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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 11 of 11. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by hitman60 on May 15, 2008, at 5:45:29
I am starting a slow 3 month taper from only .5 mg of Klonopin, 10% gradual cut every 12 days( using water titration method- feel like a chemist) Has anyone on this smaller dose titrated with litte side effects or issues. I have heard the horror stories but could use some positive motivation. Are you out there? I have been tapering for 11 days now without a problem, but a little nervous about future cuts. :)
Posted by Molybdenum on May 15, 2008, at 7:28:32
In reply to Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by hitman60 on May 15, 2008, at 5:45:29
Hi,
I too have been on 0.5mg for years. It's supposed to suppress my hyperventilation due to sleep apnoea.
Regardless, I thought at one stage that it might be contributing to my tiredness, so I stopped it completely & abruptly for at least 2 months.
I didn't get any withdrawals at all.
The only reason I started it up again was because I felt a little worse (more tired) without it & my sleep doc told me off for stopping it.
So it's not necessarily going to be tortuous for you either.
Good Luck ;)
Posted by Phillipa on May 15, 2008, at 12:06:34
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by Molybdenum on May 15, 2008, at 7:28:32
Didn't know they used it for sleep aphnea how does it help? Phillipa
Posted by becksFLA on May 15, 2008, at 21:07:44
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects? » Molybdenum, posted by Phillipa on May 15, 2008, at 12:06:34
I went from 14 to 5 in 6 weeks with very little problems lol
brendan
now still going down more...but at a slower rate. im going down .5 mg every 1-2 weeks.
Posted by Phillipa on May 15, 2008, at 23:03:52
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effec, posted by becksFLA on May 15, 2008, at 21:07:44
Congrats doing a good job. I seem to be able to wean rather fast myself. Different people different chemistries. Love Phillipa
Posted by Molybdenum on May 16, 2008, at 4:33:06
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects? » Molybdenum, posted by Phillipa on May 15, 2008, at 12:06:34
> Didn't know they used it for sleep aphnea how does it help? Phillipa
Hi,
when I stop breathing my CO2 level starts to rise in my blood. Even though I haven't taken a breath for around 40 seconds, that in itself isn't causing a problem. But as the CO2 level rises above a certain threshold, another part of the brain slightly panics & makes me take several deep breaths to compensate (hyperventilating). Apparently, it's the deep breaths that make me wake up - not enough for me to notice, just enough to stop me from entering into the deeper stages of sleep, over & over & over again all night.
So although I might be "asleep" for 8 hrs, I wake up with headaches & feeling like normal people do when they only get a few hrs sleep. Every f*ck*ng day...
In Central Sleep Apnoea, the brain just doesn't bother sending the signal to breathe. This is common in people with Congestive Heart Failure & brain injuries. Luckily that's not what causes mine. Mine is in the "damned if we know why" basket.
Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is about 10x more common than CSA. OSA occurs when your throat closes over, when your soft palate effectively blocks your airway. You'll be trying to breathe but the collapsed / obstructed airway will not let air in. So your blood CO2 rises, your brain goes into panic mode a bit & makes you gasp & snore or whatever it has to, to make you take a breath. So OSA can be treated a lot of the time with a CPAP machine with a mask over your nose / face that keeps the pressure of air in your lungs above the pressure outside, effectively "splinting" the airway open. Much like water does in an otherwise flat fireman's hose. Ok, think of a penis if you must....;)
For CSA, CPAP is generally useless & can even make it worse. So what I need is a kind of ventilator that pushes air into my lungs when I stop breathing - just enough to get me breathing on my own again. Not a full-on ventilator you've seen in hospitals for people who are paralysed or anaesthetised. I actually bought one of these pseudo-ventilator machines ($10,000) but I just can't tolerate it. I can't sleep with it - some people can, but not me. So all that's left for me is taking a tiny bit of clonazepam so that it suppresses my hyperventilation, so I don't wake up as much as I would without it. But if I take too much clonazepam, it'll bugger up normal sleep patterns all by itself + leave me sedated the next day. Viscous little circle there.
There. Totally off thread but that's the joy of sleep apnoea ;)
While I'm waffling off topic, I found out that us humans are very sensitive to CO2 but not "a lack of oxygen". That means that if you're sick of life & Babble and the PEA in your chocolate bar just isn't enough of a reason to want to live, and you decide to take a bunch of benzos & put a plastic bag over your head, your body can still panic when it senses the CO2 level in the bag getting too high - not the lack of oxygen. That's dangerous, because you might reach up & remove the bag...!
But if you stick a tube connected to a bottle of say, nitrogen into the bag with you, it'll flush out the extra CO2 and you'll happily breathe in all the extra nitrogen without panicking, 'cos the CO2 level is being kept low. Of course, your body needs oxygen so very soon you'll go unconscious from lack of oxygen...and die. But you won't go into CO2 panic & try to remove the bag.
I find it interesting because most people think it's the lack of oxygen that makes you panic "running out of air" when in fact it's not that at all. It's the increase in CO2. If you can remove the excess CO2 (by flushing with another gas or with a scrubber), you'll just drift off into oblivion....
Fascinating, ain't it?
;)
Posted by undopaminergic on May 16, 2008, at 10:05:27
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects? » Phillipa, posted by Molybdenum on May 16, 2008, at 4:33:06
What if you were to replace your bedroom atmosphere with a mixture identical to air except for the substitution of CO2 with a non-panicking gas - such as nitrous oxide?
Posted by Phillipa on May 16, 2008, at 19:04:04
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects? » Phillipa, posted by Molybdenum on May 16, 2008, at 4:33:06
Yes I found it very interesting . Thanks for the education as didn't know so many types of aphnea. I do like my dark chocolate. But so interesting about the klonopin. Thanks Love Phillipa
Posted by Molybdenum on May 17, 2008, at 2:25:00
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by undopaminergic on May 16, 2008, at 10:05:27
> What if you were to replace your bedroom atmosphere with a mixture identical to air except for the substitution of CO2 with a non-panicking gas - such as nitrous oxide?
Well if you're talking about suicide, then that's essentially what you do when you stick the tube from the nitrogen bottle into the bag over your head. I don't think it matters too much what the gas is, so long as the CO2 level in the "bag mix" you're breathing in is kept low enough, you'll not have the hyperventilation / panic response. So you'll apparently die of O2 starvation "quite peacefully". In practical terms, there's a handful of Xanax involved too ;)
If you're suggesting this as a treatment for CSA, then you're also on the right track undopa. There's actually a new approach that's under investigation that involves a normal CPAP machine but instead of just fresh air being forced in under pressure, there's another tube coming out of your mask that is used to feed some of your expired CO2 back into your fresh air tube. Either that or there's just a length of tubing that acts as a "dead space" where some of your exhaled C02 can act as a reservoir for re-breathing.
The idea of re-breathing some CO2 is to stop you from waking up too much when you hyperventilate. Which "could" mean that you don't get pulled out of the deeper sleep phases so much.
As far as I know the results are mixed. Some studies say it reduces the number of apnoeas but I don't think it's been shown to necessarily improve overall sleep quality.
Turns out that breathing is a complex system of feedback loops. If one of the elements is not working properly, the whole system can become unstable as we humans try to compensate or overcompensate for too much or too little CO2 in our blood. One of the patterns of breathing this produces is called Cheyne-Stokes respiration where you stop breathing, then over-breathe, then stop again, etc, etc. Mine looks like that.
I'm just hoping for a chemical treatment one day - whether that reinforces or regulates the drive to breathe, or adjusts my sensitivity to CO2, or suppresses one of the feedback systems I don't know.
In the meantime, I wouldn't be buying shares in a CPAP machine company. Some people can tolerate it but many have trouble & some can't stand it at all - that's me. IMHO, CPAP is definitely a treatment that is crying out to be made obsolete..!
There - I'll shutup now. And I hope Pluto isn't reading this....
Posted by Phillipa on May 17, 2008, at 20:50:11
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by Molybdenum on May 17, 2008, at 2:25:00
Me too!!!!! Love Phillipa
Posted by crazy777girl on May 17, 2008, at 21:57:49
In reply to Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by hitman60 on May 15, 2008, at 5:45:29
Greetings,
I detoxed FAST, but under medical supervision, and when I came home, I was still detoxing on my own, taking it slowly, like you, and doing very well.I'd say if you're thru your initial drop you may be over the hump. My misconception was in thinking that when I dropped from 2mg to 1mg, the suffering would be worse than when they subsequently dropped me down to .5, but it actually gets worse as the dosage level decreases.
It's mostly like a very bad flu; body aches, gastrointestinal stuff, tired, that's about it.
It isn't much more dramatic than when you last had the flu. That's as bad as it's likely to be at your dose level. And the way you're tapering - it is MORE likely to be less noticable to you in any highly negative way.
Tell yourself that you can always go prn when you've stopped, and most important - allow yourself to take steps backwards, if need be, in order to move forward, according to your plan.
That could be helpful. Best of luck,
A
> I am starting a slow 3 month taper from only .5 mg of Klonopin, 10% gradual cut every 12 days( using water titration method- feel like a chemist) Has anyone on this smaller dose titrated with litte side effects or issues. I have heard the horror stories but could use some positive motivation. Are you out there? I have been tapering for 11 days now without a problem, but a little nervous about future cuts. :)
This is the end of the thread.
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