Has anyone else tried the benzo sleeping med Dalmane. I’ve been on it for about a year and a half. I’ve noticed that most nights I can fall asleep without it, but I don’t stay asleep so I take it. I want to wean myself off of it but I’m afraid of benzo withdrawal . Has anyone weaned off of Dalmane or any other Benzo with success? How did you do it?
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I was on 0.5mg a day of clonazepam, and got horrible withdrawals. The way I eventually came if it was by slowly increasing the amount of days between taking it.
At the beginning I would take it every other day for 2 weeks, then every 3 days for two weeks, etc.
Doing it slowly was the key.
Good luck coming off it.
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The standard advice for withdrawing from any benzo is to reduce your dosage by 10% of your previous dosage every 4 weeks.
So if you are taking 1mg, start with taking 0.9mg, then 4 weeks later 0.81mg, then 4 weeks later 0.72mg.
Notice its not 10% reduction of your initial dose, but 10% reduction of your PREVIOUS dose.
Eventually when you get down to a really small amount you have to jump to zero.
You can play around with it because everyone is different. Some people drop only 5% every 5 weeks, others 15% every 3 weeks, etc… You gotta see what works for you.
Sometimes you’ll get down to 50% of your initial dose and run into problems, so maybe go up one dosage level for a couple months to stabilize, then continue tapering.
This is what I did when I was dependent on clonazepam. It took me about 4 months to go from 0.5mg down to 0. I still had withdrawals for about 3 weeks after going to zero but they where mild compared to some other people, mostly just sweating and a few anxiety attacks.
It can be a long drawn out time consuming process but don’t rush it, just have patience and you’ll do okay
If you don’t know how to break up your pills into the correct dosages buy a jewellers scale from amazon and weigh the amounts. A scale is like $30-$40 I think. Make sure it can weigh down to 0.0001g
Good info. Thanks for sharing Headspark.
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Very helpful ever hopeful. Thanks for sharing.
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What if it’s a capsule?
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Capsules can be trickier depending on the contents. You can break them open and weigh out the contents. The problem is part of the capsule can be filler and part is the medication so you have to balance it out. If inside the capsule are beads, when you divide up the contents into smaller doses, make sure there is the same proportion (roughly) of different beads in each smaller dose as you progress. If your capsule is made of power, just really mix it up with a toothpick so its all evenly dispersed, then divide it into your smaller doses.
I should add there is an alternative to weighing out smaller and smaller dosages. Basically mixing your medication with a liquid and using a syringe to measure out smaller and smaller dosages, but I have only read about liquid titration, I never tried it.
Here is a website I found that discusses discontinuing benzos: https://www.benzoinfo.com/benzodiazepine-tapering-strategies/
When I quit Ativan I did it cold turkey. Taking 2mg to go to sleep on and 1mg for general anxiety. It wasn’t pleasant.