Didn't know klonopin's half-life was THAT long

Medications
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Aw jeez this changes some things. Ok so a couple of days ago, I started experiencing weird symptoms that reminded me of my geodon withdrawal or when I was first starting on some ADs. Food would make me start to gag. It wasn’t nausea, it was like having a hypersensitive gag-reflex, feeling like someone’s finger is stuck down your throat. A while ago I determined it as a symptom of anxiety. However I had no idea what was causing this.

Now I can see what may have happened. I thought “long” for klonopins half life meant 12 hours. It’s 30-40 hours. This means it can take nearly 2 days for just HALF of it to leave your system! This means taking it regularly will create a build up effect to where I will have more of it in my system than initially intended. Those couple of days where I was having the gagging happened to be days I tried to stop taking the klonopin or took a reduced dose. I’ve unknowingly been building dependence I think :disappointed:

I’m not 100% on any of that but it concerns me. It wasn’t initially an issue because I didn’t take klonopin regularly. However lately it has been absolutely necessary due to my symptoms. This is a mess.

2 Likes
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Not only that, you can build up a resistance to klonopin’s effects. At least I did fairly quickly. So be careful @Anna. I did not know about the half life being that much.

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Yeah I notice the day after I take it my anxiety is still noticeably reduced.

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Holy moley! This encouraged me to look up the half life of diazepam (which I am prescribed), and it is 100 hours! What the heck?!

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Same I wondered why I wasn’t having attacks during the day when I was taking naps.

Also it explains why I am still SO SLEEPY halfway through the next day of taking it unless I take it super early.

@anon1571434 I’m aware of the resistance I stopped taking it bc I was gaining the resistance (I was on Ativan in the past) & because I also wanted to test if I’d be good off it which I wasn’t.

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I’ve had family members have to go to rehab for Valium.

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Oxazepam’s half life is about 8 hours.

ETA as much as 15 if you’re a slow metabolizer. But still much shorter than others.