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Blueberrybook · Feb 25, 2025, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WastingAsparagus

I am currently on my journey to lower clonazepam. I was taking 3.5 mg. Now I'm on 3.4375 mg. It may seem like a trivial change, but it's huge for me to lower the clonazepam. Anyway, my prior experience has taught me that it is very difficult to lower the medication. It can be done, however.

You definitely can do it. I had been taking clonazepam around 10 yr. I was at 4 mg when my pdoc wanted me to start tapering as he felt it had a lot to do with my forgetfulness (as it turned out, he was right, I'm much less forgetful now). It was slow tapers, I did it with his help as I was ready, some weeks as much as 0.5 mg (especially at the beginning), then in 0.25 mg increments, sometimes I'd go a month between steps, sometimes 2 or 3 weeks and at the end I was on 0.25 mg but taken every other day and then ONLY on days when it was necessary and then it became I was taking it maybe only once or twice a week and that's when finally I stopped it altogether. Though I still am on a host of meds for anxiety...buspirone, propranolol, hydroxyzine, prn Seroquel. 25 mg seroquel is not quite the same as a benzo but it does pretty well for me in a pinch. It took me about a year to taper off.

I actually have fewer panic attacks OFF benzos than I had once I had become tolerant of my dose of clonazepam. I still DO have panic attacks, but not as often, anxiety though much less since I've stopped listening to and reading the news and politics, I never realized how much that affected my anxiety until I cold-turkeyed it! I've had to use deep breathing (jury's still out on how well I manage that, but what else can you do when a panic attack hits you when driving and there is no place to pull off?).