Posted by SLS on August 7, 2009, at 9:47:09
In reply to Re: Dosing Scott, posted by qbsbrown on August 7, 2009, at 9:34:07
> > I think the cognitive effects will dissipate. You know, one is supposed to start at 400mg and increase by 100mg or 200mg every week. You've gone faster than that, so side effects must be expected to be more prominent at first.
> >
> > I would continue with the Tegretol. If you feel the need, you can take a bit more diazepam, but my feeling is that this won't be necessary in a few more days. Try to push past the side effects.
> >
> >
> > - Scott
>
> Well I actually was at 400mgs for 6 days, so not that much out of the norm right.
>
> My night was pretty good (my last 3 days have been seemingly improved), but I was up in the middle of the night (I have intrusive thoughts 24/7), and the sunrise/sunlight sensitivity came back. This seems to only go away after raising the Tegretol dose. This went away yesterday after my first night of 600mgs, now has gone away after 2 days of 600.
> Today is day 3 on 600mgs, do I want to hold for at least 5 days? I wonder how high I will have to chase it. I saw a prominent bipolar doc that said he gets his patients to at least 1200mgs, but I'm sure it's different for benzo wd.
> I think i'm a very fast metabolizer obviously.
>
> Regards,
>
> BrianI think you are on the right track. I think it is ideal to wait for the WD symptoms to stabilize before beginning your taper. Waiting 5 days to raise the dosage to 800mg seems prudent. You could get a blood level of Tegretol, but I am not sure how useful that would be. You would want to find the minimum dosage necessary to allow you to taper the diazepam successfully. The best way to go about this is to titrate the dosage clinically and observe the results.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:906673
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20090801/msgs/910756.html