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View Full Version : Getting off Clonazepam



Eljay
01-14-2014, 03:39 PM
This is probably a topic that comes often.
In my case it's a bit different because I already tapered off once. I have been on 1 mg(0.5 in the morning and 0.5 in the evening)
for several years and never had any problems. I decided to go off. A doctor told me roughly how to do it so I lowered my dose by 0.125 mg
every 2 weeks(1/4 tablet) and had no problems whatsoever. I even slept like a baby. The thing is that I successfully managed to stay clear of the internet
when it comes to looking up any infos on my my med for all the years I've been taking the medication.

I finally looked up the topic withdrawal on the same day I dropped the last 0.125 mg. All the negative sites and experiences I read immediately triggered my anxiety thru the roof
so I chickened out and went straight back on and stayed on since then.
I can't seem to shake off all the negative things I've read, even though I personally didn't have
any withdrawal experiences whatsoever. The problem with anxiety as everybody will know, is that you dwell on the negative stuff you read, lie "it is unlikely NOT to get withdrawal symptoms".
Reading stuff like that has a powerful effect on anybody but even more on people with anxiety problems. I feel like I'm in a catch-22
situation. I don't want to stay on the medication but getting off, triggers my anxiety because I have all these negative reports I read in my mind.

Not really sure how to handle it. Of course I could just stay on the medication but long term I guess it's better to cope without. I actually did cope w/o meds
pretty well but to say why I decided to take medication would take too long to explain.

Th13thOne
01-14-2014, 03:52 PM
My dosage was just increased from 1mg 2x/day to 2mg 2x/day. I will cross that path when I get to it and hope it's not too difficult. I quit smoking 4 years ago and not much is harder than that.

Good luck with whatever you decide! :)

Dahila
01-14-2014, 03:59 PM
We do have a topic 'Weening of clonazepam" I think.
I am on it for like 7 months and some extra three when I was taking it without the doctor decison. I have a tons of that....
I was on it and off and I had never any withdrawal problem. I was on Lorazepam aka Ativan probably for a few years, I quit it when i started meditation no problem. I am dealing with anxiety for over, much longer than 30 years. I mean taking meds for it.
The only problems I had was when I went off celexa, that's was tough as hell....
Please , do not mind my English, it is my second language:))

Please stop reading all the negative posts on internet, People tend to lie a lot trying to get attention, using the horror stories.....

GeneAllen
01-14-2014, 03:59 PM
Stick with success stories. I've did it too. My doc knocked me down from 2mg to 1 mg a day at a time when my 23 yr marriage was ending. I was already stricken with grief, I thought wtf? He replaced it with effexcor 150 mg as I recall. I did fine and fast. I cut the effexcor back to 37.5 mg though, then got off of it for 5 yrs. Recently anxiety has built up and I returned to the effexcor 37.5 mg. Doing pretty good.

When I was in Tennessee there was a swat team captain seeing my doc, after he left the doc said that man takes six mg of klonopin a day! He didn't know I knew who he was. A little private info. He was my cousins captain. ;) Peace

GeneAllen
01-14-2014, 04:03 PM
My dosage was just increased from 1mg 2x/day to 2mg 2x/day. I will cross that path when I get to it and hope it's not too difficult. I quit smoking 4 years ago and not much is harder than that.

Good luck with whatever you decide! :)

Good to see ya there 13thOne. Good doc visit looks like. Peace

Eljay
01-14-2014, 04:52 PM
I quit smoking 4 years ago and not much is harder than that.

Good to know. Oddly I used to smoke from the age 16 to about 25, rolling my own cigarettes with strong tobacco and about 50 a day.
I started cycling when I was about 20 so smoking and sports was a bit odd. One morning I woke up and just decided to quit smoking and that was it.
Back then I didn't even know that quitting cigarettes can give you any withdrawal symptoms. I bet if they had internet back then and I had read the horror stories, I'd still be smoking.


Please stop reading all the negative posts on internet, People tend to lie a lot trying to get attention, using the horror stories.....

Thanks, Dahila. It's good to hear things like that. I bet if I hadn't read the horror stories when I stopped Clonazepam and had just stopped like I did with smoking, I would have been fine.
You can't believe what and how many horror stories are out there or maybe you've read them yourself. They are enough to freak anyone out.




Stick with success stories. I've did it too.

That's a good idea. The problem is that the majority of people who are successful and have no problems just move on with their lives while you mostly have the ones who
claim they have gone to Hell and back, while withdrawing who write about their bad withdrawal experience.

Thanks. Your posts are really encouraging compared to what I've read. I quit reading those horror stories a long time ago but somewhere in the back of my mind, they still kind of stick.

Btw, sticking with the success stories is also the key when it comes to anxiety. I wrote in my introduction that I was having really bad panic attacks 16 years ago. To even walk to the
corner of my street was like Hell. A few years later I was on a 30 hour flight to the Andes and traveled on the so-called Death Road, the scariest road in the world, hundreds of times
without any fear. It goes to show how you can go from being totally agoraphobic to the complete opposite.

Th13thOne
01-14-2014, 05:30 PM
Good stuff here, guys!! :)

mistiblue
01-14-2014, 08:33 PM
I am in the process of weaning off 1 mg of Klonopin. So far I've done it like this. I dropped 1/8 for about 5 days, didn't feel anything, so I dropped down to .75 mg for about 3 days, nothing. I am currently at .5 mg for one day and so far nothing. The ONLY thing I've noticed is I am EXTREMELY irritable. There are other factors that play into that as well. I can deal with that if that's the only symptom so far. I just feel bad for those around me :)
Like other have told me, 1 mg is a small dose. I read online that high doses require a weaning schedule, so that made me feel a little more at ease about weaning. Focus on the positive stories, they are out there.
Soon, I will be a success story and so will you (you already were) if anything focus on that. You've done it once, you can do it again :)

Eljay
01-14-2014, 09:03 PM
Wow, you're going much faster than I did but I dropped 1/4 each time. Maybe I'll try the 1/8 version next time. When I did the .125 mg every to weeks drop, I felt a bit like I had too coffee for a day after I reduced my dose but I wouldn't call that a major symptom.
I only wonder what happens after the final drop. That's when I chickened out last time.

Dahila
01-14-2014, 09:25 PM
Yeah Eljay stick with us, we get the positive stories every day:)) People talk about their progress. Stop googling start posting :)))

mistiblue
01-14-2014, 11:35 PM
Ejay- The coffee feeling....that's how I feel...I just feel irritable though...lol. I don't deal well with the jitters.
Hang in there, we will make it.
Don't Google...if you do, Google "success stories". They will motivate you....granted, some of the people who have success still have some hard patches, but don't let that scare you. Just keep your eyes on the goal and you will be just fine :o)

Perses
01-15-2014, 09:19 AM
When I stopped taking clonazepam for about two months, I do remember thinking that I was a bit more grouchy. I find it interesting because irritation seems kind of opposite from anxiety. Anxiety always feels to me like you are afraid of others, while irritated suggests that one is angry. One is passive; the other active. I hate to say this but I'd rather be irritated than feel anxious. [I guess it's because being angry still gives me more control. It seems easier to combat irritable behavior.

I'm glad you are doing fine weening yourself off. I don't feel the need to do so re: clonazepam. I take .75 mg a day, and am fine with that. I weened myself off Xanax cold turkey about 14 years ago. I think there is a lot of animosity against that class of drugs. As someone else mentioned, people who don't have any trouble going off the drug, don't write about it. Second, I think that people who suffer from anxiety and do fine with the drug, but then feel pressured to go off of it, will, indeed, suffer from anxiety. If one has generalized anxiety before taking the drug, then the anxiety will return after one stops taking the drug. [Unless, the proximate cause for the anxiety has been eliminated, or the person has found a new mechanism for dealing with the anxiety.]

Dahila
01-15-2014, 09:46 AM
When I stopped taking clonazepam for about two months, I do remember thinking that I was a bit more grouchy. I find it interesting because irritation seems kind of opposite from anxiety. Anxiety always feels to me like you are afraid of others, while irritated suggests that one is angry. One is passive; the other active. I hate to say this but I'd rather be irritated than feel anxious. [I guess it's because being angry still gives me more control. It seems easier to combat irritable behavior.

I'm glad you are doing fine weening yourself off. I don't feel the need to do so re: clonazepam. I take .75 mg a day, and am fine with that. I weened myself off Xanax cold turkey about 14 years ago. I think there is a lot of animosity against that class of drugs. As someone else mentioned, people who don't have any trouble going off the drug, don't write about it. Second, I think that people who suffer from anxiety and do fine with the drug, but then feel pressured to go off of it, will, indeed, suffer from anxiety. If one has generalized anxiety before taking the drug, then the anxiety will return after one stops taking the drug. [Unless, the proximate cause for the anxiety has been eliminated, or the person has found a new mechanism for dealing with the anxiety.]

Exactly, you summed it up, very nicely:)

Eljay
01-15-2014, 06:07 PM
I don't feel the need to do so re: clonazepam. I take .75 mg a day, and am fine with that. I think that people who suffer from anxiety and do fine with the drug, but then feel pressured to go off of it, will, indeed, suffer from anxiety.

Actually I was put on Clonazepam while living in South America. Originally 1.5 mg but I went down to .75 mg and stayed on that for quite a while, doing totally fine. I then moved
to Germany and one doctor gave me the moral speech about benzos being bad and that I should try to get off. That was the only reason I decided to go off.
After reading all the horror stories and going back on, I sort of stabilized but never to the state I was before I weened off. I think the reason is that I still have all the horror stories
stuck in my mind. I think that they sort of always keep my anxiety higher than before. Then again, I can't just blame that doctor because I was always thinking of getting off the meds
because I think I can do w/o the meds just as well just like I could before the meds, so long term my goal should be to try to get off them.