jokeonme: 3 months of tapering Ativan

[jokeonme]

Hello everyone, I was prescribed Ativan up to 3mg per day as needed for anxiety 3 years ago. My doctor didn’t tell me they were addictive so I went along year after year medicating myself even for the least bit of anxiety. About Sept, 2017 I started experiencing tolerance withdrawal  at the same time I was starting to take care of my dad after heart surgery, my mom with Alzheimer’s and my own family including 2 special needs kids. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what was wrong or what to do about it. I was taking 1mg Ativan at night to help me sleep and 1/2mg during the day because it made me feel calm. I stopped taking the 1/2mg am dose because I just forgot to take it and when I remembered to take it it made me feel tired and I could take care of my parents/family if I was tired. I went through hell for a month then saw my doctor about it. He said I was experiencing tolerance withdrawal and that I shouldn’t have cut out my am dose all of a sudden. I cut down another 10% of my pm dose and started having worse withdrawals like extreme sweating, shaking, anxiety and tinnitus. I researched Tolerance withdrawal and Ativan withdrawal and decided to ask my doctor for liquid Ativan and told him I wanted to start my taper with just a 5% reduction. Since then, I’ve heard of people having greater success with a lower reduction of 2% at a time. My tinnitus causes me a lot of anxiety and insomnia so I don’t want to taper to much right now but I do want to get off Ativan. I think I can be patient for another year but not more than that. I think maybe I need to go longer than a year? I’m just going to start and see how it goes but should I start now at 5% or lower? I appreciate any advice. Thank you - jokeonme

[Shep]

Hi, Jokeonme.

 

Welcome to Surviving Antidepressants.

 

I'm a bit confused by what is in your signature. You have "Jan. 218 dry cut approx 80% at night 10% in am" - what is your dose in milligrams? I can't tell if "approx 80%" means an 80% cut or if you're now on 80% of what you started out on. Same type of confusion with the "10% in am". Please also write your morning dose out in milligrams. 

 

Are you on any other medications or any supplements? If so, please list them in your signature. 

 

We have a members-only benzo forum, so please go ahead and start a thread for yourself there. 

 

Members-only benzo forum

 

You may be experiencing interdose withdrawal due to Ativan's short half life, so once you have a thread set up in the benzo forum, we can discuss ways of dealing with that, along with answering questions about the best taper rate to use.