I have no problem sharing this and anything you may be curious about. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, and I know I shouldn’t let this condition define me but it does. When this taper is over I will still have a lot of work ahead of me recovering from the trauma this has created. I will also have considerable work restoring my sense of self worth.
I’ve been on klonopin for about 14 months. At my peak I was on 1.5 mg daily but for most of the -14 months it’s been pretty steady at 1 mg. I was taking .25 mg 4x a day and since early March have tapered down to .125 mg in the morning and .187 at bedtime.
I think I was lucky in the fact that I divided the 1 mg into 4 doses. No one told me to do it that , it just seemed more manageable that way but now I read it does help manage the taper .
Back in November I was on 200 mg, the highest dose of Zoloft and 40 mg of Buspirone. I got myself off of both of those which wasn’t too hard but, even though I knew klonopin was going to be a lot harder, it is unbelievable hard. My psychiatrist has been of no help throughout all of this and actually gave me really bad advice on how to get off all three meds. Completely useless. I always felt uncomfortable being on these meds and kept asking him if it was ok to still be on the klonopin. He always assured me it was such a low dose and nothing to worry about.
Last October and November I was building a stone wall which I’m very proud of (190’ long, 3’ high, 2’ thick) on my Catskill property and something in the work was so therapeutic that by the end of November I was CURED. My wife and I were giddy with joy. I then told my psychiatrist that I wanted to get off klonopin. He probably should have said let’s wait a couple of months before we do it. Instead he said drop .25 mg every two weeks. Well my being normal lasted 12 days and I had a relapse. I’m still haunted by this. I had it in the palm of my hand and lost it. Not only that but all my anxiety symptoms came back even harder. So what does the good Dr do, well of course he adds an antidepressant Pristiq and tell me he’s certain this will work. After 17 days of hell and feeling suicidal I stopped. He said go back to a lower dose but I didn’t listen and now he’s just my drug dealer. I do not trust anyone in the medical profession.
I’m trying now to get some help with all of this including therapy but not much luck. Internet is full of companies offering all sorts of services but they either aren’t taking new patients, charge too much or seem like a scam. What a great country we have. Some companies are making a fortune getting us sick and the other companies are making a fortune saying they can fix us. As you can tell I’m very angry.
Well I’ll leave on a good note. Today is a good day for me so maybe I’m finally getting my brain to heal🤞
Sorry for the rant!