@thankful the way he explained it to me was that for everyone/every time?? he prescribes opioids to me knowing I am on clonazepam, DEA gives him a "strike, and 10 "strikes" and they go after his license to prescribe. From conversations later I doubt that knew the consequences for ME of a 2-week taper. But even if he knew about the 6-month Ashton schedule and thereby prescribed the stepdown drug of Valium, he'd be in trouble. My guess is that he needed me off one or the other ASAP and rather than push back for an exception, he just told me I had to do it. I spent 4 years on a DEA (illegal drug - mostly cocaine) task force and 23 years in the fed gov't: bureaucrats make decisions in a vacuum, so I blame them equally.