - again, 8.33%! Now, it is true that you have to go through more steps with the 0.5mg tablets, but these occur at the end. This means that you can manage cuts of 10% or less for far longer if using twelve 0.5mg tabs instead of six 1.0mg tabs. The smaller tablet size is of definite benefit. Also, you can change over to the 0.5mg tablets later (so long as it is done before you have to make cuts larger than 10%), and it will have the same tapering effect as it would have done if you had started the stepping-off chart using 0.5mg tabs from the beginning. Try it out. Go through the chart using the 1mg tabs, switch to an equivalent dose of 0.5mg tabs (at any step before you have to make cuts of more than 10%), and start the steps at the equivalent step. I'll example.

Assuming that you cannot manage the 1/8th of a pill cuts (most people cannot, and it is rather inaccurate) you will make cuts no smaller than 1/4 of a tab:

Six 1mg tabs (step 21) >>

Step 9 (you have made 12 cuts), you are on two-and-a-quarter tabs >>

Two-and-a-quarter 1mg tabs are equivalent to four-and-a-half 0.5mg tabs (step 18) >>

12 steps + 18 steps is 30 steps - exactly the same amount of steps you will have made if you had started on twelve 0.5mg tabs from the beginning!

Now, if we assume that the smallest cuts you can manage are a quarter of a tablet, and if you instead started on six 1mg tabs and stayed with those size of tablets throughout, you will step off sooner. You will begin to make cuts of more than 10% of your dose after step 9. But, step 9 is a dose of 2.25mg with 1mg tabs; step 9 is a dose of 1.125mg with 0.5mg tabs. The smaller the tablet dose, the lower you can get your in your daily dose before you have to make cuts of more than 10%.

The method scales properly until the we can no longer accurately divide our tablets into small enough doses. On our Stepping-off table, this occurs at step 9, or step 5 (if you feel you are able to divide your pills into eighths).