New to the forum...glad to find it :)

Hi everyone,

I've been dealing with a variety of diagnosis and medications for 7 years now and am finally down to 5 diagnosis and 6 medications. lol I am just starting to come off of Klonapin. I've been on 4mg for 1 year now (the dose gradually increased to that level over the course of the previous year due to severe panic and tolerance problems). When I was at a lower dose, my doctor and I made a mistake and I went from 2mg a day to 0mg. Bad idea (as I'm sure you all know)

I am slowly tapering off of my dose now. I'm at 3 1/2 mg (have been for 3 weeks) and am about to drop to 3. I'm scared because we tried tapering the dose once before and life circumstances made it impossible for me to function. This time, so far the first step was ok, but I have been on this stuff a long time, have dealt with other withdrawls, have now had two bad experiences with tapering, and am a little scared. I was on line to do research, and am really happy to find this forum.

I don't know what else to add in here. I ave been dealing with mental health issues all my life...and getting help for almost 1/3 of my life. Gets kinda scary after a while. Life is slowly getting better and the first drop actually seems to already have some good effects. I'm still scared crapless...but that's why I'm glad I found the forum. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

Thanks for putting this out there. I look forward to meeting all of you.

g2

Welcome G2,

You've come to the right place. Lots of people here can help you through this. How has your first cut gone? Do you have a taper plan from your doctor again or are you doing it on your own? Are you familar with The Ashton Manual? It has lots of information and answers many questions you may have, I will provide the link to it below. I do not have the expertise to help you with a taper, but someone else should be along shortly with some help!

Hang in there! Someone will be by!

http://www.benzo.org.uk/manual/index.htm

just wanted to say thanks for such a fast reply. Talk about making a person feel welcome.

I am tapering with my doctor (as well as doing my own research). We have to be careful of interaction with my other meds as well.

I'll check out the manual. Thank you! 

Hi Gewinnin,

Welcome to BenzoBuddies.

It sounds as though you are using 2mg Klonopin tablets - I strongly recommend that you obtain 0.5mg tablets. The 0.5mg tablets will allow you to make smaller cuts. We generally recommend that you stick to cuts of no more than about 10% of your daily dose. Already, your cuts are well over this figure, and as your dose drops, these 0.5mg cuts will account for a larger-and-larger percentage of your daily dose. At this stage in your taper, you'd probably fair better by cutting no more than 0.25mg at a time. Cutting just 0.125mg (a quarter of a 0.5mg tablets) with each new reduction might be even better. Smaller more frequent cuts are generally better tolerated than larger less frequent cuts! Maybe you'll be OK for the time being, but sooner or later you will almost certainly need to reduce the size of your cuts, so it would be wise to obtain that prescription now.

I am tapering with my doctor (as well as doing my own research). We have to be careful of interaction with my other meds as well.

I so hope that your doc will support your doing a slower taper.  My previous doc told me to just cut the dose .5mg every 3-4 days and I'd be off in a few weeks.  After finding this forum and other research I was convinced that that was way too fast and got a new doc!   

Hi G2,

      It's nice to meet you! I'm new here myself, but am finding this to be a fantastic place to go to get help with tapering and just to find wonderful people who understand what this is like! Good luck with the taper and I look forward to talking with you more on the boards!

-Pete

Welcome! This is a great place for support and information! Your cuts are quite big. Maybe you should cut a little smaller? I was on 4mg and had some difficulties with .25mg cuts. But some people are different and can handle bigger cuts.

Anyway I hope you find what your looking for here, though I;m sure you will.

Amanda